Years after being one of the ruling justices in the famous Bush V. Gore case, Antonin Scalia had a few simple words for those questioning him on whether the Supreme Court had cost Al Gore the presidency. “Get over it,” Scalia stated brusquely. When pressed further if he had any second thoughts about the case, Scalia was again terse in his response. “No regrets at all…Especially because it’s clear that the thing would have ended up the same way anyway. The press did extensive research into what would have happened if (what) Al Gore wanted done had been done, county by county, and he would have lost anyway.” Over the preceding month, the controversy of the November 4th presidential election had polarized Americans everywhere. The election had been decided by the swing state of Florida, whose 25 electoral votes gave Bush the victory. Democratic candidate Al Gore had led up unto that point, however after initial results showed Bush winning Florida by a handful of votes, his (Gore’s) lead evaporated, triggering massive litigation and recounts across the state. The recount was ultimately declared unconstitutional on a narrow 5-4 decision, infuriating many Gore supporters who felt as though the court had robbed their candidate of the presidency.
But the most significant aspect of the 2000 election was not the specifics of the Bush V. Gore case itself. To many political scholars, the most surprising development coming out of the election was had to do with the mechanics of the Electoral College in the final count. Despite the fact that Gore had won about half a million more popular votes nationwide than Bush, Bush had still finished ahead in overall electoral votes. Many questioned the legitimacy of this result, outraged by the seeming miscarriage of the system. How could the candidate with the most popular support lose the race? But such an attitude displays a basic ignorance of how America’s electoral system functions. Indeed, upon close examination of the Electoral College, it is clear that we as voters have no direct influence on the outcome of the presidential race.
Instead, the Electoral College is the sole determinant in the election of America's most important official. Electors-citizens chosen by each political party-go to their state capital and vote for the candidate nominated by their party. Whichever party receives a plurality of the popular vote in a given state has the exclusive capacity to activate their electors. Thus in an indirect sense, the popular vote of citizens does impact the result of the election. However, citizens do not even vote for the electors—they (the electors) are chosen by parties behind closed doors. These same electors technically have the freedom to go to their state capital and cast their vote for any candidate they wish. They are not legally obligated to vote for the candidate they pledged loyalty to even though their party nominated them for that task! Although some states have specific penalties for such so-called "faithless electors," such laws are legally unenforceable by constitutional law. Thus, objectively, the American voter has little if any influence on the overall outcome of the presidential election. Then why, one would ask, did the Framers put such a seemingly undemocratic system in place?
This paper will examine first why the Electoral College was created, looking at specific background information on the rather convoluted process, then secondly looking at some of the arguments for and against the system, examining the justifications for why the College should indeed be reformed, and looking at a specific reform option. An incredibly significant issue yet one that is rarely discussed in today’s mass media, the current mechanism by which the president is elected will be shown in both a favorable and a unfavorable light, but ultimately this paper will advocate the Electoral College has too many fundamental flaws, spurring a need for change. In addition, a viable alternative to the status quo will be examined.
  Why did the Framers create the Electoral College? Dewey M. Clayton, a Professor of Political Science at the University of Louisville and a premier author and writer for Black Scholar claims that the Founders of our republic considered a multitude of options when drawing up the first few articles of the Constitution. Some of the more elitist Founders wished Congress to choose the President. However, according to Clayton, "This idea was discarded because the framers believed it would run counter to the balance of power that they envisioned between the legislative and executive branches of the national government." The Framers also deliberated over the idea of state legislatures electing the President, but once again Clayton says, this proposition fell through because it would create a conflict of interest and possibly weaken the national government by putting the selection process in the hands of state legislatures.
Finally the idea of a direct election by citizens was rejected. Why? William Kimberling, former Deputy Director of the Federal Election Commission Office of Election Administration posits: "Direct election was rejected not because the framers of the Constitution doubted public intelligence but rather because they feared that without sufficient information about candidates from outside their state, people would vote for a 'favorite son' from their own state or region." In the early days of the freed colonies it was widely assumed (this was before formal political parties had been established) that each state would select a popular representative in said state and seek his election to the executive office. In such a system, the Framers thought that the inevitable result would place the 'favorite son' of whichever state had the largest population in the oval office. The possibility of a few large states exclusively controlling the presidency was a major factor in causing the Framers to reject Direct Election.
