Since that historically tumultuous election, awareness of and opposition to the Electoral College has grown. To date, 16 states and the District of Columbia have passed it National Interstate Pact of Popular Suffrage, which requires participating states to allocate their electors to the winner of the popular vote. (The compact will go into effect only if and when states representing a 270-vote majority of the Electoral College sign the compact.)
Critics of this distinctly American institution often cite its historical connection to slavery and disproportionate weighting of small and volatile positions as the main reasons for its abolition. But in a new paper, Georgy Egorov, Kellogg professor of managerial economics and decision sciences, and co-author Konstantin Sonin of the University of Chicago outline an important and under-discussed advantage of the Electoral College: it reduces both incentives to commit electoral fraud . and the likelihood of pulling it, for reasons we’ll describe below.
Election fraud in the United States is extremely rare. However, Egorov stresses, that doesn’t mean it can’t happen, especially in the current era of polarization, misinformation and very close elections. Indeed, Donald Trump’s alleged efforts to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential race have made the issue harder to ignore. When it comes to fraud, Egorov says, “there is no American exception.”
How the Electoral College prevents electoral fraud
Egorov and Sonin developed a theoretical model to study fraud in two different electoral systems: the Electoral College and the popular vote. They examined the incentives to engage in fraud, as well as the likelihood of successfully changing the election outcome, in each system.
There are many ways to cheat in elections: encouraging people to vote multiple times, stuffing ballot boxes, changing vote counts, and so on. In addition to these purely criminal methods, there are also gray area ways to stack the deck for a particular candidate or party, such as harassment and voter suppression. For the purposes of their model, Egorov and Sonin focused on fraud at the vote counting stage—when votes for one candidate are counted for their opponent.
Egorov and Sonin’s model considers three types of states: stable left states, stable right states, and swing states. In solidly left-wing states, all aspects of government, from the courts to the local authorities that oversee elections, are dominated by liberals. the same goes for conservatives in solidly right-wing states. In swing states, however, the government is more divided.
The model reveals that, under the Electoral College system, fraud is relatively unlikely. This is because there is never a situation where it is feasible and useful to commit fraud.
Imagine a candidate or party trying to orchestrate election fraud under the Electoral College.
It would be comparative feasible alter vote counts in a state dominated by that party, since courts and election officials are less likely to intervene against members of their own party, but not by much useful. After all, with or without fraud, the candidate is likely to win the state and all its voters.
Committing fraud in a suspended state, meanwhile, would be too much useful, in that it could conceivably change the outcome of the election. But it’s not much feasible. With the opposition party well represented in the state government, it is likely that the attempted fraud will be detected and punished.
Now, imagine a candidate or party trying to engage in the same electoral shenanigans under the popular vote, a scenario in which every vote in every state counts equally. Under this scenario, committing fraud in a swing state would be equally impossible (since once again, the adversary would be likely to intervene).
However, a dishonest candidate or party could simply transfer their fraud to a politically friendly state. There, they would see little structural opposition to their efforts and win votes with relative ease—votes that would matter just as much as votes from any other state. In other words, within a popular vote system, there are situations where it is indeed possible and useful to commit fraud.
The pros and cons of the Electoral College
So does this structural disincentive to commit fraud outweigh the downsides of the Electoral College?
Egorov says that is difficult to answer. He certainly sees what critics object to: the intense focus on battleground states, to the exclusion of other regions, seems to many “kind of unfair and maybe inefficient and wrong. That’s a point I sympathize with.” However, popular vote is not the perfect solution either. “It will solve this problem, but it will create new problems,” he points out.
However, his research makes it clear that the shift to the popular vote – whether through the National Compact for the Popular Vote or by other means – has real risks as long as elections are held locally.
The US has fairly minimal national oversight of its elections. The federal government does not enforce uniform standards for voting methods, ballot design, polling station hours, counting procedures, etc.—meaning that local (and party) election officials exercise enormous control over the process.
Of course, many election officials are “just honest,” says Egorov, and will intervene against fraud regardless of who committed it. But we certainly can’t count on everyone to have moral courage when it counts. “This is a strong case,” he adds, “especially in a time of polarization.”
Our highly local electoral system leaves us vulnerable to fraud, especially in areas where one party dominates. In fact, “we know, historically, that if there was fraud, it was concentrated in places where local political party support was strongest,” says Egorov.
For example, some historians believe that the Democratic machine in Chicago illegally boosted John F. Kennedy’s performance in the 1960 presidential election. While the scale and significance of the fraud was was widely discussedthe story underscores the message of Egorov and Sonin’s research: it’s easier to cheat in places where your support is already strong and local officials are on your side.
In the 1960 election, whatever fraud was committed “wasn’t big enough to change the outcome of the election, which is exactly our point,” says Egorov. But under the popular vote across the country and local administration of the vote, the disincentive is reduced. If parties believe they can actually win elections by cheating, “it suddenly becomes a worthwhile political enterprise.”
