As 538 party officials around the country prepare to cast their electoral votes on Monday to formally elect Donald Trump the 45th president, the question whether the Electoral College should be abolished again was hotly debated this year.

Read the arguments for and against the Electoral College by two New Jersey election scholars, then vote in our informal poll to tell us what you think.

PRO

By Lazaro Cardenas

The Electoral College is neither a disaster or outdated, and it is as vital to our Republic today as it was in 1787.

The Electoral College is a critical part of the concept of federalism, and fundamental to our system of government. Its origin dates back to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and it was an important compromise between the small and large states. The other part of this compromise was to give all states two senators regardless of population.

The Electoral College ensures that support for a candidate is broad as well as deep. For example, if a candidate receives 65 percent of the vote in a densely populated area of the country but loses overwhelmingly in the less populated heartland, the chances are that a candidate cannot win the presidency. The Electoral College makes it unlikely that a regional candidate, popular in the urban centers, can win without appeal to other segments of our population.

If the Electoral College were eliminated, presidential candidates would focus only on highly populated areas. Rural areas that are less populated would be ignored, because, as a whole, these areas would have less impact on the election.

Another reason to keep it is that with the Electoral College we have a rational rather than an emotional approach to electing our presidents. For instance, a candidate who receives a substantial majority of the popular vote is also almost certain to win enough electoral votes to be elected president.

However, in the event the popular vote is close, then the candidate with the best distribution of popular votes wins by obtaining the absolute majority of electoral votes.

Also, the Electoral College encourages a two-party system by making it virtually impossible for a third party to win enough popular votes to have a real chance at obtaining sufficient Electoral College votes. This in turn provides a more stable political environment for the nation, and protects the presidency from passions and transitory movements. The practical effect of the Electoral College is then to force third party movements into one of the two major political parties.

This works in two ways, first, major parties have every incentive to absorb minor party movements in an attempt to win popular majorities in the States. Second, during this process of assimilation third party movements are forced to compromise their more radical views if they hope to attain any of their more generally acceptable objectives. This results in the victors being more pragmatic political parties which tend to be to the center of public opinion rather than many smaller parties catering to divergent and extremist views.

If we were to move to a direct popular election for the president, it would create an incentive for a multitude of minor parties to form in an attempt to prevent whatever popular majority might be necessary to elect a president. In this system, it is likely that the prevailing candidates would be focused on more extremist views in hopes of winning a run-off election. This will likely create an unstable political system composed of a multitude of political parties which will result in more radical changes in policies from one administration to the next. As it has been the case in some Latin American countries where runoff elections create the illusion of majoritarian support resulting in unstable political systems for decades.

Finally, certainty of outcome and eliminating the need for a national recount is another reason. For instance, if the popular vote was close, candidates would have an incentive to seek a recount in any state in which they thought the recount would give them more votes than their opponent. Candidates would likely have lawyers challenge state after state to have the votes recounted. The result would be uncertainty, delay, and conflict. Imagine the turmoil that a dispute limited to one state, Florida, caused in 2000, now imagine it at a nationwide level.

This seemingly archaic institution has served us for nearly 230 years by ensuring that the president of the United States has both sufficient popular support to govern and that his popular support is sufficiently distributed throughout the country to enable him to govern effectively. It helps provide a more stable political environment and gives certainty and finality to an otherwise messy process. For these reasons the Electoral College should not be disturbed.

Lazaro Cardenas is a graduate of Rutgers School of Law.

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CON

By Frank Argote-Freyre

The Electoral College strikes again.

For the second time in less than 20 years, our next president will be sworn in having received fewer votes than their principal opponent. The last time it happened was in 2000 when Al Gore received 500,000 more votes than George W. Bush. This time around Hillary Clinton received about 2.8 million more votes than Donald J. Trump.

This is fundamentally unfair and undemocratic.

I served on the Electoral College in 2012 as an elector for President Obama and wrote an opinion piece at that time, for this same newspaper, arguing against the unfairness of this antiquated institution.

For those unfamiliar with the Electoral College, a bit of history is in order. It was designed by the Founding Fathers as an elite institution to check the will of the "people" who, engulfed in the political passions of the day, might elect someone unfit for office.

The rationale for the Electoral College is set forth very clearly in Federalist Paper No. 68 by Alexander Hamilton writing under the pseudonym Publius. He envisioned the electors which, by the way, excluded persons of color, women, and the poor, as "men most capable of analyzing the qualities" of those seeking the highest office in the land. Hamilton won that debate and the Electoral College was codified in the United States Constitution.

This was a nice idea in the 18th century as the United States was moving away from the governance of kings toward greater self-rule. In the centuries since, one of the great successes of our nation has been the steady, if slow, expansion of voting rights. By the time of the next presidential election in 2020 we will be celebrating the centenary of women's suffrage.

However, in the 21st century, the Electoral College is an outdated relic of a bygone era. It makes a mockery of the one person, one vote principle. Under it, every vote is not equal. If you reside in a swing state your vote carries a great deal more weight than if you are in a state that leans towards one political party or the other.

There is a solution.

Congress could draft a constitutional amendment that would eliminate the Electoral College and replace it with a direct popular vote. As was proposed in 1969 in the Bayh-Cellar Amendment, a presidential candidate would need to receive at least 40 percent of the popular vote to be elected. In the event that does not happen a run-off election would be necessary within two to three weeks, among the two candidates with the most votes.

Retiring California Sen. Barbara Boxer recently submitted legislation abolishing the Electoral College and replacing it with a majority vote system. It does not provide for a minimum percentage for the winner which would be essential to ensure that one candidate has sufficient support to govern.

More optimistically, there is a chance that some day enough states will join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. The states that agree to join the compact pledge to give their electors to the candidate that wins the national popular vote regardless of who wins in their state. New Jersey has voted to join the compact, but It does not go into effect until states totaling 270 Electoral Votes have joined it. Thus far, states totaling around 165 electoral votes have joined the compact. If it were in place Clinton would be president-elect.

The compact may be our only hope of a system more closely approximating democracy because I am not optimistic of the Electoral College being discarded any time in the near future. A constitutional amendment would require a two-thirds favorable vote in both houses of Congress. Unfortunately, in recent years our Congresses have been so dysfunctional they cannot even agree on a lunch menu. If it were to pass Congress, it would then need to be approved by three-fourths of the state legislatures which means 38 states would need to pass it. In the polarized politics of today this seems like an insurmountable task.

My conclusion is that the Electoral College is a historical curiosity that never seems important enough to make a national priority. There is some uproar over it now but very soon everyone will move onto the process of governing and forget about this very curious institution which is uniquely our own.

Sadly, I predict, this 18th century relic will remain with us for most, if not all, of the 21st century.

Frank Argote-Freyre is an assistant professor at Kean University.

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