Even if the electoral college functioned as Hamilton envisioned, it still would be illegitimate. Its basic architecture flouts the principle that has defined elections for every other public office in the United States for the last 50 years: one person, one vote.
The Supreme Court established the principle in 1964, when it ruled that states cannot unevenly weight votes in choosing their officeholders. The 8-1 decision struck down a Georgia scheme that, much like the electoral college, gave voters in less-populated rural counties significantly greater power than voters in urban counties.
Justice William O. Douglas acknowledged the fact that the Georgia system was similar to what was set up in Article 2, but he still concluded that the impulse was unconstitutional — and un-American. “The conception of political equality from the Declaration of Independence, to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, to the Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Nineteenth Amendments can mean only one thing — one person, one vote,” he wrote.
With an appropriate challenge in the high court, that precedent ought to topple the electoral college. Still, the college has its supporters. They fall back on a political defense. In a pure popular-vote system, they warn that candidates would pay no attention to the least populous states. But it’s not as if Wyoming’s voters are getting a lot of attention now.
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