Ah, the Electoral College. Under attack from so many angles, it’s hard to find any place that supports our venerable institution. With the 2008 election cycle now, apparently, forced upon us in 2007, it won’t surprise me to start hearing calls for some Constitutional change on this last bastion of defense for our Republic.
The complaints range from it being archaic to not being democratic. Were it left to many today, the College would be done away with quickly and hit the heap of governmental concepts rejected by the masses. But should we be so quick to attack this peculiar institution? If all the facts are known, then the answer is most assuredly “no.”
To start with, we must accept the fact that the United States is not and never has been a democracy. At no point did any of the Founders really feel as if a democracy was the aim of their efforts post-England, as I have already demonstrated previously. They did want and cherish democratic principles such as being allowed to vote on some issues, but in general, it was clear they preferred the darling of Enlightenment thinkers like Scot David Hume who espoused the value of a Republic over a Democracy.
Thus, if we are not a democracy, then all arguments that attack the Electoral College on the fact that it might not fully represent the will of the majority are mute. Our nation has a history of very close elections (at least 22% of all Presidential elections have either been decided by 1% margin in the popular vote or actually had the “loser” receive more popular votes), yet the Electoral College has properly provided for a method of selecting the chief executive that has kept the country on a successful path.
Obviously, some people won’t agree with that assessment and think our history proves otherwise. Yet, upon scrutiny, the Constitution is very clear when it comes to Presidential Elections. Article II, Section 1, paragraph 2 states that the selection of the Electors for the President would come from the state legislatures. Those bodies could “appoint in such a manner as the legislature thereof may direct.” And they did.
In the first three presidential elections, state legislatures themselves chose the electors in most states. Thereafter, popular choice gradually took hold, state by state, so that by 1832, electors were chosen by popular vote in all states except South Carolina, which clung to legislative election until 1864. Of course the 1828 election where Andrew Jackson won the popular vote, but found himself outflanked by Henry Clay in the House of Representatives, was critical to the move towards more democracy. It is here that Jackson and his followers first added the name Democratic to their political party, the original Republicans (sometimes referred to as Jeffersonians), to demonstrate to the nation that they were more supportive of democracy than John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay and others of the old Republican Party.
By the time of the looming Civil War, popular elections to select the electors was solidly in place, but the most frequent method of popular election was within legislative districts, the method apparently favored by many of the Founders. As a consequence, a state’s electoral votes were often divided among two or more presidential candidates. But with the rise of political parties during the 1830s, the states began to use at-large, winner-take-all elections to choose presidential electors. In the winner-take-all system, the party carrying the state, by however small a popular plurality, wins all of the state’s electors. The minority party, or parties, gets none.
Why did the Founders, then, choose this method? Simply put, they wanted to protect the country from the excesses of the masses seen within a democracy. They wanted to allow the smaller states to have voice within the country and by preserving the smaller states, even today we see the truth in this. Much is made about the 2000 election and how important Florida was, but had Vice-President Gore won any of the 7 states that only receive 3 or 4 electoral votes, then Florida would have been a minor issue. Gore had 266 votes before the decision in Florida was determined. If he had won any of the small vote states, then he would have had more electoral votes than Bush regardless what happened in the Florida recount. In other words, that election demonstrated that EACH STATE’S electoral votes are critical.
However, without the electoral college, the will and thought of the folks of Nevada or Idaho would have been rejected by the vast majority living in the great urban cities. This fact can be seen when you look at the 2000 (or 2004) election on a county by county map. (For even more detail, check out this site.) Al Gore won ONLY about 15-20% of the nation geographically (Kerry did little better). While the citizens of our cities also deserve their voice to be heard, it is telling when you consider the vast majority of our nation geographically wanted the Republican candidate.
Secondly, quite frankly, the founders also wanted to put the decision of our chief executive officer into the hands of the intellectual elite, politically astute leaders of our day. It was their contention that the masses had little idea about what was best for the country and by allowing the State Legislatures to control the choosing of electors, we could assume that they would know best. This certainly strikes at the very concept of democracy; the Founders were saying, in essence, that there IS a difference between the elite and the average person. One can see this concept clearly portrayed by how they limited the electoral body to citizens and how tightly they defined this.
Take the 1860 election for instance. In 1860, 81% of the possible voters did vote. In 1856, 78.9% voted. But when you count the full American population, there were over 26 million, yet only 4 million in 1856 and 4.6 million in 1860 people voted. Obviously many of the non-voters are women, but even if you simply double the potential voting citizens thus to 11.6 million, you still have 15 million unaccounted for. Some of those would be children under 18, but not 15 million. The point is that citizen was tightly defined in the 1850s in a way that is consistent with the idea of Republic and certainly not how we define it in 2004.
In the end, the Founders’ plan was solid and worth our recognition, not derision. It was the genius of our Founders that has protected us within their experiment over these 220+ years. It is NOT the best election tool for a democracy. Thankfully, we are not part of a democracy. Perhaps the rest of the world will actually come to see it our way and also create an election tool as solid as the Electoral College.