"Should We Dispense with the Electoral College?"
PENNumbra has a debate on the Electoral College: Professor Sanford Levinson, of the University of Texas Law School, argues that true believers in majority rule should find it insufferable that the United States still employs a “constitutional iron cage built for us by [the] Framers,” which allows presidential candidates who lose the popular vote to win our nation’s highest office. Accordingly, he offers a challenge to his two interlocutors, Professor Daniel Lowenstein, of UCLA Law School, and Professor John McGinnis, of Northwestern Law School: “to defend the indefensible.” For his part, McGinnis argues that “majority rule in political decision making is far from sacrosanct,” and that while the Electoral College might not be the “best law that could be enacted,” it “fulfills the . . . essential criteria that any election for a president must meet in a democracy.” Furthermore, he maintains that “it [is] a virtue, not a defect, that the symbolism of the Electoral College reminds us that simple majority will is not the legitimating feature of society, but that instead popular consent is merely an instrument to protect the deep and enduring principles that make us a free people.” Similarly, Professor Lowenstein holds that “abstract majoritarianism” was never a goal of Framers like Madison; rather, the true “republican principle” is consent of the governed, and the Electoral College upholds this principle rather well. Finally, Lowenstein offers five reasons why the Electoral College should continue to receive the support of the American people, suggesting, ultimately, that “ [t]hose of us who see government as a practical enterprise will resist tearing down an institution that, however surprisingly, fits well into our system and fortifies it in numerous and diverse ways.” -- Should We Dispense with the Electoral College?