Here’s Why We Can’t Elect the President by Popular Vote

I have a one-word response to those who say that we should get rid of the Electoral College and elect presidents by popular vote: California. As of Sunday morning after the election, California had only reported 76% of its votes.  That is ridiculous.  Fortunately, with the Electoral College, it doesn’t matter.  California is going Democratic, so it doesn’t matter if 76% of its votes are counted or 100%.  But, if we elected presidents by popular vote, it would matter. 

In 2016 ,Hillary Clinton’s popular vote margin went up and up as the days and weeks passed after Election Day.  Much of this was because California was finally counting its votes.  The same thing happened with Joe Biden’s margin in 2020, but with the Electoral College, it didn’t matter.

If presidents were elected by popular vote, however, it would matter.  If the vote elsewhere was close, we could be waiting weeks until California and other states that don’t require ballots to actually show up by election day to get around to counting their votes.  California counts ballots that show up within seven days after the election, as long as they are postmarked by election day.  Illinois, for some reason, allows fifteen days.  That couldn’t be allowed if we elected presidents by popular vote. 

Delays in counting, in California or other states like Illinois, would allow doubts to be raised with respect to the legitimacy of the result.  If there are delays, there will be concerns about fraud and cheating.  Such concerns might be wrong and even unfair. but either side could, and would, make claims if the other side was running a slow and delayed process. 

The objection to requiring ballots to be in by election day is “every vote should count,” but it is hard to see the problem with asking people to get their ballots in by election day.  We don’t have surprise elections.  It’s not like our campaigns are so short people don’t have time to get their ballot in.  They can do it if they want to.  They will do it if they have to.

Slow counts aren’t good under our current system, but they would be totally unacceptable if we elected the president by popular vote.  Until states are willing to set up systems to get votes counted right away, we can’t even think about electing a president by popular vote.