Why We Need the Electoral College
The Electoral College dismayed our Founding Fathers for a long time! They had much dissension and arguments about how to elect our President! At first, the Framers believed that Congress should pick who should represent us as President. Others believed it should be by popular vote. This was one of their hardest challenges! The 1787 Constitutional Convention included a debate on this very difficult question.
The reasons behind their compromise for this process are still as true today as back when the Framers wrestled with it.
Electoral College Reasoning
At that time, no other country in the world elected their chief executive. This was uncharted territory for our Founders. They knew from their own experiences of the injustice of having a leader that ignored its people! Yet, that leader forced them to live under his rule! Our Founders had already fought off a tyrannical king and powerful governors! They held a deep distrust for executive power! They wanted to keep our new, young country out of the same trap!
The Founders felt strongly that Congress should not have the power to elect the President. They knew opportunities for corruption between the executive and legislative branches would flourish fast if Congress had too much power.
Three Most Important Reasons to Birth the Electoral College
Their three common and most important reasons that birthed their compromise were:
1. First, voters today have their internet, tv, libraries and history books, etc.! However, 18th-century voters did not have any resources to be fully informed of their candidates.
2. Second, they were also dead-set against the popular vote!!! They feared a “democratic mob” would lead the country astray from our principles! Plus, this mob would elect their own kind.
3. Third, a populist and dishonest president, appealing directly to the people, could command dangerous amounts of power!
Why This System
Candidates for President have won the popular vote only five times in our history, but lost the Electoral College! That brought up the question of why we use this system in the first place. Many of our Founding Fathers came up with their thoughtful scenarios. Our Founders knew why we needed to have a real check on fairness and justice in our election process! They compromised and came up with the Electoral College.
The Founding Fathers also wanted a “temporary” group of honest, patriotic and objective intermediaries to assure our citizens of a fair and just choice! Instead of Congress or the people electing them, they gave that power to the states to appoint them! The Electors, in turn, would cast their ballots for the Presidency! Of course, the Founders counted on the states’ honesty and fairness in choosing these electors.
However, there were no political parties in 1787, as there are today. Those parties provide a glitch to the whole process. Today, it is more dangerous than ever to abolish the Electoral College! Simply stated, a group or party could hold our country captive with whatever radical ideas they can invent to deceive citizens! Our trust in our states abiding by the rule of law and our Constitution is all we can rely upon to keep our country intact! It is imperative that every citizen remains alert as to what our elected officials are doing, both in our state and in Washington!!!
FLASH: Maybe we should abandon political parties instead!!! Also, remember to choose your state reps carefully and thoughtfully!
Preventing Political Corruption
The drafters of the Constitution thought that the electors would vote according to their individual discretion and not the dictates of a state or national party. Today, however, electors are bound to vote for their party’s candidate. More importantly, the Constitution does not say how states should allot their electoral votes. So, as time passed, all but two states (Maine and Nebraska) passed laws to give all their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the state’s popular vote. So, this proves that the popular vote does have power!
However, any resemblance to elector independence has been completely wiped out! According to the Constitution, if no candidate wins a majority of electoral votes, the decision goes to the House and every state gets only one vote. Only two U.S. elections have been decided by the House and the last one was in 1824. This becomes very controversial when one party is the majority in the House.
The Electoral College was not a controversial point at one time. But by the twentieth century, opponents of the Electoral College nearly convinced Congress to abolish it. More than 12 states have joined in to hijack it as a way to force a popular vote for President. This would give the advantage to large states and small states would have no say.
No Federal Officials As Electors
Federal officials were prohibited from being electors. Electors were required to cast two ballots. They were prohibited from casting both ballots for candidates from their own state. A deadlock for president would be decided by the House of Representatives, with one vote per state. Following that, in case of a deadlock for vice president, the Senate would decide. Also under the original system, the runner up became vice president.
This last provision was misery for President John Adams in 1796. Thomas Jefferson became his vice president. Four years later it almost robbed Jefferson of the presidency. His unscrupulous running mate, Aaron Burr, tried to parlay an accidental deadlock into his own election by the House. The Twelfth Amendment, ratified in 1804, fixed all this by requiring electors to cast separate votes for president and vice president.
Solutions to the Dilemma
James Wilson took the advice of Mason. He devised a plan to create districts and hold popular elections to choose electors. His plan and several others (for reasons of common sense) were voted down. For example, an executive elected by Congress would be subservient to Congress. The framers also knew the result would be the same if the selection was given to any group of politicians.
By July 25, it was clear to James Madison that the choice was down to two forms of popular election: “The option before us,” he said, “[is] between an appointment by Electors chosen by the people—and an immediate appointment by the people.” Madison said he preferred popular election, but he recognized two legitimate concerns.
One is that people would support candidates from their own states. This gives an advantage to larger states! The larger states would be able to choose their candidate and could hijack the election for years.
Second, a few areas with higher concentrations of voters might come to dominate. This would lead to the infinite domination of one group! Madison spoke positively about the idea of an electoral college. He showed that “there would be less opportunity for cabal, or corruption” in such a system. The system could still be hijacked, but it was the lesser of all evils.
Capitol January 8, 2009.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
“So why does the Electoral College still exist, despite its contentious origins and awkward fit with modern politics? The party in power typically benefits from the existence of the Electoral College! The minority party has little chance of changing the system. This is because a constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds supermajority in Congress plus ratification by three-fourths of the states.”
“Plus the old-school electoral system has its benefits. With the Electoral College, for example, there’s no chance of a run-off election or a protracted national recount. Columnist George Will shudders to think of what would have happened in the 1960 election if there had been no Electoral College”.
“John F. Kennedy’s popular vote margin over Richard M. Nixon was just 118,574,” writes Will. “If all 68,838,219 popular votes had been poured into a single national bucket, there would have been powerful incentives to challenge the results in many of the nation’s 170,000 precincts.”
Electoral votes are allocated among the states based on the Census. Every state is allocated a number of votes equal to the number of senators and representatives in its U.S. Congressional delegation! Two votes are for its senators in the U.S. Senate. Plus they have a number of votes equal to the number of its members in the U. S. House of Representatives.
Under the 23rd Amendment of the Constitution, the District of Columbia is allocated three electors. It is treated like a state for purposes of the Electoral College.
The allocations below are based on the 2010 Census. They are effective for 2012, 2016, and 2020 presidential elections.
Total Electoral Votes: 538; Majority Needed to Elect: 270
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