Electoral College - Were the Founding Fathers Wrong?

[juanez]

There's been lots of talk about the Electoral College since the election in 2000. Like Bush created the Electoral College in an evil plot to win or something...LOL. The same rules were followed in 2000 that the Country has been following since, well, forever.

Here in Colorado, we have Amendment 36 on the ballot. This Amendment, if passed, "would make Colorado the only state in the union with a purely proportional system of casting its electoral votes." Funny, the initiative was pushed by some rich California Democrat who wants Colorado to do away with the EC for this election because we are a "battleground state" and, if the Amendment passes, would give Kerry a few extra EC votes and possibly push him into the win column. Why not push this idea in his own state? Because all the EC votes in California will already go to Kerry. It’s such a blatantly disingenuous ploy, disguised as an effort to make "every vote count". It appears that the Amendment will not pass, thankfully.


Mike Rosen makes a pretty good argument for why the Electoral College is a good idea and why the Founding Fathers implemented the system in the first place. Do you think the Founding Fathers were wrong to implement this system?

I encourage you to read the Entire Article , but here are a few quotes:
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Students of American government understand that we have never had a national popular election for president. We have 51 separate elections, one in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. We tally the overall popular vote only as a matter of curiosity. It has no legal bearing on the election.

This is no accident; our Founders intended it that way precisely because we are a constitutional republic, not a democracy.

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Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution reads: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government ." The word "democracy" appears not a single time in the Constitution, Bill of Rights or Declaration of Independence.

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In Federalist No. 10, James Madison says, "Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property, and have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."

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For the record, Al Gore didn't defeat George W. Bush in the national popular election for president in 2000, simply because there was no national popular election. In any event, neither candidate won a majority of the vote. Gore's plurality was three-tenths of 1 percent above Bush's. But Bush won in 30 of the 50 states and carried 2,480 counties to Gore's 674, representing 2.5 million of America's 3 million square miles. Gore won three populous states (New York, California and Illinois) by a total of 3.3 million votes, and lost the rest of the nation by 3.2 million. If we did away with the Electoral College, rural America and the West would be swamped by the voting power of big cities, traditional Democratic strongholds.

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[MMMMMM]

Great post, Juanez. Maybe this will give the AndyFoxes of the world something to think about ;-) [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[wacki]

Agreed. I've named this book a numerous times in 2+2, but if you read Machiavelli's The Prince it outlines why democracies are bad and republics are good as well. It goes through numerous histrorical examples and analyzes them all.

[benfranklin]

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Funny, the initiative was pushed by some rich California Democrat who wants Colorado to do away with the EC for this election because we are a "battleground state" and, if the Amendment passes, would give Kerry a few extra EC votes and possibly push him into the win column.


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Colorado is still getting Californicated, eh? How can an initiative in this election change the rules for this election?

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Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution reads: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government ." The word "democracy" appears not a single time in the Constitution, Bill of Rights or Declaration of Independence.

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The founding fathers had a pretty healthy skepticism about majority rule. They had great respect for the individual, but distrusted those same individuals acting as a group. Rightly so, in my humble opinion.

Opinions aside, the facts are that we have an Electoral College, and that gives certain powers to the states.

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If we did away with the Electoral College, rural America and the West would be swamped by the voting power of big cities, traditional Democratic strongholds.

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Exactly. The framers of the Constitution didn't care about political parties per se. They already saw the growing concentrations of population, and knew that pure majority rule tends to ignore the rights and welfare of certain minorities, and wanted to protect against that.

The Electoral College gives each state some degree of power in national politics irrespective of pure population. The system will not be changed at the Federal level, because the power given to the smaller states lets them prevent it from being taken away. If any choose to give it away, such as through Colorado-type initiatives, that is short-sighted but it is their option, which they may live to regret.

There has been much weeping and wailing on these forums about the unfairness of the E.C., and I expect to see much more, especially AFTER the election. But that is the form of government we have, and the rationale for it remains valid. The big argument against it is that the E.C. is not democratic. I say that that is a big argument for it, and have never seen a solid, logical argument here to show that pure democracy would be better than what we have.