There are a couple other viable theories however as to why the Founders created the Electoral College. In the decades following the Revolutionary War, slavery was still an unfortunate yet stark reality in the former colonies, mostly the Southern states. Southern politicians soon realized that the more persons counted in the South, the more representatives they would receive in the House, Unlike the Senate, the House of Representatives is based strictly on population, 700,000 persons per district; as a result larger states received significantly more representatives. The new Constitution stipulated that a census be taken every ten years to reapportion seats based on changes in population. This placed Southern politicians in a bind. On the one hand they denied the equality of the enslaved African-Americans. On the other hand, if the slaves were counted in the census, the South would receive significantly more seats and more representation. According to Hanes Jr. Walton and Robert Smith in their work American Politics and the African American Quest for Universal Freedom, this cognition led Southern aristocrats to endorse the Electoral College as the process for electing a president. As a result of the three-fifths compromise, the Southerners were allowed to count their slaves as "three fifths of a person" to allow them to gain more seats in the House without acknowledging the humanity of the slaves. Electoral College seats are allocated to each state based on the combined number of House representatives and Senators that state possesses. For example, California has garnered 53 electors since 2000–51 representatives from the House and 2 Senators. One may be shocked that some of the Founders had such shallow motives in creating the college system but even James Madison expressed concern that without the Electoral College, Southern States would become irrelevant with too few voters. The Founders with Southern allegiances realized the college system allowed them to deny blacks the vote yet count them in the census and thus garner more representation in the presidential election.
At this point it is imperative to describe the specifics of how the Elector system functions. First of all, every general election, political parties in a state must nominate their slate of electors, how many electors they can nominate is dependent as earlier referenced by the combination of representatives and senators the state possesses. Every political party can nominate electors. These electors pledge their allegiance to the party candidate, and are thus chosen based off of past party loyalty. The electors can technically be anyone but generally are loyal party constituents.
  Next, the parties must wait and watch as their state votes for president. Whichever presidential candidate in that state receives a plurality of the vote—it is key to note plurality and not majority—garners all of the electoral votes of said state. In other words, although each political party nominates a slate of electors, only the party which receives a plurality of votes for its candidate has the capacity to "activate" said parties electors. The other party’s electors become irrelevant. That is to say, even if the losing party received 49% of the popular vote, they cannot receive any electoral votes in that state. What is key to comprehend though is that the winning presidential candidate does not have to receive a majority in the state, neither does he have to win by a substantial margin to receive every single electoral vote in the state. This particular dynamic played a key role in the defeat of Al Gore in the 2000 election. To win the presidency, 270 Electoral votes are required. This is due to there being 538 total electoral votes in play. 535 votes come from the representatives and senators of the fifty states while three complementary electoral votes come from the District of Columbia.
Next, if no presidential candidate receives the required majority of 270 electoral votes, the House of Representatives is constitutionally required to hold a special session to elect the president from among the top 3 electoral vote recipients. Each state selects the Representative of its choice, and a vote is then held. A majority of state representatives must approve a candidate—in other words he or she must garner 26 votes from the special election. Failure to secure the required majority means the House Speaker must dismiss the House and another vote is held two days later. This process is repeated until 26 votes are garnered for one of the 3 candidates.
At this juncture, we can deduce several ascertainments. First, as repeatedly stated, it is possible to win the majority vote nationwide—(i.e. win over 50% of the vote) and still lose the presidency under the Electoral College. This odd situation has indeed happened four times in our nation’s history and can occur through several facets. In the case of the 2000 election between Bush and Gore, Al Gore won by decisive margins in several largely blue states such as California and New York-indeed overwhelming margins-yet lost in close swing states such as Ohio and Florida that ultimately decided the election. The reason behind this development can be gleaned through what the Founder’s intended for the Electoral College. At the time of the penning of the Constitution, American citizens in the colonies had no conscientiousness of loyalty to any entity other than their native state. A national identity had yet to develop. Thus politicians sought to ensure that an emphasis would be placed on state representation rather than citizen representation in the electoral process. To win the Electoral vote the candidate must have broad support from numerous states largely regardless of the population of those states, as opposed to support in a concentrated few but highly populated states. Electoral votes are not split fairly based on population rates- they unevenly give small states more power than they would have than in a direct election. Hence, although Gore won the popular vote by winning by huge majorities in states such as California, New York, and others he did not garner a broad enough consensus across multiple states. According to Thomas F. Schaller, a Professor of Political Science at the University of Maryland Baltimore Country:
…Vice President Al Gore won the popular vote by a mere 543,000 ballots out of 100 million cast. Bush won the Electoral College, 271 to 267 -- a difference of one state. Gore built his popular vote margin in large part by his huge victories in the two most populous states, California and New York, where he outpolled Bush by a combined total of almost exactly 3 million votes. Bush won the next two biggest prizes, taking Texas by roughly 1.4 million votes and Florida by just 537. That gave Gore a net popular vote margin in these four states of about 1.6 million.

