Warren, an Electoral College Abolitionist

Prof. Elizabeth Warren and Holly Petraeus speak with servicemembers and their families at a forum in Ft. Myer.

Earlier in the week Elizabeth Warren spoke at a forum in Mississippi, where, she said, she wants to ensure that “every vote matters.” To make that happen, Warren would “get rid of the Electoral College.”

It’s Not Just Elizabeth Warren

Now, many in the Democratic Party are looking to abolish the Electoral College, Victor Davis Hanson warns readers.

Animosity Toward Electoral College Rooted in Rank Partisanship

Since they watched their supposed “blue wall” evaporate in the small hours of the 2016 presidential election, many Democrats have felt sufficient anger with the system to seek to remake it.

This habit has by no means been limited to the Electoral College. Indeed, no sooner has the Democratic Party lost control of an institution that it had assumed it would retain in perpetuity than that institution has been denounced as retrograde and unfair.

In the past year alone, this impulse has led to calls for the abolition or reinvention of the Senate, the Supreme Court, and more.

Electoral College Ensures Stability, Continuity, Unity

The U.S. Constitution is a complex document that, as Whitman might have put it, contains multitudes. … it hosts an outline for national action, and a blueprint for localism; and serves as a vehicle for the majority, while including guarantees that the most significant decisions must be broadly agreed upon.

The Electoral College is one of the many finely tuned institutions within the charter that have ensured stability and continuity in America for more than two centuries. To destroy it in a hail of platitudes, civic ignorance, and old-fashioned political pique would be a disastrous mistake.

The Electoral College Checks Polarization

No one paying the slightest attention to American politics thinks this concern is irrelevant today. As the WSJ notes, the Founders designed the Electoral College to help check polarization. For example, because of the EC, presidential candidates need to campaign in competitive states across the country, rather than campaign to motivate turnout in populous partisan strongholds. (California and NY come quickly to mind.)