[o0mr_bill0o]

[ QUOTE ]
There's been lots of talk about the Electoral College since the election in 2000. Like Bush created the Electoral College in an evil plot to win or something...LOL. The same rules were followed in 2000 that the Country has been following since, well, forever.

Here in Colorado, we have Amendment 36 on the ballot. This Amendment, if passed, "would make Colorado the only state in the union with a purely proportional system of casting its electoral votes." Funny, the initiative was pushed by some rich California Democrat who wants Colorado to do away with the EC for this election because we are a "battleground state" and, if the Amendment passes, would give Kerry a few extra EC votes and possibly push him into the win column. Why not push this idea in his own state? Because all the EC votes in California will already go to Kerry. It’s such a blatantly disingenuous ploy, disguised as an effort to make "every vote count". It appears that the Amendment will not pass, thankfully.


Mike Rosen makes a pretty good argument for why the Electoral College is a good idea and why the Founding Fathers implemented the system in the first place. Do you think the Founding Fathers were wrong to implement this system?

I encourage you to read the Entire Article , but here are a few quotes:


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Wow. I was hoping this would be an article making good points that would take a little bit of thought to refute. It's not.

[ QUOTE ]
Students of American government understand that we have never had a national popular election for president. We have 51 separate elections, one in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. We tally the overall popular vote only as a matter of curiosity. It has no legal bearing on the election.

This is no accident; our Founders intended it that way precisely because we are a constitutional republic, not a democracy.

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This is both misleading and false. It implies that in order for a government to be a constitutional republic it must elect its executive via electoral college. this is simply not the case, instead the United States is not just the only constitutional republic to use the electoral college, it's only state in the world to use the electoral college. Therefore, it is entirely inaccurate to say that the electoral college was implemented in order to create a constitutional republic in the United States. Furthermore, this consideration had little bearing on the strongest motives for the founders to create the electoral college. There are a myriad of different reasons it was created, however, at the forefront among them were these considerations:
The forefathers were concerned that the ignorant populace would elect an incompetent executive. That is not to say they doubted the intelligence of the American electorate, instead they feared that thanks to extremely limited communications capabilities voters would vote for candidates from their own state, a "favorite son." Therefore, they created the electoral college in order to trump the people should they make such a decision. Clearly this consideration is impractical under our current democracy.
Furthermore, southern slave states were concerned they would be overpowered by the north with regards to the presidential election, just as they had the same fears regarding congressional elections. Implementing the electoral college allowed them to use the 3/5 rule to gain an extra edge in national representation thanks to their large slave populations.

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Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution reads: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government ." The word "democracy" appears not a single time in the Constitution, Bill of Rights or Declaration of Independence.

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Once more, this statement is misleading and shows a general lack of understanding regarding democracies worldwide, and the nature of a republic itself. There is no inherent trait in a republic that prohibits its nation from directly electing the executive.

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In Federalist No. 10, James Madison says, "Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property, and have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."

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this statement is irrelevant to the electoral college, and once again shows the same confusion regarding the nature of democracies, republics and electoral systems that the rest of the article has shown.

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For the record, Al Gore didn't defeat George W. Bush in the national popular election for president in 2000, simply because there was no national popular election. In any event, neither candidate won a majority of the vote. Gore's plurality was three-tenths of 1 percent above Bush's. But Bush won in 30 of the 50 states and carried 2,480 counties to Gore's 674, representing 2.5 million of America's 3 million square miles. Gore won three populous states (New York, California and Illinois) by a total of 3.3 million votes, and lost the rest of the nation by 3.2 million. If we did away with the Electoral College, rural America and the West would be swamped by the voting power of big cities, traditional Democratic strongholds.

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This inaccurately plays to fears that rural areas would be trumped by big cities. They already are, and the electoral college does nothing to alleviate this. The rural areas within each state are still far more sparsely populated than the urban areas.

