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Letters

A Better Way to Elect a President?

Credit...Kiersten Essenpreis

To the Editor:

Re “Let the People Pick the President” (editorial, Nov. 8):

The Electoral College needs to be mended, not ended. Rather than replace our winner-take-all system in most states with awarding electors based on the national popular vote, which would result in a cascade of challenges, particularly in a close election, the best option is for our states to change the way they allocate their electoral votes.

I propose that each state’s electoral votes be divided proportionally based on the actual vote count in that state, with the winner receiving a guaranteed two electoral votes.

A proportional system for allocating electoral votes would force presidential candidates to run truly national campaigns instead of concentrating on just the swing states. It would preserve federalism, strengthen our democracy, increase turnout, restore voters from all states to a meaningful role in presidential campaigns, and require neither a constitutional amendment nor an interstate compact.

RICHARD KAVESH, NYACK, N.Y.

To the Editor:

The Electoral College is not only a bad idea, but also violates basic principles of voter equality. Under the Electoral College structure, smaller states have enormous political leverage. Wyoming has a population of about 585,000 and has three electoral votes. California has a population of more than 39 million and has 55 electoral votes. So each presidential vote in Wyoming is worth 3.6 times more than each vote in California.

If this discrepancy occurred within each state — if the voters in one county had 3.6 times the voting power of voters in another county — that would violate the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. So the “one person one vote” rule applies to every election in the United States, except for the vote for president. A lawsuit should be brought to end this ridiculous practice, which was created out of a distrust of democracy. We must eliminate this anachronistic, harmful practice.

LEON FRIEDMAN, NEW YORK

The writer is a professor of constitutional law at Hofstra Law School.

To the Editor:

Another good reason to void or avoid the Electoral College is highlighted by Russia’s tampering with the 2016 election. It would be much easier to flip a presidential election by hacking the vote count of a few key states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania (which Donald Trump won by only 77,000 combined votes) than by hacking the entire United States. “Let the American People Pick the President.”

DOUG GREER
MORGAN HILL, CALIF.

To the Editor:

You point out that “modern presidential campaigns ignore almost all states, large and small alike, in favor of a handful that are closely divided between Republicans and Democrats.” The defects of the Electoral College aside, I have never understood why it is that we sustain a system that perpetually assigns such a lopsided share of the presidential-picking process to Iowa and New Hampshire, sites of, respectively, the first major caucus and the first primary. By the time these two events are over, numerous candidates have usually been eliminated from the pack, without any input whatsoever from any voters in 48 of the states.

Iowa and New Hampshire are delightful places, but there is nothing in the air or drinking water of either state that confers upon their residents any special wisdom in judging presidential timber. Modest proposal: Why not have a different primary schedule each election year, using a lottery system to determine the order?

DAVID ENGLISH, ACTON, MASS.

To the Editor:

Eliminating the Electoral College would remove the injustice of a candidate receiving almost half a state’s votes while gaining none of its electors, but it would disenfranchise large segments of our country. A pure majority-vote system, while not inherently unfair, would require campaigns to focus almost exclusively on large population centers. A better system would be to have electors selected by the winner of each congressional district. Maine and Nebraska already use this method.

Of course there might be a focus on districts that are more “competitive,” but they would be spread across many regions. Since congressional districts are designed to be proportional, it would bring us closer to achieving the intended “one person one vote” goal.

DAVID P. MIRANDA, ALBANY

To the Editor:

You cite the disproportionately high percentage of presidential campaign events targeting a small number of voters in a handful of swing states as one reason for changing the Electoral College system. However, there is one exception to this campaign event disparity. Presidential candidates travel disproportionately to wealthy states, like Massachusetts, for the sole purpose of collecting campaign donations at private events. Unfortunately, both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates campaign for my money, but not for my vote.

PETER LIFTON
LEXINGTON, MASS.

To the Editor:

You are right that adopting the National Popular Vote compact — where every state gives its electoral votes to whoever wins the nation’s popular vote — would be a huge step toward fairer democracy. As it stands, though, National Popular Vote is unenforceable. Suppose that Ted Cruz or Sarah Palin is leading slightly in a future three-way race for president. Will the people of New York, Illinois and California really meekly give him or her all of their electoral votes? Or will their legislators withdraw from the compact as fast as they can?

To make National Popular Vote enforceable, states need to put the pact into their constitutions. National Popular Vote will work only if it is hard to withdraw from.

MARK WESTON, SARASOTA, FLA.

The writer is the author of “The Runner-Up Presidency: The Elections That Defied America’s Popular Will.”

To the Editor:

Your editorial is correct that the Electoral College must be superseded. But the details of the interstate National Popular Vote compact as currently written are suboptimal. Instead of giving the presidency to the plurality winner in a seven-candidate race, instant runoff would ensure that the majority decides between the two top candidates.

Compact opponents who present nightmare scenarios of endless vote recounts and litigation in close elections can be won over by using the popular vote only when one candidate has won a clear victory margin of one million votes or a 1 percent margin in the popular vote. Thus a recount litigation in a razor-thin election would be limited to only one or two contested states.

It is beyond dispute that the candidate who wins the popular vote by millions of votes should become president.

THOMAS O’BRIEN
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA.

To the Editor:

I wholeheartedly support doing away with, or otherwise bypassing, the Electoral College. I suggest that a sister initiative should be a legal requirement that all eligible voters vote in national elections. As reported by CNN, only 55 percent of the eligible electorate voted in last year’s election, which constituted a 20-year low.

The idea that democracy can exist when almost half of the population abstains from participation is an insult to our intelligence and an affront to the international role the United States purports to play as a champion of democratic freedom. Countries that have led the way in this regard include Belgium, Australia and Brazil.

Such a requirement, which would allow the individual to vote freely for anyone, including people not on the official slate, would put an end to artificially constructed barriers to access to the polls that we have seen in recent years and would complement your proposed reform.

PETER WYER, NEW YORK

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A version of this article appears in print on  , Section SR, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: A Better Way to Elect a President?. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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