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The original concept in the Constitutional Convention was to have the President elected by the Legislature, per the first draft presented by the Committee of Eleven to the Constitutional Convention on August 6, 1787. However, Daniel Carroll of Maryland and Governeur Morris of New York object to this.
Carroll proposed that the President be elected "by the People" instead of the national legislature. Morris's objection was that by having the Legislature directly elect the President, it made the President a creature of the Legislature.
According to James Madison's notes on the Convention, Morris "dwelt on the danger of rendering the Executive uninterested in maintaining the rights of his Station, as leading to Legislative tyranny. If the Legislature have the Executive depedent on them, they can perpetuate & support their usurpations by the influence of tax-gatherers & other officers, by fleets armies &c. Cabal & corruption are attached to that mode of election: so also is ineligibility a second time. Hence the Executive is interested in Courting popularity in the Legislature by sacrificing his Executive Rights; & then he can go into that Body, after the expiration of his Executive office, and enjoy there the fruits of his policy." Morris instead proposed that the President be chosen by Electors chosen by the people of the several states.
Morris's motion to change the Presidential election method remained an open point and the issue of Presidential election was not resolved when the Committee of Eleven submitted an updated draft of the Constitution to the convention on September 4th.
The initial September 4th draft had presidential electors chosen by what ever means each state legislature decided to use, had the national legislature decide the date for electoral voting, had the two-vote method for the President that we still use today, but had the Senate alone act as the national body that counted the total votes, that declared the President and Vice President, and that cast deciding votes for each office in the case of either a tie or the inability of a candidate to achieve a majority of votes.
The members of the Constitutional Convention then began changing the proposed Presidential election method, by including the House of Representatives in counting the Electoral Vote and having the House resolve the election in the event of no candidate receiving a vote majority. These changes then made it into the final draft of the Constitution submitted for ratification.
The concept of Electors solved several problems, as the members of the Constitutional Convention saw it.
It allowed for a voice other than the Legislature in choosing the President, enhancing the independence of the Executive branch while still granting the Legislative branch the power to resolve any ties or pluralities.
It moved the power of resolving ties and pluralies in the Presidential election from the Senate, with its longer terms of office and expectation of longer service by the Senators, to the more democratic House of Representatives, but it still maintained a one state / one vote concept for Presidential elections thrown to the Legislature. It also, in a nod to the Vice President as the President of the Senate, kept the power of resolving ties and pluralities for the VP within the Senate.
It avoided a direct election of the President by the People, with its dangers of unbridled democracy, questions of voting rights, possibilities of foreign influence, and potential situations of hung elections for the Executive branch.
It kicked the responsibility for choosing Electors down to the State Legislatures, papering over any disagreements at the national level regarding the qualifications for Electors (other than that Electors not be part of the national legislature or the federal government).
By basing the number of Electors on the total Congressional representation, it kept closed the issues already resolved by the Connecticut Compromise between small and large population states and by the 3/5ths Compromise between Southern and Northern states.
However, the Electoral College proved to have its short comings.
The election of 1800, with the rise of the Thomas Jefferson's Republican Party resulting in an Electoral tie between Jefferson and Aaron Burr, gave us the 12th Amendment, which changed the ballot voting so that Electors would vote for a President and a Vice President, instead of two votes for two different presidential candidates.
The election of 1824, in which no one candidate receiving a majority of the vote, resulted not in a Constitutional Amendment but rather a "winner-take-all" method at the state level for allocating votes by Electors.
The United States of America is a Union of independent States under a federal system. Read the Constitution and the Federalist Papers. The Electoral College will not go away unless the USA dissolves.
The confederation of independent states already existed under the Articles of Confederation. It didn't work so well. Independent states were cutting deals with foreign governments, taxing the snot out of interstate trade, and basically vetoing any effort to pay off the debts incurred by the Continental Congress during the Revolutionary War. As a Union of independent States, it pretty much sucked.
The Constitution was established in an attempt to split sovereign powers between state and national governments. The concept of "split sovereignty" worked up until about 1861.
And yes, I've read the Constitution. And the Federalist Papers. And the Anti-Federalist Papers. And Madison's Notes on the Constitutional Convention (which are really boring, for the most part).