Eliminating the electoral college would increase the representativeness of our government, with no cost to effectiveness. There is simply no reason to keep it around aside from a general unfounded fear of change. As it stands the electoral college systematically disenfranchises those states whose electorate is overwhelmingly in support of one party over another. Candidates have little incentive to consider the well-being of the country as a whole, instead they find themselves with a great incentive to disproportionately consider the well-being of swing states.

[natedogg]

Doing away with the electoral college is only the second stupidest idea on changing our election.

The worst idea, hands down, is fining people who don't vote, like some euro countries do.

natedogg

[sam h]

N/M

[sam h]

Many states are structured as federal republics. This has nothing to do with how they elect federal officials.

The electoral college sucks. It devalues the principles behind "one man, one vote" and makes the votes of some count effectively more than others. I suspect some of those on this board who defend it to the teeth might be reconsidering in about ten days, as the chances of Bush winning the popular vote and losing the electoral college seem good.

[juanez]

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Colorado is still getting Californicated, eh? How can an initiative in this election change the rules for this election?


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It's amazing how many of "them" have moved here in the past 15 years. They keep trying to Californicate us, but hopfully they will fail. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

This is a part of this ballot initiative. As it's written, it will apply to this election as well those in the future if it's passed. That's why it's an obvious ploy to gain Kerry a few EC votes "RIGHT NOW - BEAT BUSH" without any consideration of future elections. Pretty shortsighted.

[benfranklin]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Students of American government understand that we have never had a national popular election for president. We have 51 separate elections, one in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

This is no accident; our Founders intended it that way precisely because we are a constitutional republic, not a democracy.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is both misleading and false. It implies that in order for a government to be a constitutional republic it must elect its executive via electoral college.

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I don't think that that statement says anything other than our country chose to implement a constitutional republic via an electoral college. There is nothing there to indicate that there are not other forms of republics.


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This inaccurately plays to fears that rural areas would be trumped by big cities. They already are, and the electoral college does nothing to alleviate this. The rural areas within each state are still far more sparsely populated than the urban areas.

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At the risk of putting words in your mouth, it is absurd to argue that the admitted influence of Cheyenne on the electoral process of Wyoming is anthing like the potential influence of Chicago on the electoral process of Wyoming, if all votes were counted equally on a national basis. The citizens of Cheyenne are aware of state and local issues, and of the potential impact on Cheyenne of economic and other issues that affect rural Wyoming.

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Eliminating the electoral college would increase the representativeness of our government, with no cost to effectiveness.

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Excuse my scoff, but there is a sweeping general statement with nary a hint of an attempt to back it up with empirical evidence or theoretical argument.

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There is simply no reason to keep it around aside from a general unfounded fear of change.

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The Founding Fathers had many well-articulated reasons to adopt it, which are cited if not expounded in the original post. The system has worked for over 200 years. (Could another system have worked better? Maybe, but there is no evidence to show that.) Finally, attempts to change it have been soundly defeated. We have kept it because we have seen no reason to change it.

The major reason (not argument) for wanting to change the Electoral College system is dissatisfaction with the results. We lost because the rules aren't fair. We lost because the other team scored more runs, but we had more hits, so we should have won. It's not fair that we lost the football game even though we scored 6 times (all field goals) while they only scored 3 times (all TDs). Sorry, we play by the rules here.

The essence of the argument against the Electoral College is that the rules are not fair. And the rules are not fair because the winner of the overall popular vote may not win.

Where is it carved in God-given tablets that a popular majority is the only fair way to have an election? Everyone who argues from this position takes it as natural law that only a popular majority process is fair. Anything else is by definition deemed to be unfair. Sorry, that is not a fact, it is an opinion. It is an unsubstantiated opinion and assumption in every argument I have heard for the abolition of the Electoral College. I, and many others, don't accept the premise that a popular majority is the only fair way to have an election. Until someone justifies that basic assumption, they are not going to have any success arguing that the Electoral College is unfair.