Secondly, in the event of a candidate failing to secure a majority, the House of Representatives is not constitutionally required by any law to select either the candidate with the most electoral votes or the candidate with the most popular votes. In 1824 Andrew Jackson, candidate from the Democratic-Republican party won not only the most electoral votes with 99 but convincingly won the popular vote as well. Yet he failed to secure the majority of 131 required at that time (fewer states meant fewer electoral votes in play). The other candidates in the running were John Quincy Adams, William H. Crawford, and Henry Clay, in that order of placing. Only the top three were considered by the House, however there were rumors (which possess some credibility that Clay then threw his support to Adams in return for the pledge of a political position should Adams become president. And Adams did indeed secure 26 votes in the House and won the presidential office despite losing the electoral and popular vote. He then appointed Clay to be the Secretary of State, leading to complaints from Jacksonians that a corrupt bargain had taken place. This important historical anecdote demonstrates the importance of the majority rather than plurality requirement in the Electoral College.
Why not abandon such a seemingly backward and inept system altogether?
There exists indeed a large contingent of political scientists and scholars who call for either the radical reformation or complete abolishment of the Electoral College.  However defenders of the College posit that entirely apart from the racist and elitist reasons that 18th century politicians used to defend the system, there are indeed compelling arguments in the modern day why abolishing the college would be detrimental to equality and human rights.
One already mentioned issue is the fundamental flaw in the Electoral College that allows for a candidate who lost the popular vote to win the election. Proponent’s of the system do not deny or mitigate this point but rather claim the nationwide popular vote should not be the primary determinant of the result. Instead they argue, a nationwide popular vote being the focal determinant would disenfranchise certain voters and cause candidates to exclusively focus on several population centers. Their reasoning for this is that with a nationwide popular vote, candidates would only have an incentive to appeal to states with large urban centers, which would sway the outcome most. As a result such scholars claim, candidates when elected would tailor policy towards their main electorate-the large states, while small states without large urban centers would not only not be appealed to during the campaign but be ignored by the executive in policymaking.  One scholar who makes this argument is Maria McCollester who writes in the International Social Science review that:
With its aim of selecting a "national president," the Electoral College is designed to require that a candidate campaign and appeal to the entire nation, not just one faction or region… By eliminating the Electoral College, this could easily change. A candidate would no longer be required to seek support throughout the country. Candidates would simply have to get enough votes in enough similar regions to acquire a majority. This could be accomplished by focusing only on the most populous areas of the nation. A candidate could then completely ignore the needs of less populated regions entirely.

