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So why would a direct popular vote system be a worse way to elect a president?
ROSS: There are many reasons why it would be worse. First, it would get rid of the coalition-building incentives that are in our system now. There'd be no reason for candidates to learn or care about the concerns of the less densely populated areas of our country. As a strategic matter, it would be easier to go to the big cities or the big states, and rack up as many friendly votes as they can, as fast as they can, because that's just easy.
If we were to eliminate the Electoral College, the second thing we'd notice is how much easier it would be to steal elections. As it stands now, you have to know exactly where to steal an election - which state is close, which state is going to make a difference - then you need to steal votes in that one particular spot so you can swing the national outcome. Even that doesn't work well, by the way, unless the overall national election is close enough that one or two states are going to swing the whole thing. That doesn't usually happen.
If you have a national popular vote, by contrast, any stolen vote in any precinct in the country will make a difference. Votes can be stolen in the bluest blue California precinct or the reddest red Texas one, and you could affect the entire national outcome. A national popular vote system requires us to be on defense in every single precinct of the country at all times, and that's impossible. We simply don't have the resources for that.
A third thing that people don't really think about when they think about a switch to a national popular vote is that it would undermine the two party system. Some people might think, 'That sounds great! We're tired of being stuck with two choices.' But you have to also think about the other ramifications of that: You'd allow extremist third parties to come in and have an influence on the election.
Look at the French election system. It's not unusual to have ten or twelve candidates vying to get into a runoff. Two candidates finally make it with something like 18% or 19% of the vote. More extremist types of candidates often end up in the runoff in the French system. They have no incentive to build coalitions and to come together, and that's the kind of world that we would be looking at if we got rid of the Electoral College.— Tara Ross
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