February 18, 2009
The Electoral College Protects Maine Voters

By Rep. Bob Nutting

At the beginning of each day’s session in the Maine Legislature, we stand together and say, “I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands….” The United States is not a democracy where the majority rules. It is a constitutional republic where rights of citizens cannot be taken away by a simple majority vote, as they can be in a democracy. The Electoral College is a valuable part of the American federal system that is responsible for that republic.

In Augusta, some legislators support a proposal which would have Maine join only four other states in the so-called National Popular Vote System. Doing so might require in the future that Maine cast its Electoral College votes for the candidates for president and vice president who have received the most popular votes nationwide. It will not matter which candidates the voters of Maine choose in the election.

There have been numerous attempts to abolish the Electoral College at the national level, but they have never succeeded because Congress cannot agree on another system. At the State House, this end-run around the Constitution is legal because each state controls its own electors. It is not, however, a good idea.

The American federal system was thoroughly and wisely debated by the Founding Fathers and has served us well for more than 200 years. As part of that system, each state has a variable number of congressional representatives based on state population but only two U.S. senators regardless of that state’s population. The system is a brilliant compromise reached between states with populations both large and small.

The Electoral College system essentially imposes two requirements on candidates for the presidency. The candidate must obtain a sufficient popular vote as well as a sufficiently distributed popular vote to enable him or her to govern. If our presidential elections were determined purely by popular vote, smaller states like Maine, as well as minority groups, would be at a definite disadvantage and lose significant influence in electing a president. While the norm is for a newly elected president to have received the greatest popular vote total, it is not the determining factor – nor should it be.

Since we became a nation, there have been only three times that a president has been elected without winning the majority of the popular vote. In 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes was elected president despite the fact that he came in about 3 percent behind Samuel J. Tilden in the popular vote. The contributing factors in that race would take a whole separate discussion, but suffice it to say that in 1887 Congress enacted legislation which remains in effect today and precludes those circumstances from affecting elections again.

In 1888, Benjamin Harrison was elected even though Grover Cleveland received more popular votes. Cleveland gathered large majorities in a few states that supported him while Harrison received a smaller margin of votes but in a larger number of states that supported him. Harrison won more states than Cleveland, received more electoral votes and won the election even though his popular vote total was about 1 percent less than his opponent’s.

More than a century later, George W. Bush defeated Albert Gore, Jr., even though Gore received about 500,000 more votes out of the over 101 million votes cast. The election of 2000 renewed the call by some to abolish the Electoral College. Is the current system perfect? If your idea of perfection requires every president to be elected by a democratic majority, then the answer is no. It seems to me that the more significant question is whether the federal Electoral College system is better than any other system that has been devised. I think the answer is clearly yes.

In the election of 2008, because all votes in the Electoral College are important, Maine saw visits from candidates and their surrogates. If the criteria for winning were the popular vote, they would have camped out in California, Texas, Florida, New York, and other populous states. States like Maine, Iowa and New Hampshire would have been simply forgotten. Remember that each state gets two of their Electoral Votes because they each have only two senators.

The United States has survived a Civil War, two world wars, the Great Depression and various other internal and external conflicts. Our constitutional republic has survived where countless other forms of government, including many democracies, have failed. One needs only to look at the peaceful transfer of power which occurs with every new president. The Electoral College and our constitutional republic have stood the test of time and should not be weakened by well-meaning but misguided attempts to require that the presidency go to the winner of the popular vote.

State Representative Bob Nutting represents House District 78, which includes residents of Oakland and Sidney

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