Is this indeed the case? One must take this claim seriously in order to gain an accurate evaluation of how the system enfranchises groups that would otherwise be ignored. Opponents of the Electoral College respond in multiple ways to said argument. One counterargument is that candidates already ignore the majority of states and instead cater only to a few so-called “swing states.” Since the majority of states are already ‘locked up’ in the sense that regardless of the margin their electoral votes are going to one party for certainty or the other (e.g. California is a solid blue state, Texas a solid red state), candidates tend to appeal only to states whose electoral  votes are undecided, such as Florida or Ohio. There is some merit to this claim when one considers the opinion of John B. Anderson , former presidential candidate, professor, and the head chair of FairVote, who opines that:
Battleground states are the focus of both the candidates and the media. In the 2004 campaign, to cite only one example, President Bush bothered to poll in only eighteen states. More importantly, most registration drives were focused on battleground states. Is it healthy for the democratic process to see the number of competitive states decreasing? Indeed, if federalism is a principal argument for some last-ditch advocates on the Electoral College in a country where an overwhelming majority of Americans favor direct election but feel increasingly ignored, it is the defenders of the status quo who should feel challenged.

Another argument advanced by proponents of the Electoral College is that it heightens the importance of minority contingents in elections and thus helps advance minority representation. When discussing one particular plan to abolish the elector system, David Gringer, a professional litigator writes in Columbia Law Review that the Electoral College forces candidates to court key minorities such as Hispanics in California because failing to win a minority group in a single state could mean losing 53 electoral votes, in California’s case. He further postulates that a move away from the Electoral College could potentially cause candidates to take minorities for granted and focus on courting white voters:
In a presidential election between a white Democrat and a white
Republican, for example, the Democrat might easily take California’s
Latino support for granted and vie for solely white voters. In this scenario, Latinos would receive no increase in substantive representation.

Gringer’s above analysis helps us understand the fear behind many defenders of the status quo: that a popular direct election would cause minorities to become increasingly irrelevant in general.
How do opponents of the college respond? One argument would be that currently racial minorities and in fact every kind of minority are already being ignored due to the swing-state focus of the Electoral College. Par example in Ilinois the Democratic candidate already takes the African-American vote for granted and as a result ignores said group in his campaigns. After all it doesn’t matter if a few members of that minority vote for the other candidate-the Democratic candidate would assume that a normally loyal constituency will stick by him for the election and will instead focus on appealing to the state’s white majority. There is no incentive to pay special attention to a group you already have locked up and a few discontented voters from that minority will not factor in how many electoral votes you receive. Hypothetically, if the election were one of a popular direct election, every vote would matter and so Democratic candidates would be forced to eagerly campaign even for groups that already vote largely Democratic. Additionally in mostly white and Republican states such as Alabama or Georgia, minority voters such as Hispanics are completely disenfranchised by the college system due to their inability to have any influence on the state’s electoral votes (as proved earlier).
Another counterargument to those who claim the electoral college is needed to protect minority voters is that in the status quo political minorities are already currently being taken for granted. Political minorities are not racial minorities but simply groups of citizens affiliated with a minority party in a state. According to Vicki Haddock, an Insight staff writer, such minorities, both Republicans and Democrats, are being disenfranchised in multiple states:
More than 4.5 million Californians had their votes sucked down a black hole of irrelevance four years ago. They voted for George W. Bush, who, despite winning 42 percent of the California vote, garnered a big fat zero out of the state's 54 votes in the Electoral College …Like all but two states, California awards its electoral votes via the winner-take-all system, which allows a victor with even a slight margin to vacuum up every elector. State clout is maximized at the expense of the will of millions of people who vote for the candidate on the short end of the state's count.

This analysis demonstrates that in non-swing state states, in other words the majority of states in America, the minorities votes don’t count because no matter which way they vote their state’s electoral votes are going to the candidate whom the majority group voted for! As Haddock writes above, if you are a Republican voter in California it is irrelevant who you vote for because since there are mathematically more Democrats than Republicans in California and since the electoral votes all go to the candidate whose party has a plurality in said state, as long as one more person in California votes for the Democratic candidate than the Republican, Republican votes will have no impact on the election in that state. This comes from the winner take all feature of the college. It is irrelevant for example, if in Texas the Democratic base is energized and all Democrats in the state vote one way. Because Democrats in Texas are an overwhelming minority in the same way Republicans in California are an overwhelming minority, they cannot sway the outcome of their state’s electoral votes one way or the other. They receive no electoral votes for their strong showing. Taking this logic to its extreme implications, imagine that in Texas there is one more Republican voter than Democrat. Further picture that all Democrats and Republicans vote as a bloc for their respective candidates. Despite the fact that 49.999% of Texas citizens voted for the Democratic candidate, the Democratic candidate will not receive a single electoral vote. Undisputedly, the electoral college inherently fails millions of political minority voters—a glaring deficiency in the mechanics of the college itself.
Now we will examine some additional criticisms of the Electoral College before closing. The first and most critical point made by the opposition of the status quo that has not been examined is the problem of the faithless elector. A faithless elector can be thought of as simply an elector who is chosen by his/her party to vote for the party candidate, and then upon being activated casts his ballot for a different candidate. The implication here of course is that even though the candidate who receives a plurality of the vote in a state could potentially still be deprived of all of that states electoral votes if the electors hypothetically changed their mind and voted for another candidate. Although many states have laws punishing faithless electors, there is no evidence that such laws could constitutionally be enforced and indeed the Supreme Court has said so (citation needed).
We cannot overestimate this discernment. The fact that the presidency is decided by a few hundred random unqualified individuals who may cast their ballot for any candidate they wish to regardless of previous party pledges, and the fact that the votes of the rest of America do not technically count then at all is not only undemocratic but arguably a violation of citizen’s rights. Only 11 electors in the history of the Union have been “faithless” but there should not even be the possibility for one. And there certainly should not be the possibility for electors to vote for a random unqualified candidate who has no popular support, but once again such a situation is a possible reality under the system. This is an argument that defenders of the Electoral College generally do not have a clear response to. Defenders can point out that such scenarios have rarely played out but the possibility that American citizen’s votes would be reduced to complete irrelevance is undeniably in and of itself a grave injustice.
A further objection that must be introduced is the discrimination toward third parties. Walter Berns, a professor of political philosophy and Constitutional law currently at Georgetown University describes the problem in an article for American Enterprise Institute:
A third party with an even national appeal but lacking plurality support within any state will be stymied by the electoral college. Millard Fillmore and the Know-Nothings won 21 percent of the popular vote in 1856, but received only 2 percent of the electoral vote. Republican William Howard Taft was the choice of 23 percent of the voters in 1912, but of less than 2 percent of the electoral college… Most recently, we had Ross Perot’s 1992 campaign, when he won nearly 20 percent of the popular vote but didn’t earn a single electoral vote (ellipses mine).

