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Why Keep the Electoral College? |
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Under the Electoral College system, it is possible for a candidate to lose the nationwide popular vote, yet be elected president by winning only in eleven key states. Should you ever forget this fact, critics of the Electoral College will be sure to remind you of it every four years.
What could the Founding Fathers -- the Framers of the Constitution -- the Champions of Democracy -- have been thinking in 1787? Did they not realize that the Electoral College system effectively took the power to select the American president of out of the hands of the American people? Yes, they did. In fact, the Founding Fathers always intended that the states -- not the people -- select the president.
Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution grants the power to elect the president and vice president to the states through the Electoral College system. Under the Constitution, the highest-ranking U.S. officials elected by direct popular vote of the people are the governors of the states.
Tyranny of the Majority
To be brutally honest, the Founding Fathers did not give the American public of their day much credit for political awareness. Here are a few relevant quotes from the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
"A popular election in this case is radically vicious. The ignorance of the people would put it in the power of some one set of men dispersed through the Union, and acting in concert, to delude them into any appointment." -- Delegate Gerry, July 25, 1787
"The extent of the country renders it impossible, that the people can have the requisite capacity to judge of the respective pretensions of the candidates." -- Delegate Mason, July 17, 1787
"The people are uninformed, and would be misled by a few designing men." -- Delegate Gerry, July 19, 1787.
The Founding Fathers had seen the dangers of placing ultimate power into a single set of human hands. Accordingly, they feared that placing unlimited power to elect the president into the politically naive hands of the people could lead to a "tyranny of the majority." In response, they created the Electoral College system as a process to insulate the selection of the president from the whims of the public.
Preserving Federalism
The Founding Fathers also felt the Electoral College system would enforce the concept of federalism -- the division and sharing of powers between the state and national governments.
Under the Constitution, the people are empowered to choose, through direct popular election, the men and women who represent them in their state legislatures and in the United Sates Congress. The states, through the Electoral College, are empowered to choose the president and vice president.
Whoa! You call that democracy?
Next page > But This is a Democracy! Or is it? > Page 1, 2, 3
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Written by: Robert C. Longley
Date: 10/22/2000
URL: http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa102200a.htm
