Why Keep the Electoral College?

More of this Feature • Part 2: No Democracy? • Part 3: Can it Change?    Join the Discussion "Eliminating the electoral college wouldn't provide any clear benefits." KRD3   Related Resources • The Electoral College • EC Votes by State • Presidential Straw Poll  From Other Guides • Our First Election  • GOP Fears Gays? • The Debate & Women • A Letter to Bush   Elsewhere on the Web • EC's Home Page  • Defenders of the EC

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.