Topical Analysis:

Direct Election

Because the constitution specifies the electoral college as the method for selecting the president, switching to a direct election (i.e. the “popular vote”) would require a constitutional amendment with ratification by 38 of 50 states.

Proposed Counterplan

The description requires that I must defend “an electoral college in some form.” Hence, I propose the following counterplan: states implement proportional elector allocation, similarly to the split elector system Nebraska currently has, but proportional to population. Further, states should nullify the votes of faithless electors, as Colorado has done. Getting the majority of states to do this, or even all of them, is much more feasible than a constitutional amendment and less likely to lead to political backlash, since some states have already made reforms along these lines.

Framework:

In Baron de Montesquieu’s widely-lauded political treatise The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu argues that a government’s laws and structures must be designed with the society’s political structure and cultural context in mind. For example, a policy that works for a small, homogenous city-state may be counterproductive when applied to a large, heterogeneous republic.

For a country as culturally diverse as the United States, I propose a framework that takes this cultural context into account. The question that should underpin this debate is this: Does switching to a direct voting system risk undermining the spirit of the republic—that is, the principles and stability of the United States?

Accommodation

Montesquieu states that a just government must accommodate the diverse “general spirit, morals, and customs” of its people, so that people’s minds can be “prepared for the reception of the best laws” (Book XIX). True to Montesquieu’s point, governments imposed from above that are incompatible with the culture of the people are prone to collapse—consider the U.S. intervention in Iraq, when imposing a Western-style democracy on a society with deep-seated tribal divisions proved to be ineffectual.

Moderation

Montesquieu states that “political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments” (Book XI), and that tyranny is “sure to be felt whenever those who govern establish things shocking to the existing ideas of a nation” (Book XIX). Consider the National Prohibition Act, which prohibited alcoholic drinks in the United States. Because the act was so drastic and polarizing, it was poorly enforced and led to black markets run by criminal gangs, undermining the rule of law and the contract between the government and the governed.

Decentralized Power

Montesquieu argues that “power should be a check to power” and that “were [the judiciary power] joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control…were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with violence and oppression” (Book XI). If undue control is given to a single group or individual, this creates a great risk of corruption. Consider the South Korean Impeachment Crisis, in which a single executive declared martial law in South Korea in a bid for unchecked power, and the full strength of the legislative branch was required to repeal this declaration.

Burdens:

Because Pro’s plan requires radically altering the structure of our elections and the constitution itself, they hold the greater burden in this debate. I argue that Pro’s proposal must pass all of these tests—accommodation, moderation, and decentralized power—for us to consider it worthwhile. Think of these as three pillars supporting the republic, where the collapse of one undermines the entire structure. If a radical alteration to the constitution fails to accommodate the diverse factions in America, such a change fails the duty of government to serve the common good and cannot justify its existence. Similarly, if such a change disrupts moderation or decentralized power, it can lead to an inevitable vicious circle in which warring factions cling to increased power and undermine the common good.

1. Accommodation of Diverse Factions:

Over four-fifths of the US population resides in urban areas. Rural areas have often been written off by the media as irrelevant “fly-over country,” but they are granted greater representation by the electoral college than they would have under a popular vote system. Under a direct voting system, politicians could ignore the needs of rural, agricultural communities and prioritize urban interests, leading to policies that harm the very people who feed Americans.

Case Study: California

The state government of California uses a popular vote system, which means that interests from agricultural areas in the Central Valley are frequently ignored in favor of interests from the more populous city regions. For example, Proposition 1A, which allocated funds for the California High-Speed Rail Authority, passed with a slim majority. The rail line would have connected San Francisco to Los Angeles but failed to accommodate the Central Valley, leading to intense legal battles and the government used eminent domain to snatch land from homes, ranches, farms and businesses in the Central Valley. Today, the High-Speed Rail Project is widely seen as an inefficient, overexpensive failure.

2. Preferring Moderation to Drastic Political Measures:

Precedent of Electoral College

The electoral college has stood the test of time, scaling from 10 states in 1788 to 50 states today. That’s a 237 year timespan, 37 years longer than the average lifespan of democracies. This is a big sign that the current system is doing something right in keeping the republic stable and should not be thrown out. Radically altering the system now would be an extreme, immoderate measure.

Partisan Divide

Abolishing the electoral college is a strongly partisan issue, with significantly greater opposition from Republicans than from Democrats. Recent attempts to abolish the electoral college in 2016 and 2024 came entirely from Democrats, shortly after a Republican won the presidential election. As of late, Americans increasingly see the country as more divided than at any time since the Civil War. Switching to a popular vote system will inevitably be seen as one party “changing the rules” to win more elections.

3. Maintaining a Decentralized Delimitation of Power:

Unfeasibility of Decentralized Popular Vote System

A popular vote system would require a single national voting standard under a single organization. To see why, consider the Bush v. Gore election. When Florida was too close to call in the 2000 election, this led to an expensive, contentious recount. Under a popular vote system with no central voting standard, candidates would demand recounts in every state when an election was too close to call, multiplying the cost and complexity by 50.

Consequences of A Central Voting Authority

However, despite being required for a direct voting model, a single voting authority would come with a whole slew of unacceptable consequences. Both parties have made serious allegations of election tampering, and giving the federal government unilateral control over handling vote counting, trusting the rules and execution entirely to the executive branch and the final single adjudication entirely to the Supreme Court, would undermine trust and legitimacy in our highly partisan society and eliminate state checks on government power—as Montesquieu argues, “every man invested with power is apt to abuse it” (Book XI).

Rebuttals:

“States have frequently flipped on what party they have voted for…It is not the 'state identity, but the 'American identity that matters for president…Twenty states are overrepresented in the Electoral College by more than one vote, based on population. Texas is underrepresented by nine votes.”

I disagree that a simple majority is effective at capturing “American identity” in a diverse society with heterogenous interests. The wisdom of crowds is only effective when the crowd holds diverse, independent opinions. The interests of farmers and those in agricultural areas should hold significant weight and not be ignored, even if they are a minority of the country.

“The president should not have to focus on swing states and their local issues, but to the American people as a whole, and national issues…A state can have 51% - 49% vote for president, yet out of that can come an unequal number of electoral votes for one party over the other.”

My counterplan addresses this. Ending the winner-take-all system would force politicians to focus on all states. A popular vote system would do the opposite, allowing candidates to focus solely on urban areas and ignore the needs of farmers, as I addressed under “Accommodation of Diverse Factions.”

“As of the 2020 election, there have been a total of 165[3][4] instances of faithlessness”

Faithless electors are addressed by my counterplan, by having states nullify their votes.

“In 1812, slave states had 76 seats out of 143 instead of the 59 they would have had; in 1833, 98 seats out of 240, instead of 73. As a result, Southern states had additional influence on the presidency”

No longer relevant, since the three-fifths compromise has been abolished.

“The Electoral College traps us into a divisive system of two party politics…Southern favorite Wallace actually captured 46 electoral votes…Although he had received nearly 14 percent of the popular vote, he got only eight percent of the electoral vote. Some 4.1 million Wallace votes cast outside the states he carried were “wasted.”

Wallace doing poorly is a good thing—he was a pro-segregation candidate who strongly supported racist “Jim Crow” policies. Abraham Lincoln, who freed the slaves, failed to win a majority of the popular vote, but won a comfortable majority of the electoral college. These impacts all turn against Pro.