As Mr. Berns poignantly illustrates, there are numerous instances in our nations past where third party candidates who had attracted a substantial and meaningful portion of the popular vote were not even acknowledged in the results due to failure to capture plurality. Of course none of these candidates won a majority of the popular vote, but by failing to even achieve recognition when it came to the Electoral College, candidates such as Ross Perot are discouraged from re-running After all if a candidate does not even secure a single electoral vote for his/her efforts it makes little sense to renew their efforts. Third parties in turn become increasingly discouraged to seek the presidency. One might object to this argument by pointing out that even with a system that counted popular votes instead of electoral votes these same third party candidates would not have been elected. There is some truth to this claim but the point here is that under the Electoral College there is absolutely no chance of a successful third party campaign, or even a third party campaign with a significant showing in the Electoral College. Third parties in modern America simply cannot gain plurality in enough states to make a substantial showing in the electoral vote count.  At least with an alternative system they would be able to make a political statement with a strong showing of support. This may seem like a weak incentive but in all fairness, third parties, although they seek political recognition for their cause which often has unconcentrated support, do not actually seriously attempt to win a presidential election (knowing they have little chance). Instead as already noted they seek recognition and attention for their party, something they receive very little of with the Electoral College mechanics stacked against them.
The final objection placed against the Electoral College to be elucidated upon here will be the unequal weight of individual votes. Those under the impression that the Electoral College gives each citizen an equal right to vote are mistaken. If you live in Wyoming your vote counts far more than the vote of a citizen in California. California has about seventy times as many citizens as Wyoming, yet California has but 55 electoral votes to Wyoming’s three. To further explicate why this is the case look at how electoral votes are allotted. California receives 53 electoral votes for House Representatives, and 2 for Senators. Wyoming has one House Representative and 2 Senators. Slight representation differentiations, though questionable, might be acceptable but the simple fact that a Wyoming citizen’s vote counts for three Californians votes is a gross violation of equal representation. There is no rational justification for a disparity of this measure. Defenders argue that such inequality in representation is in fact merited the necessity to protect small state’s representation in the election process. However there a couple of problems with this defense. This first presumes that citizens should have greater voting power than others simply based on where they live. If it is unconstitutional to hinder voting rights based on race, gender, or other such factors why is justifiable to discriminate based on locality? And secondly, as earlier referenced, the current system does not end up eclectically distributing state power. States such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida have far more influence than other states because of their “swing state status.” This postulation is strongly supported by Jonathan Chait, a Los Angeles Times writer who wrote about the Electoral College a couple years after the Bush-Kerry election.
…our current system encourages candidates to devote almost all of their time and resources to a handful of swing states. As it stands now, presidential candidates ignore L.A., New York and the majority of the country. During the last election, George W. Bush and John Kerry spent 40% of their money in Ohio and Florida. If your goal was to encourage candidates to spread themselves out, you almost couldn't design a worse system than the one we have now…

