OK, we know it's a cheat. But so what?

Allegedly, some top Republicans believe they will rarely if ever win the popular vote for president, again.

To stay in power they need to keep the Electoral College, which on the whole tremendously enhances the power of Republican voters.

And the nonpartisan, non-racist arguments for keeping the thing are bullshit.

Personally, I think winning hearts and minds on this is useless since Republican senators, and maybe even some others from small states, will never vote for a relevant constitutional amendment.

Ditto abolishing the senate or making a state's representation in the senate proportionate to population.

Republicans do not want all votes to count equally.

They don't want non-Republicans to vote at all.

But a lot of folks are out there trying to win hearts and minds.

Here’s Eric Levitz

At a CNN town hall Monday night, Elizabeth Warren argued that America should elect presidents by a national popular vote. 

“We need to make sure that every vote counts. And you know, I want to push that right here in Mississippi. Because I think this is an important point,” the Democratic presidential candidate told a crowd in Jackson. 

“My view is that every vote matters. And the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting and that means get rid of the Electoral College.”

An overwhelming majority of the American public agree. And yet, an overwhelming majority of GOP operatives, public intellectuals, and politicians do not.

The simplest explanation for this discrepancy is that professional Republicans believe (consciously or otherwise) that the existing election rules benefit their party. 

After all, the GOP has lost the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections. 

And since the Electoral College gives disproportionate influence to whiter, more rural states — and the GOP is becoming increasingly reliant on white, rural voters — the existing conservative coalition is poised to continue deriving a benefit from the status quo rules for cycles to come.

. . . .

Terrible arguments ensue. 

And these awful products of motivated reasoning are joined by the awful products of status quo bias (which leads some small number of liberals to defend the Electoral College) in a noxious stew of nonsensical arguments against allowing popular democracy to determine control of at least one branch of our government.

. . . .

Argument 1: The Founders said so.

[Referring to an op-ed, our author writes] this isn’t the op-ed’s only argument. 

But the authors devote a solid 350 words of their short column to saying, essentially, “Look, our finest slaveholders already debated all this only a couple decades before the advent of the steam engine, so why reopen this can of worms?” 

And they are hardly alone in presenting “the founders said so” as a trump card.

The trouble with this argument is twofold. 

First, the founders were (mostly) a collection of land speculators who built their fortunes by ethnically cleansing Native Americans, and slavers who built theirs by participating in one of the greatest atrocities in world history. 

Most did not believe in popular democracy (as the vast majority of Americans do today). 

As political theorists, these dudes were so foresighted, they assumed that America would never have political parties.

None of this means that some of them weren’t brilliant, or that they didn’t build some institutions that are worth preserving. 

But it does mean we’re talking about incredibly flawed, extremely dead human beings, not philosopher kings appointed by God.

. . . .

But the most fundamental problem with the idea that we should defer to framer’s judgement is this: Almost immediately after writing the rules for presidential elections into the Constitution, the leaders of our republic realized they’d made a mistake (which is why the 12th Amendment exists). 

. . . .

Argument 2: It would put us on a slippery slope toward abolishing the senate.

. . . .

The biggest problem with this slippery-slope argument is that it’s implausible[.]

. . . .

But the more basic problem with this species of Electoral College defense is that it boils down to “federalism exists, therefore it ought to.”

. . . .

There may be some virtue in decentralizing power and creating opportunities for policy experimentation on the subnational level. 

But that does not require inflating Wyoming’s influence over presidential elections or congressional legislation.

By contrast, the case for not requiring all legislation to pass through an upper chamber that is wildly malapportioned — such that Wyoming residents get 66 times more say in the Senate than Californians do — is quite simple: In a democracy, individual citizens should have roughly equal representation in their governing institutions. 

Achieving perfect equality in this respect is impossible; but designing a more representative legislature than the U.S. Senate is not. 

In fact, every U.S. state has already done so. 

If abolishing the Electoral College will eventually destroy the Senate, that only makes the case for Warren’s proposal more compelling.

Argument 2 (a) It would give too little political power to white people.

Pfui.

Argument 2 (b) It would give too much power to white people.

Pshaw, and see this.

The Electoral College forced the winning candidate [Trump] to appeal to a wide variety of different kinds of white people. 

Therefore, abolishing it would reduce the influence that African-Americans and Hispanics enjoy over our political system?

Argument 2 (c) It would give large states too much power.

. . . .

More broadly, the “counting votes equally would give voters in populous states too much power” is just a long-winded way of saying that one does not believe in democracy. 

Why shouldn’t national candidates campaign in the places where most people live? 

Congress already guarantees that every region will have some say over policy-making — and that, within the Legislative branch, small states will actually have disproportionate say. 

What is it, exactly, about people who live in big cities that make them so undeserving of democratic equality?

Argument 2 (d) It would give small states too much power.

Oh, ick.

Argument 3 (a) Candidates would not campaign much in rural states.

And presidential candidates already don't waste a lot of time speaking to vast empty wheat fields.

Argument 3 (b) Third party candidates would sometimes be spoilers.

Like that never happens.

The problem identified here is not inherent to a national popular vote, but rather, to a winner-take-all system. 

Implementing ranked choice voting and/or runoff elections would solve the spoiler issue (that already exists).

Argument 3 (c) It could lead to a situation where American politics is defined by polarization, and high levels of social animosity.

This is a joke, right?

Argument 3 (d) It would create a political system in which an unqualified “media personality” could win the presidency,

Somebody actually made that his objection?

Here's Jamelle Bouie

In February, I wrote about the Electoral College, its origins and its problems. 

Whatever its potential merits, it is a plainly undemocratic institution. 

It undermines the principle of “one person, one vote,” affirmed in 1964 by the Supreme Court in Reynolds v. Sims — a key part of the civil and voting rights revolution of that decade. 

It produces recurring political crises. 

And it threatens to delegitimize the entire political system by creating larger and larger splits between who wins the public and who wins the states.