The Electoral College has become the weapon at the head of American democracy. Lorenzo Douglas

dThese are not easy days for supporters of American democracy. But what moves me is not the prospect that, three weeks from now, a majority of voters could hand power to a vengeful authoritarian demagogue. Instead, I grow tired of the expectation that the Electoral College can do it for us: that Kamala Harris can win the national popular vote, but come up short on what counts.

We know that the winner of the popular vote has already lost twice in this young century, again in 2000 and 2016. But when Biden won the national popular vote in 2020 by a significant margin (more than 7 million votes), few understood how narrowly we missed a disastrous result. . In any other democratic nation, such a decision would have solved the problem. Not in the United States. In the three key states: Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin, Biden's margin of victory was less than 44,000 votes. united.

That Trump has directed his efforts to overturn Biden's victory in these three states (main state and federal impeachments) is no coincidence. If Trump had managed to pressure Georgia's Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, if he had managed to “find” the votes necessary to win Biden's state primary, if he had managed to falsify the Electoral College votes from Arizona and Wisconsin, he could have won back the power. White House. .

Now, once again, our nation is hostage to our obviously flawed means of electing a president. How did we get to this precarious situation? In the summer of 1787, the framers of the Constitution, exhausted from long days of work in Philadelphia's smoky Independence Hall, settled into the Electoral College with some idea. Unable to decide between Congress electing a president or giving the people absolute power, they managed to reestablish a device used by the Holy Roman Empire to “elect” kings and emperors. By allowing each state legislature to choose an electorate (equivalent to the state's representation in Congress), the system seeks to identify citizens at large with the ability to intelligently elect a chief executive.

Almost since its launch, the system has not worked as designed. With the rise of parties, states realized that the best way to exert their power over national outcomes was to award all of their Electoral College votes to the state winner of the popular vote—the system we have now. (By defeating Al Gore in Florida by 537 votes, George W. Bush captured all the Electoral College votes in the Citrus State, and with them the White House.)

Those who defend the Electoral College today as a device to ensure that the presidency is not always captured by “coastal elites” offer a logic that has nothing to do with the original logic of the college and ignores the fact that the vast majority of American citizens. Lives in coastal states. An electoral system that gave Wyoming citizens four votes and California citizens one vote would be rejected as a clear violation of the constitutional principle of “one person, one vote.” And yet this is what the Electoral College does.

Even worse is how the Electoral College Dramatically In a few undecided states the citizen vote is magnified. Millions of voters in uncontested states are essentially disenfranchised. Kamala Harris currently leads Donald Trump by 24 points in California. Trump votes are counted in California and then nothing, while the majority needed for Harris to win is completely wasted. In key swing positions, things look very different.

The entire election will change what happens in seven states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona. Voters in the remaining 43 states are relegated to the role of spectators. We breathlessly wonder whether American democracy will survive based on whether Arab Americans in Michigan feel betrayed by the Democratic Party, or whether black people in Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia will vote for Harris in sufficient numbers.

A system that allows a national election to boost results in a few districts in a few states is designed for the purpose of one candidate sowing electoral confusion. On January 6, 2021, when Trump incited a mob to attack the Capitol, his bid to remain in office had already failed. Thanks to the honest and tireless efforts of election officials from both parties, each state (and the District of Columbia) has now certified its decision. The uprising simply promised to delay the inevitable.

This time Maha's team knows better. This time he will dedicate his efforts to the monkeys with the state recount. They have already managed to infuse significant numbers of Trump loyalists into key positions within the electoral infrastructure of swing states. It doesn't take much to smear the outcome of a close state race by targeting specific districts, especially since Trump has primed his supporters to reject any outcome that doesn't result in his victory.

Given the dangers and dysfunctions of the Electoral College, it is not surprising that more than 700 proposed amendments since 1816 have reformed or eliminated the system. Yet they have all instituted a cumbersome constitutional amendment process that has thwarted essential constitutional changes throughout our history and now traps us in an electoral process that no one would seriously consider if tasked with designing a new system.

And so we face the ominous possibility that this flaw in constitutional design – against the will of the majority of the American people – could lead to a decision that will limit the end of liberal democracy in the United States. The body hurts.

• Lawrence Douglas most recently, Will He Go? Trump and the looming 2020 election crisis. He is an opinion contributor to The Guardian US and teaches at Amherst College.