CLEVELAND — Call it sour grapes.
For years, Ohio was the political heart of it all, the state where all electoral roads passed to determine the winner of the presidential election. But that changed when Ohio became a red state. Over the past two elections, and particularly this year, we have been treated with the brazen indignity that Pennsylvania – with reminders of the role played by Pittsburgh, the city with that other AFC North football team – is the state upon which the presidential election depends.
All kidding aside, no matter which state is the key battleground, the Electoral College that creates this situation does mischief to our democracy. The flaws of the Electoral College come into sharp relief this election year because the razor-thin margin separating the two presidential candidates sets the nation up for a divisive and tumultuous Electoral College outcome that could very well end up in the House of Representatives, the go-to place when neither candidate has a clear majority of electoral votes. And given former President Donald Trump’s refusal to commit to accepting the results if he loses and the fierce animosity on both sides, there are real concerns that the aftermath of the election could tear an already polarized country farther apart.
That’s why we need to think beyond the choice of two candidates to the fundamental flaws in an electoral system that magnifies partisan divisions and is detrimental to democracy.
The key problem is the rank injustice that a candidate can become president without winning the greatest number of votes. This has happened five times in the nation’s history, most recently in 2016. In 2020, although Joe Biden had 7 million more votes than Trump nationally, Trump would have defeated Biden if some 43,000 voters had changed their minds.
This brings up the second problem – the outsized importance of battleground states. Each of the 43,000 voters who perforce shaped the election outcome in 2020 – about 11,000 in Arizona, 12,000 in Georgia, and 20,000 in Wisconsin – was immensely more important than the 7 million voters who cast their votes for Biden. This isn’t as unusual as it may seem. Political experts have concluded that close to 40% of all presidential elections would have produced a different winner or a deadlock in the Electoral College with a change in just 30,000 votes – frequently, those located in battleground states.
Far from encouraging candidates to engage in a national campaign, the Electoral College math marginalizes voters outside the battleground states. In 2020, just 4% of presidential campaign events occurred in non-battleground states, as candidates campaigned where the electoral numbers were located.
“The Electoral College is antithetical to democracy,” the legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky has written in a recent book. “Any president chosen after losing the popular vote inherently lacks legitimacy.” And this result fuels anger, resentment, a sense of injustice, and, in the worst cases, violent protest against an illegitimate, illiberal democracy.
The public says it favors substantive political change. But, as is typical and inevitable, the current campaign has not focused on reforming or changing systemic problems that scholars argue ail democracy, including the Electoral College, partisan gerrymandering in the U.S. House of Representatives, and life tenure for Supreme Court justices who are no longer in touch with the cultural tenor of the times. Chemerinsky argues we need a national conversation to address these issues,
Richard M. Perloff is a Distinguished Professor of communication and political science at Cleveland State University.Cleveland State University
Rather than debating who has the best tariffs or digestion of pets, these are the issues that demand urgent attention.
Of course, this won’t happen this fall or in any future campaign. “No democracy lasts forever,” Chemerinsky warns, with an eye on our nation’s bruising polarization. Many Americans doubt civil disunion could happen in the United States, but the signs scholars identify as precursors of that outcome – diminishing democracy, tribal factionalism, and decline in the majority group’s status – are present in this nation. We remain complacent at our own peril.
Richard M. Perloff is a Distinguished Professor of communication and political science in the Levin College of Public Affairs and Education at Cleveland State University.
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