Discernibly, we can surmise that the Electoral College neither gives citizens the equal right to vote nor spreads representative power evenly among the states.
There are further disadvantages to the college, including the lack of representation among territories such as Guam or Puerto Rico, however those presented already clearly show a need for an alternative system.
Those ensconced in defending the Electoral College often would retort at this point that, despite its flaws, the current system is preferable to less practical and unproven alternatives. Other electoral systems are also equally riddled with flaws, and the risks of switching to a possibly even worse electoral method outweigh any potential benefits.  However the truth of the matter is that there are indeed viable alternatives to the status quo that would considerably ameliorate many if not most of the harms of the Electoral College. The National Popular Vote plan for example would render the College void by requiring each state’s electors to cast their votes to the winner of the national popular vote. This would get around the thorny issue of having to amend the Constitution and at the same time essentially create a direct national election, with the electoral votes simply being a nominal procedure. However the National Popular Vote plan also runs afoul of multiple state laws, and would force some states to cast their electoral votes for candidates their citizens firmly rejected. In addition, this methodology still enables the problem of the faithless elector, because electors still cannot be stipulated upon to cast their votes for their party’s candidate.  Although the NPV has merit in theory, it isn’t the real solution to the current electoral dilemma. Instead, this paper advocates a critical examination of the root of America’ undemocratic presidential election—the Constitutional provision enshrining the Electoral College.
The provision should be repealed, and replaced with a system of direct democracy. However in order to maximize the utility of the electoral system for all Americans, an even more optimal solution is the system of Instant Runoff Voting (IRV).  IRV is a form of direct democracy that strengthens third party candidates by requiring voters to rank their preferences on the ballot as opposed to voting for exclusively one candidate. Christopher Jerdonek, a writer for the National Civic Review, elucidates:

The ballot count proceeds like a series of runoff elections. Initially, every ballot counts as a vote toward the first choice. If any candidate receives a majority (more than 50 percent) of these votes, that candidate wins the election. If no candidate receives a majority, the second round of the “instant
runoff” begins. The candidate receiving the fewest votes drops out, and voters for that candidate have their ballot count toward their next choice. All the ballots are counted again. The process continues, round by round, until some candidate wins a majority.

This system has been in effect in the legislative elections of Australia, Papa New Guinea, and certain local elections in Britain as well as the United States.  The limited experimenting with IRV in these localities indicates a successful system, however first the process must be considered in theory.
The first and arguably most important advantage to IRV is the elimination of the electoral disenfranchisement created by the Electoral College. With IRV, candidates cannot discount Republicans in California or Democrats in Texas. As opposed to the EC, where only a plurality of votes in a state matter for the electoral votes, thus causing candidates to disregard minority voters, IRV ensures that literally every vote counts in some capacity. IRV also eliminates the other discussed defects of the EC, such as the unequal weight of votes state by state, the faithless elector, and the squelching of third parties.
Under IRV, the hold of the two parties on American politics would be shaken by the emergence of new third parties with an enthusiastic base. To see why this is the case, we can look to the practical effects of implementing this system. By allowing voters to choose multiple candidates rather than only giving them one vote, IRV eliminates the infamous “spoiler dynamic” by not making voters think they’re wasting their votes by voting for a third party candidate. Voters often sympathize with an alternative third party candidate but are unwilling to waste their vote on a candidate that is certain to lose in the general election. Under IRV however, these voters can rank a third party candidate as their first option while still casting a second or third place vote for one of the frontrunner candidates. Rob Richie, executive director of Fair Vote (a non-profit dedicated to improving electoral representation), explicates the problem the spoiler dynamic poses in the status quo:
Plurality elections also suffer from the "spoiler" phenomenon in races with more than two candidates. Someone with no chance of getting elected can gain enough votes to swing the race between the two leading candidates. By gaining the power to determine the winner, unscrupulous candidates can gain leverage over major candidates. At the same time, many minor candidates genuinely seek to raise important issues. Their supporters must make a tough decision: to vote for their favorite candidate, knowing that the candidate will not win and might even throw the race to the supporters' least preferred candidate, or settle on a less preferred candidate who has a chance to win. In other words, voters must accurately judge not only which candidate they prefer but whether that candidate has a chance of winning.

