Stuart Stevens

Opinion contributor

Only once since 1988 has a Republican presidential candidate won the popular vote: 2004, when President George W. Bush won reelection. I’ve worked in the past five presidential races on the Republican side, including the Bush 2000 campaign when we lost the popular vote and still won the White House. I’m now convinced that it is not only in the country’s best interest to end the Electoral College, but that abolishing it might be a key to the long-term survival of the Republican Party.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan won a sweeping landslide of 44 states with 56% of the white vote. In 2012, Mitt Romney lost with 59% of the white vote. In 2016, Trump won with 57% — but only because the black turnout rate in a presidential election fell for the first time in 20 years and third-party voting rose.

Since 1964, the Republican Party has increasingly become a white party. In 1956, 39% of African Americans voted for Dwight Eisenhower. In 1964, less than 7% voted for Barry Goldwater, who opposed the Civil Rights Act. Black support for the Republican Party fell of a cliff that year and has never come back.

For a while, it looked like Republicans could make strong inroads into the Hispanic vote with Bush topping 40% in 2004. But that dropped to 31% for John McCain in 2008, and that’s where it has been languishing.

In 2020, Pew Research estimates, Hispanics will be the largest minority voting group for the first time. Hispanics have grown from 7% of the electorate in 2000 to a projected 13% next year.

Keep the Electoral College: Rural Americans would be serfs if we abolished the Electoral College

Republican Party must change

The math is simple and compelling: America is becoming a less white country, and unless white people can figure out how to quit dying, the Republican Party is facing a crisis.

What does this have to do with the Electoral College? Under the EC, it is possible, though increasingly difficult, for a Republican candidate to win the presidency without substantial nonwhite support.

As long as the Republican Party believes it can win as an overwhelmingly white party, it will never feel the political pressure to change. Parties rarely voluntarily change as part of some long-term strategy to improve future results. Parties change because they are facing defeat and/or extinction if they don’t change.

Without an Electoral College, the Republican Party would be forced to grow or die. Donald Trump is defining the Republican Party as a white grievance party, settling the score for the great injustices being wrought on America’s white middle class. That was just enough to win in 2016 with the decline in black turnout and the rise of third-party voters, but losing a campaign by 3 million votes should be a serious warning sign for anyone who cares about the health of a center-right party in America. The fastest decreasing demographic in the electorate is white voters without a college degree. In 1980 they were about 70% of the electorate, vs. 44% in 2016. This is the Trump base.

The argument that abolishing the Electoral College would result in campaigns only targeting large urban areas simply doesn’t make sense. In America’s largest states like California and Florida, candidates campaign all over the state. The benefits of campaign appearances are far more about driving a message than the acquisition of votes in that particular market. In a recent race for the U.S. Senate, Democrat Beto O’Rourke campaigned in each of the 254 counties in Texas despite the fact that 84% of Texans live in urban areas. The idea that suddenly, presidential nominees would run campaigns like mayoral races in big cities is a fanciful excuse to justify an outdated system of electing a president.

Electoral College is outdated and doesn't work

The Electoral College has never performed as intended, with electors acting as a deliberative check on the whims of a national election. In practice, its only function is to allow for the possibility that the choice of a plurality of American voters will be thwarted and subject America to minority rule. If the Electoral College actually was beneficial, why is it that huge states like California have not copied it?

The same theoretical argument can be made that an artificial mechanism must be in place to give the rural voters of California more power in selecting the governor of a state dominated by urban population. But if anyone suggested such a change, it would be considered ridiculous. Yet we continue to elect presidents by a similar system?

Only states can fix it:How states can fix the Electoral College and prevent future Trumps

America has invested blood and tears into the concept of one person, one vote. In the last presidential election, the votes of almost 3 million Americans were disqualified by a system that failed to work as designed when ratified in 1804. In every election in America, the person with the most votes wins. Let’s quit pretending there is some great benefit to the national good that allows the person with the least votes to win the White House. Republicans have long said that they believe in competition. Let both parties compete for votes across the nation and stop disenfranchising voters by geography. The winner should win.

Stuart Stevens, a Republican consultant and writer, was a top strategist for Mitt Romney in 2012 and is working with the Weld for President campaign. Stevens' book about the Republican Party will be published next spring. Follow him on Twitter: @stuartpstevens