The Reason for the Electoral College

We’ve all experienced something like the following. The topic of politics comes up at a party, and someone in the group, seeking some way to say something smart but not divisive, will just toss out that we need to get rid of the Electoral College, the Constitution’s structure for electing the U.S. president and vice president.
The expectation is that everyone present will readily agree. And usually that is precisely what happens because few people have ever heard the other side.
We celebrate democracy so much, so often, that it seems like a no-brainer: the popular vote should always prevail. What possible reason would there be for any other system, much less this convoluted one in which states appoint electors who then weigh in with their choice?
Well, a cocktail party is not the ideal time to take up the topic but let’s just say it very clearly. The Founders were too smart, too well read in history, too aware of the complications and geographical diversity in the United States, and respectful of the federal system, to embrace something as crude and unsustainable as direct democracy.
Under such a system, the large population centers would dominate everyone else, and result in the worst excesses of mob rule.
The purpose of the Electoral College is to provide a fairer weighting between the states, which were seen as the primary political jurisdictions in the U.S. system. The federal government had defined roles and defined limits while everything else was left to the states. The U.S. president needs to represent the whole and therefore the states would serve as an essential buffer.
This is why the United States is a republic on the old Roman model and not a democracy of the form that Aristotle said can only work in small homogenous territories. A direct democracy in which the popular vote elected the president would disenfranchise all small states and, within them, everyone who lived outside the large population centers. Essentially five or so of the most populous cities would elect the president and there would be no reason to campaign anywhere else.
In other words, anyone arguing for the abolition of the Electoral College is very plainly arguing for a one-party state forever, with elections as nothing other than a veneer on top of it.
Anyone who moved from one of America’s Gothams to get peace and quiet, run a small business or start a family, or simply wants to raise a family and be left alone, would essentially surrender all political rights. He would then be subject to tyrannical control forever by the mobs and masses left behind in the population centers.
The reason this topic has come up, and this is the only reason, is that the popular vote is yielding different results than the Electoral College. This happened in both 2000 and 2016. Both were wildly contentious and disputed and led to the claim that we just need to stop with all this crazy confusion and defer to the masses. Of course the claim is only made by the party that lost out.
Alexander Hamilton in Federalist #68 explained the consensus view at the time of the drafting of the Constitution:
“The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never [editor’s note: it was also published as “seldom”] fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.
“Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union.”
He admitted that the system was not perfect but, he said, “it is at least excellent.” He pointed out too that the system itself had not met with any real controversy precisely because it protected the rights of the states and guarded against mob rule and manipulation.
To be sure, the system as established bumped into some problems soon after and some clarifications were added in the 12th Amendment.
An essential piece of the system was reinforced by a bicameral Congress that mirrored the old English system of a House of Commons and a House of Lords, the first elected by popular vote and the second appointed as a reflection of high status and deep investment in tradition and order. The House of Lords also reflects the deeper history of liberty in the English tradition wherein it was the landed aristocracy that first stepped up to limit the power of the king with the Magna Carta.
The U.S. Senate was to be the American version of the House of Lords. There were to be two in each state regardless of population size. These would be appointed positions emanating from the legislatures of the states. Thus would the Senate always represent the interests of the lower orders of government against the centralist tendencies of the federal government.
It was a change in only two words: chosen became elected, and legislature became people.
As a result, the major metropolitan areas of the states became the centers of political power, and the U.S. Senate became another version of the House. The careful design of the Framers was immediately blown up, leaving only the Electoral College and the 10th Amendment as the remaining bulwarks against mass direct elections that the Founding generation knew from history would lead to tyranny.
Ideally, there would be a repeal of the 17th Amendment. I would push that button right now if I could.
That would rebalance a major part of the system that is broken, re-enfranchise the rural areas, drive more focus on states’ rights, and set up the Senate to be a genuine force of resistance against centralization. I’m assuming that this change won’t happen anytime soon, since only a few of us even write about this subject which most everyone else regards as eccentric and irrelevant.
That said, there are ways to make the existing system even worse. One of them is to abolish the Electoral College. These days, in the cocktail set of the elites, the presumption that the system needs to go is all the rage. It is said as if no one of any high credential or social status could possibly disagree.
I’m telling you, this is all deeply dangerous. A president elected directly by popular vote would be the end of the republican system of government and probably liberty in America along with it.
The framers knew exactly what they were doing. The wisdom of that generation—as Hamilton said, they created not a perfect system but an excellent one—becomes more apparent with each passing year.