The Trump administration has made its first arrest in an election fraud crackdown. Honduran national Darwin Jonathan Rivera Flores was apprehended late last week in Los Angeles and charged with two felony counts of fraudulently registering to vote and falsely claiming U.S. citizenship.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli calls the arrest “the first of many to come,” noting that “there is no telling how many non-citizens are currently registered” in California because of the lack of safeguards in that state.
Simultaneously, anti-Electoral College advocates are renewing their calls to eliminate the system, with Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear saying it’s needed to “fix the darn government” and Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger signing the National Popular Vote interstate compact earlier this year.
What terrible timing. If that compact goes into effect, it will amplify bad actors’ ability to steal elections. And it would do so at a time when news headlines already have many Americans worried, demanding that the Senate take action to stop non-citizens from voting.
Nothing can make fraud impossible. Where people vie for power, there will always be an incentive to cheat. But historically, the Electoral College complicates any attempt to steal a presidential election.
Its state-by-state structure makes cheating as difficult as possible.
Because of the Electoral College, a presidential election cannot be stolen unless several factors come together: First, the election needs to be close at the national level — close enough that only a handful of altered state outcomes will change the final results. Second, at the state level, the margins in states holding the right number of electors must also be close — and there must be disputes in those same states that could arguably swing the outcome.
Finally, bad actors must be able to predict, in advance, which state or states to steal. Stealing votes in the wrong state doesn’t do any good.
Such predictions are usually hard to make, but when they can, people on both sides of the political aisle typically see the danger. This is why a state like Pennsylvania is currently under the microscope as non-citizens are purged from voter rolls. It is why poll watchers and lawyers descended on places like Nevada and Georgia during the 2024 election.
Elimination of the Electoral College would create the exact opposite situation: It would ensure that any vote stolen in any part of the country could affect the election outcome. And it would also create a world in which the focus of presidential elections swings to large urban centers, where it is easier to hide stolen votes.
What a dangerous situation. It is impossible to defend every precinct in the country with equal vigor. It is more practical to narrow down the list of dangerous spots and focus attention there.
Consider that it is undoubtedly easier to steal votes in the bluest California precinct or the reddest Texas one, but those votes cannot change the outcome of presidential elections today. One interesting dynamic in our current system is that it is usually easy to steal votes where it does not affect the national outcome (e.g., safe states dominated by one political party) and harder to steal votes where it might (e.g., swing states, which are closely watched).
By contrast, without the Electoral College, easy-to-steal votes would not be confined to a single safe state. Instead, they would get thrown into the national tally, potentially changing the election outcome.
The Electoral College provides one final benefit in this context: If problems occur during the election, whether through fraud or human error, they can be isolated to one or a handful of states. The nation does not have to endure the chaos of a nationwide recount. Indeed, recent elections have shown the Electoral College’s remarkable ability to deliver stable outcomes and end the fighting.
We inaugurated both Presidents Biden and Trump, even though matters threatened to fall apart in the days immediately after their elections.
The Electoral College has successfully served this country for nearly 250 years. At a time when cynicism about states’ voter rolls is rising, it is doubly important to preserve the Electoral College. Only with such safeguards in place can we restore confidence in elections.
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Tara Ross is a retired lawyer and the author of several books about the Electoral College, including “Why We Need the Electoral College.”
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