Some Democrats have begun agitating to include the elimination of the electoral college on the country’s agenda. Republicans, whose last two presidents failed to win the popular vote but won the electoral college, are predictably unenthusiastic.
Most voters probably don’t even know there is an electoral college, where it came from, or how it works. This is not surprising since it was unimportant until it regularly began to bestow the highest office on losers; yet the more you examine it the worse it seems.
The drafters of the Constitution themselves struggled over the method of electing a president in the summer of 1787. James Wilson, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention from Pennsylvania deserves respect for having advocated for a direct election of the president by the people, pointing out that such direct elections for state governors worked in New York and Massachusetts. His proposal was rejected by a vote of twelve states to one.
The objections tell us a lot about the 18th Century and suggest the folly of originalism unless we long to return to the era of George III, Louis XVI, and Frederick the Great. Most complaints about electing a president directly centered on the untrustworthiness of the people, also known as the mob or the rabble. Elbridge Gerry doubted they could choose a president wisely being “uninformed” and easily “mislead by a few designing men.”
Randolph of Virginia proposed a triumvirate since a single head of government could be a “fetus of monarchy.” Madison said the chief executive might not be the problem since in the states omnipotent legislatures were proving more worrisome than weak executives. And a more self-interested issue was raised by James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, but not always infallible.
Since the North was more populous than the South (if you didn’t count 700,000 slaves), the North would end up picking every president. Obviously the South would reject government by a popular vote they couldn’t win.
Some delegates proposed letting the members of Congress pick a president, but that would have meant the head of government wouldn’t be a check on Congress but its creature. Conversely, the process might invite corruption, tempting legislators to chose a president who would be likely to hand out patronage to those who put him in power.
Next it was suggested that the legislature of each state could vote for president, but a good deal of contempt was heaped on them, and the worry expressed that the states would usurp the power of the national government and a rerun of the impotent Articles of Confederation would ensue. As the King of Siam said, “Is a puzzlement.”
Altogether, sixty votes were held on various permutations of presidential selection without any winning a majority. Eventually the Rube Goldberg device of the electoral college was proposed, again suggesting the mindset of a roomful of elitists suspicious of democracy. The electoral college would be made up electors chosen for this single purpose in a manner decided by each state’s legislature.
No one could serve as an elector who is “a Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States.” Some delegates charmingly supposed men picked for this one task would be admirable citizens who could be trusted, others feared they would be partisan hacks.
The number of electors was much debated as well, with large states and small states engaging in turf battles. The number was finally made identical to the number of each state’s total representatives and senators which in turn would be based on the most recent census for a total today of 538. In the beginning, the number of electors was thus rigged two ways.
First, Southern delegates had insisted on getting seats in the House based not on the number of a state’s citizens alone but on an additional 3/5 of a person for each slave, giving slave states an advantage so great that for 32 of the first 36 years of the Republic a Virginia slaveholder held the office of president.
For example, Jefferson won the presidency over John Adams in 1800 by 73 electoral votes to 65. But 12 of his votes were due to slaves counted at 3/5 of a person, so Adams should actually have won 65 to 61. After emancipation this shameful advantage was eliminated, but the second way the electoral college offends against equal weight for each voter still persists .
Giving each state two Senators, no matter how large or small the state was demanded by the small states in 1787 to keep Massachusetts and Virginia from dominating Congress, but the unfair advantage to small states persists and now absurdly skews the electoral college. So California with a population of 40 million gets two electoral votes for its two Senators, while the 30 smallest states with a similar total of 40 million people get 60 electoral votes.
The only way to get rid of this dog’s breakfast is to award the presidency on the basis of one man, one vote. That would require the elimination of the electoral college in favor of popular election, as called for by a few delegates to the Convention in 1787. They should have been heeded. Now a Constitutional Amendment will be required. It is long overdue. The college is folly. The voice of a majority of the people should decide who leads them.