Editor’s Note: Tom Wyler was formerly a senior official in the Obama administration, where he was counselor and senior adviser for international economics to the secretary of commerce. The views expressed in this commentary are the author’s own. View more opinion articles at CNN.

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Of the three American presidents who took office since the beginning of the 21st century, only Barack Obama won the support of a majority of voters when first elected. George W. Bush and Donald Trump both lost the popular vote but nevertheless emerged victorious in the Electoral College. As the 2020 election cycle dawns, it’s no surprise that our ongoing national debate over the Electoral College has resumed once again.

In fact, on the first day of the new Congress, a representative introduced a constitutional amendment to provide for the direct, popular election of presidents and vice presidents. The amendment is highly unlikely to be ratified, but given our recent history, it isn’t particularly surprising that the concept is generally quite popular with the public. Even Sen. Elizabeth Warren has joined the fray. Just this week, during a CNN town hall, she endorsed the idea of eliminating the Electoral College in an effort to make sure that “every vote matters.”

Tom Wyler

The goal is unassailable, and the premise is certainly appealing in its simplicity, but upon closer inspection, it turns out that an electoral system that incentivizes candidates to engage different demographic and geographical swaths of the country still serves as compelling a purpose today as it did in 1787.

It is a mistake to argue that the direct popular election of presidents is an obvious and unassailable solution to our electoral problems. It isn’t. As alluringly simple as it may be, such a change would have a dramatic impact on our national politics and would open a Pandora’s box of problems, some of which could be quite serious. Instead, states ought to adopt an alternative approach to reform that allocates electoral votes on a proportional basis. There is no constitutional requirement mandating the winner-take-all approach that most states use today. This Electoral College 2.0 would improve the legitimacy of our process by encouraging more Americans to participate and by incentivizing candidates to campaign more broadly across the country.

For those in favor of abolishing the Electoral College, the premise is straightforward: Deciding presidential elections based on the raw national popular vote is the best measure of legitimacy because it would enfranchise all Americans equally. They argue that the current system not only fails to treat all voters equally but has, in fact, led to perverse outcomes where the “loser” of the popular vote still wins.

Citizens of smaller states have fewer total Electoral College votes, but each individual’s vote has a proportionally greater impact on how that state’s electoral votes are allocated. California, for example, has roughly 70 times the population of Wyoming but only about 18 times the number of electoral votes. The math is straightforward, and it falls well short of our democratic ideal of one citizen-one vote. To put it simply, Warren is right: Some votes count for less.

These are serious issues, especially during these times of deep division when doubts about the legitimacy and sanctity of our process could be catastrophic. But would scrapping the existing system in favor of the raw popular vote actually resolve these issues?

After fighting a war to break free from an oppressive and distant monarch, the Founders understandably considered the question of how to select our nation’s leader to be of utmost importance. But the 13 Colonies were, on many issues, deeply divided and distrusting of one another. The small states would never have agreed to a direct popular vote scheme that would have ceded political power to the large states. So, at the time, a compromise made sense. Under the system they designed, no regional bloc, standing on its own, could raise an individual to the presidency. But given our recent elections, it makes sense for us to wrestle anew with the question of whether the Electoral College is promoting distorted outcomes and has, in fact, outlived its usefulness.

A direct popular election for president would completely alter the current two-party system. Today, many Americans identify as independents, and a popular vote-based system would allow a third-party candidate to make a credible White House run. In 1992, for example, Ross Perot ran as a third-party candidate and received roughly 20 million votes or nearly 19% of the total votes cast. He got zero Electoral College votes.

Forging a new system that brings more parties into the electoral process may actually sound appealing to many voters, but the implications are at least important to consider.

Without the constraints of the Electoral College, a viable third or even fourth party candidacy becomes conceivable. Imagine for a moment a scenario in which there are four relatively serious contenders for the presidency. Let us label them A, B, C and D. Say candidate A receives 30% of the popular vote; candidate B receives 28%; C receives 22%; and D garners 20%. Given the current electoral landscape, such an intensely competitive four-way race is not particularly unrealistic. But would the American people really accept a president who was elected with just 30% of the votes cast? It is not clear why that candidate would be more legitimate than someone who won just under 50% of the vote but the majority of the states, as George W. Bush did in 2000.

Of course, a direct popular vote system could incorporate a two-stage runoff like in California. The first round would be a free-for-all, regardless of party. In the second round, the top two finishers – A and B in the above example – would face a runoff in a head-to-head matchup resembling our current general elections. Such a system is plausible and used in a number of other countries. Turnout for round two often falls off considerably, however, and there is little reason to expect that the American public would vote with greater enthusiasm.

Assuming turnout in the second round did drop materially, we would, again, end up with presidents who are elected without having won a majority of the votes cast. It is also important to consider that, in both of the scenarios presented above, a significant majority of the country would likely have cast their ballot for someone other than the winner.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the vast majority of Americans now live in cities, and our rural and urban communities are intensely divided along political lines. If our presidential elections were determined by direct popular vote, a candidate could win by dominating in, say, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Miami, Boston, Dallas and other cities. Those of us who live in cities might gain additional influence, but a popular mandate gained exclusively from urban voters may not be regarded as fair or legitimate by the rest of the country, and the divide between our rural and urban communities would be further aggravated.

So, is there a metric other than the popular vote that deserves electoral respect? Today, 48 states use a winner-take-all approach to their Electoral College votes. Put differently, if a candidate wins one of those 48 states by even a single vote, that candidate receives all of that state’s electoral votes. States should adopt a new system in which each candidate receives his or her earned percentage of the state’s electoral votes based on that state’s popular vote, provided that the losing candidates reach a certain viability threshold, say, 25% of the state’s vote.

In 2008, for example, Obama won roughly 40% of the vote in Alabama, but the state’s entire slate of electors voted for Sen. John McCain. Under this proposal, 40% of Alabama’s nine Electoral College votes would have gone to Obama and 60% to McCain. The electoral map and the nature of campaigns would be changed dramatically. In fact, in 2000 and 2016, if all 50 states had allocated their electoral votes on a proportional basis, rounding the second-place finishers votes up or down as appropriate and awarding the balance remaining to the winner of the state, both popular vote winners could have emerged victorious.

Maine and Nebraska already take an innovative approach to doling out electoral votes. Each state awards an electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district, and then the state’s remaining two electoral votes are given to the winner of the statewide vote. But this proposal goes beyond that scheme.

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    There is certainly room to debate the specifics around the viability threshold and how to handle fractional electoral votes, and others have offered variations of a proportional approach, but the essential element is using the popular vote to determine the allocation of electoral votes. This would enfranchise minority party voters in traditional majority party strongholds without eliminating the need for candidates to generate broad geographic appeal. In fact, it would likely incentivize broader campaigning and would increase turnout nationally. The liberal Democrat in Mississippi or the conservative voter in Massachusetts, for example, would be more motivated to vote if his or her candidate could plausibly gain some number of electoral votes from their state.

    Instituting such an approach would need to be done by our 50 state legislatures rather than the federal government, but it would have the benefit of both preserving the basic Electoral College framework, which encourages building geographically and demographically diverse coalitions, and fostering an environment in which the voices of more Americans are heard in our presidential elections.