There are three important benefits produced by the current electoral college system:
(1) Because a candidate must win at least 270 electoral votes from across the nation, a candidate cannot become president without a significant widespread voter base. In fact, as has happened in three previous elections, the distribution of voter support may actually take precedence over the quantity of voter support. Therefore, the electoral college ensures a broad national consensus for a candidate that subsequently will allow him to govern once he takes office.
(2) Since the electoral college operates on a State-by-State basis, this not only enhances the status of minorities by affording them a greater proportional influence within a smaller block of voters at the State level but it also ensures a geographically diverse population which makes regional domination, or domination of urban over suburban or rural areas, virtually impossible. In fact, since no one region of the country has 270 electoral votes, there is an incentive for a candidate to form coalitions of States and regions rather than to accentuate regional differences.
(3) The electoral college system prioritizes the most important factors in selecting a president. If a candidate receives a substantial majority of the popular vote, then that candidate is almost certain to receive enough electoral votes to be president. However, if the popular vote is extremely close, then the candidate with the best distribution of popular votes will be elected. And if the country is so divided that no one candidate obtains an absolute majority of electoral votes, then the U. S. House of Representatives the body closest to the people and which must face them in every election will then choose the president.
What if the two major candidates were separated by a popular margin of less than one percent. Therefore, if a candidate needed to pick up an additional one percent in a national recount, there is no reason to confine the recount solely to the closely contested States; in fact, it would make sense to recount even the landslide States.
While opponents of the electoral college system assert that the prolonged recount in Florida would have been avoided if there had been a direct popular election of the president, the reality is that without the electoral college system, recounts likely would have increased.
Therefore, if Bush needed only 100,000 votes to take the popular lead, he could demand a recount in New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Washington, D. C., Massachusetts, etc. States he lost by wide margins not because he needed to win those States but because he might gain more votes to add to his national total. In fact, he could even demand a recount of the States that he won handily States like Texas, Georgia, Virginia, Alabama, etc. simply to accumulate additional voters.
Contrary, then, to what many currently assert, without the electoral college system, in a close election the possibility of recounts and of recounts in numbers of States, would likely increase rather than decrease.