Using simple psychology, one can easily discern why a voter might therefore be much more inclined to vote for a third party candidate under a system in which that voter has multiple choices instead of simply one vote to cast. By increasing voter choice, through the preferential ranking system, IRV therefore strengthens third party candidacies. The reason why this matters for America is that increasing voter options increases the accountability of officeholders to the citizens. Instead of having a duopoly on politics, both Republican and Democratic politicians must strive to better their “product” so to speak in terms of how they deliver on promises to their constituents, or else risk being voted out of office in favor of a third party. This economic principle of increasing competition in order to produce better outcomes for “consumers” (in this case voters) works well when applied to electoral systems. Empircal proof of how IRV strengthens third parties is Australia’s legislative elections. Ben Raue, a former candidate for the Australian Greens, Australia’s main environmentalist political organization, describes in an article titled “Instant Runoff Voting In Australia” how the IRV has given the Greens a much bigger role in the political system:
I definitely think the Greens have benefited from our system of instant runoff voting. I don't think it's a coincidence that the Greens have performed much better in Australia than our counterparts in other single-member electorate English-speaking democracies like the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and pre-1996 New Zealand. The primary benefit of having instant runoff voting is that the entire concept of a 'wasted vote' is largely demolished. That means that small political parties do not need to worry about targeting seats where they either will not do any damage to their preferred major party or seats that they can win.

But IRV has other unique advantages as well. In addition to preventing spoiler candidacies as well as strengthening third parties, IRV has the potential to greatly increase voter turnout. By giving voters a multitude of options and thus bringing in moderate voters who would normally abstain from voting due to the polarization of politics IRV has been empirically proven to increase voter turnout. In some American cities, IRV has been tried on a local scale with great success. According to Jerdonek,
San Francisco held its first citywide IRV election in 2005. In one race voter turnout nearly tripled. The number of voters rose by almost 120,000. Turnout in the poorest and most racially diverse communities rose the most.

But for those still unconvinced of IRV’s merits, it also helps eliminate one of the worst aspects of America’s current electoral system, negative ad campaigning.
Under IRV, candidates will be seeking the second place ranks of voters who admire that candidate but award their first place vote to another. In order to ensure that they do not alienate these voters who might still give them a higher preference ranking than other candidates but not the first place vote, candidates will scale down on negative advertising towards these other candidates.  Under the Electoral College, candidates have a clear incentive to campaign negatively and thus discourage some smaller, less powerful candidates from running as well as simply tarnishing another frontrunner’s image. Richie poignantly describes the philosophy behind negative ad campaigns:
Plurality elections lead to negative campaigns that, with ever-increasing sophistication about how to win office in today's multimedia world, drive far more voters away from politics than bring them to it. Knowing that voters will ignore minor candidates because they cannot win, the two leading candidates can focus their attention on each other. Turning a voter away from an opponent is just as effective as…persuading an undecided voter to support you. Plurality voting creates direct incentives for negative campaigning and personal attacks; candidates generally will eschew negative campaigning only if they think they can win without it.

A final advantage to be elucidated upon here is the monetary savings of IRV.  A simple direct plurality election presents the complication of costly recounts and runoffs in the event of an unclear initial result. IRV negates this issue however by having runoff elections already built into the initial election. Because voters already vote initially for multiple candidates based on preference, as earlier noted, when a candidate fails to secure a plurality of first place votes, the second place votes are counted and so on, runoff elections are unnecessary as these will be a part of the system without requiring further intervention. This is again a unique edge to IRV not present in any other system, demonstrating not only the equitability of the system but the economic viability of its implementation.
IRV will not be perfect. Of course at some point, electoral complications will come up in the implementation, in addition, amending the Constitution to replace the Electoral College with IRV will be a painstakingly long and arduous process, much indeed must happen for IRV to be a realistic candidate for replacement. But the argument here is not that IRV is likely to be put in place but rather the point is that the Electoral College should be replaced and IRV is a more desirable system. The practicality of going about change is not what is significant; instead we must first decide whether such change is worth going about. The arguments in favor of IRV are definitely compelling in terms of its long term ability to solve for shortcomings in the current system, as to the pragmatics of the immediate implementation of IRV, there will of course, as with any new system, be difficulties and questions that must be answered.
But it is clear from all observable analysis that the Electoral College has failed in providing American voters with a fair and representative system of electing their commander in chief. The College disenfranchises millions of voters every election by not counting the minority party voters in elections. Faithless electors have the power to vote in candidates with zero popular support with no repercussions. Third parties are completely crushed by the overwhelming demands of securing electoral votes, strengthening a two-party system that Americans are already unhappy with. And perhaps worst of all, certain voters receive grossly less weight in their votes than others. No other modern democracy has a similar system, and for good reason. It is time for Americans to cease feeling sentimental about an undemocratic and remarkably inefficient mechanism for electing their executive. It’s time to enfranchise millions of political minority voters who are not being represented in the status quo. It’s definitely time to do away with the Electoral College.