I hate to betray the views I held when I was a senior in high school debating in my AP Government class, but it’s time to face the truth. Abolishing the Electoral College is a bad idea.

On March 18, Sen. Elizabeth Warren was met with mixed reactions when she argued that the United States should eliminate the Electoral College, and switch to a system where “every vote matters.” There are other possible voting systems, but most who argue against the Electoral College are arguing for a popular vote.

It can be argued that Democrats are in favor of abolishing the current system because they have seen that they have a better chance of winning without it, considering that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016 and not the presidency, and so did Al Gore in 2000.

To dismiss their arguments based on this agenda would be a logical fallacy. To dismiss their arguments on the basis that the Electoral College ensures that regional needs are considered and to discourage election fraud is better.

The founding fathers created the Electoral College to create a balance of voting power between the states, so that the most populous states would not be able to determine the outcome of every election. This concern remains alive today.

The most populated states, California, Texas, and New York, would have the most power in electing the president. Candidates who hoped to win the popular vote would have to place the highest priority on the interests of these states. In order to get elected, candidates would end up largely ignoring the needs of less populous states.

The Electoral College makes it so that voters in smaller states have more power proportionally, but this is necessary to ensure that each state is fairly represented. After all, it’s simply not fair to let federal decisions that affect the entire nation be so heavily influenced by three or four large states.

Some argue that the Electoral College is undemocratic. This is true. However, the United States is not a democracy. It is a democratic republic. The founders created our current system with the knowledge that true democracy devolves into mob rule. The Electoral College works to prevent this.

“They rejected government by simple majority because plebiscites (popular votes) historically have been the tool of dictatorships, not democracy,” said Ronald D. Rotunda at the Cato Institute.
It was considered easier for one person to take control of the nation by dominating the whims of the majority, according to Allen Guelzo and James Hulme of The Washington Post.

Along with protecting smaller states, the Electoral College also acts as a safeguard against election fraud. According to Tara Ross, author of “The Indispensable Electoral College,” stealing votes is much easier in a popular vote, where every vote is counted. In order to steal votes under the current system, she explains, one would have to “steal votes in the right state at the right time.” And, the election would have to be close in the first place.

Some argue that the Electoral College is racist, because state populations were counted based on the Three-Fifths Compromise, and because the Founding Fathers created the Constitution with debates over slavery in mind. However, none of this implicates the Electoral College as racist. James Madison’s notes on the Constitutional Convention show no discussion about slavery by the Founders when deciding on the Electoral College. Without it, in fact, slavery may not have been abolished as soon.

“If anything, it was the electoral college that made it possible to end slavery, since Abraham Lincoln earned only 39 percent of the popular vote in the election of 1860, but won a crushing victory in the electoral college… [Southern slaveholders] realized that the electoral college would only produce more anti-slavery Northern presidents,” Guelzo and Hulme said.

Eliminating the Electoral College might have sounded great to Elizabeth Warren, or to me in my high school classroom, but it’s not time to do away with it just yet.