We also have the possibility of "faithless" electors because there is no effective safeguard to require electors to vote based on the actual state vote tally. It is an outdated and flawed elitist system and it's time to abolish the Electoral College.
The term "faithless elector" always struck me as strange.
State governments don't have the power to recall or punish the U.S. Representatives or the U.S. Senators from their states for votes that they cast, so why would they have the power to recall or punish an Elector for a vote that he casts?
I do realize that the social convention is for an Elector to remain faithful (especially if he's a party apparatchik - he'll kill his political career) but I don't see a way under the U.S. Constitution that a state government can punish an Elector for not being "faithful".
The reality that states put up Referenda questions on the ballot contradict this.
Secondly, why shouldn't major population centers make those decisions based on their numbers?
They are the engines of the economy and the sources of so much of our tax money.
I don't see a very strong reason their votes should count for less?
One man one vote, can't be any simpler.
One PERSON, one vote. No need for gender-based, patriarchal language.
Do you understand that the electoral college predates the Republican party? Are you trying to say that they reason Republicans continue to defend it is because it benefits them? The language that you are using implies that you are a bit confused about the history.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jman0war
The Electoral College has benefited the Republican party twice now.
Hence, their supporters want to keep it.
You are partially right but it is not that simplistic. The college was created to give smaller states a bit of a stick against bigger states. That is factual. It is part of our federal system.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jman0war
Had the roles been reversed, they would be loudest to abolish it.
I am a Republican voter and I am not in love with the college. But we can't abolish it retro-actively because the other side is upset about an election. If you believe this, than be part of a grass roots effort to get a constituitional ammendment before next time. I, as a Republican, would support it.
The Founders were 'off the hook' cats who had a LOT of 'off the hook' issues! But keeping it real, They got this Electoral College thing right!
With the EC, every state has a voice. If not for the EC, Prez candidates would only campaign in New York, Texas and Cali, where the population density is at! With the EC, the candidates have to WORK every state! And work to get everyone in every state's vote, they should!
My observation is that 1) too many of us have little understanding of the Electoral College, how it works, and why it's needed in Presidential elections; 2) our school systems have failed in properly educating us on the Electoral College.
The EC is more bungling by 18th and 19th century politicians.
The reality that someone can have the most votes but loose the election points to a vast and obvious democratic deficit.
Rationalizations such as smaller states wouldn't have joined the union unless they got greater representation is mooted by the modern precedent of the expansion of the EU.
Market forces drive smaller states into the union.
Not to mention in the new world those smaller states would seek mutual defense in the union.
In the 18th and 19th century they didn't have mass communication technologies.
But today, physical presence of electioneering in small states is not necessary to win those states.
Not saying it does nothing to help, but is simply not required.
How many of you actually went to see your candidate speak at a public forum?
Have you ever?
California gets a whopping 55 electoral votes. That's over 20% alone of the votes needed to win an election. In contrast Texas gets 38.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jman0war
The EC is more bungling by 18th and 19th century politicians.
The reality that someone can have the most votes but loose the election points to a vast and obvious democratic deficit.
It's almost like you simply ignored 4 pages of responses explaining the purposes of an electoral college. You might fit better in the P&C forum if your intent is simply to repeat "I don't like the results" over and over.
Last edited by volosong; 11-11-2016 at 08:31 PM..
Reason: orphaned comment, post 'clean-up'
One PERSON, one vote. No need for gender-based, patriarchal language.
What part of "Isn't going to happen" don't you understand. Next thing you'll want to talk about is #calexit.. Should we review the Historical aspects of Succession from the Union?
The "Founding Fathers" also considered black people 3 fifths of a person and women had no vote at all.
Yet that is something that changed over time.
I don't see any particularly convincing case against one man, one vote.
All equal.
The founding fathers who believed slave owners should not get the benefit of their property being counted giving them more political representation, zero representation for slaves just as there was zero representation for a cow. Those founding fathers which owned slaves suddenly found the humanity in their property and tried to use them for more political power to add to the economic power and wanted one slave one representative system. The 3/5 of a person was the compromise between the two groups.
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