HOW THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE PROTECTS BRODERISM. David Broder, or possibly someone parodying David Broder, is predictably unimpressed by plans for various state to begin awarding their electoral votes to the winner of the popular election, thereby creating a de facto popular vote system in the country. Broder is concerned that we're doing this too quickly, we don't know what'll happen, we shouldn't mess with the wisdom of the Founders, and all the rest. It's compelling stuff until you take a step back and realize that what he's so afraid of is an equal vote among American citizens, wherein a resident of Wyoming doesn't count as four residents of California. Indeed, all of Broder's fears seem rather similar. He writes that, "the two-party system that is the underpinning of our form of representative government is supported by the electoral college, which gives each party a reliable base of support and forces them to compete fiercely for swing voters in places where they are of roughly equal strength." But this is just rank Broderism, as if the undecided or "swing" voter should be a more valuable prize than another sort of voter. In a popular system, of course, politicians will still have to compete for votes. But they won't have to spend all their time in 50-50 states, deadening their rhetoric and sanding down their edges. They will still compete for a majority, but who wins won't be controlled by a handful of so-called swing voters. In other words, the electoral college system provides for a politics much more amenable to David Broder's particular biases -- it ideologically shapes the sort of majorities that are worth pursuing, because it makes more sense for a candidate to moderate himself and pick up three more electoral college votes in Wyoming than 3 million new voters in California. Under a popular vote system, that will instantly cease to be the case. --Ezra Klein
