Let The Electoral College Debate Begin - But, With Knowledge

It is about time for the quadrennial appearance of the latter-day hysterics to reemerge to rant about ending the Electoral College in favor of an array of schemes most often in the name of “fairness” or “modernity” but almost always without even the most feeble notion of its what or why. The story involves the Founders considering several approaches that contrary to popular myth and argument never included taking the selection of a President from the hands of the great unwashed masses ala “Super Delegates” as some assert. In fact nothing could be farther from the truth.

Several ways of electing President were proposed including: having Congress do it (that was rejected for fear of corruption, political pandering, and foreign interference through Congress and risking upsetting the balance-of-power among the Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches.); others wanted state legislatures to do it and that was rejected for some of the same reasons; a direct vote was rejected from a fear “favorite sons” would dominate, and big states would simply overpower the smaller, and finally there was the Committee of Eleven that emerged in the Constitutional Convention proposing an indirect election of the President through a College of Electors.

That indirect election can be likened to the Roman Catholic Church’s College of Cardinals selecting the Pope. The original idea was for the most knowledgeable and informed individuals from each State to select the President based solely on merit and without regard to State of origin or political party. That was a permutation of the Centurial Assembly system of the Roman Republic. Under that system, the adult male citizens of Rome were divided, according to their position, into groups of 100 (called Centuries). Each group of 100 was entitled to cast only one vote either in favor or against proposals submitted to them by the Roman Senate. Proponents like it because after all it worked OK for over a thousand years.

In its original shape the Electoral College States were the Centurial Assembly assigned one elector per Senator (always two regardless of the state’s size) and one per member of the House of Representatives and that was parceled out based on population determined in the decennial census. By the way that was based on a compromise achieved among big and smaller states of how to apportion Congress. Each state could figure out how to select electors and that made states happy because they didn’t want the Federal government interfering in their business.

Congressmen and federal employees were specifically forbidden from being electors and electors were required to meet in their own states and not together. They had to vote for two one who could not be from their state. Those votes were sealed and send to the President of the Senate who open and read the totals out loud and whoever got a majority plus one was the President and the next highest became Vice President. If nobody got a majority the House of Representatives voted on the top five candidates with each state’s delegation getting only one vote. If that failed the Senate voted to break a tie among the top two again with the second place becoming vice President.

It worked for four elections and until political parties formed – something the founders hope to avoid. In 1800 Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr (both Democratic-Republicans) took 36 votes in Congress to pick Jefferson President, and a lot of backroom horse trading and bad blood. The 12^th Amendment was hastily passed in 1804 requiring each elector cast one vote for President and one for Vice President. There have been myriad statutory changes since. But, it was the excesses, chaos, and paralysis of direct democracy during the French Revolution that solidified the Electoral College system as a workable compromise to see the nation deteriorate into such chaos.

It is imperfect

• 1824: John Quincy Adams received more than 38,000 fewer votes than Andrew Jackson, but neither candidate won a majority of the Electoral College. Adams was awarded the presidency when the election was thrown to the House of Representatives.
• 1876: Nearly unanimous support from small states gave Rutherford B. Hayes a one-vote margin in the Electoral College, despite the fact that he lost the popular vote to Samuel J. Tilden by 264,000 votes. Hayes carried five out of the six smallest states (excluding Delaware).
• 1888: Benjamin Harrison lost the popular vote by 95,713 votes to Grover Cleveland, but won the electoral vote by 65.
• 2000: Al Gore had over half a million votes more than George W. Bush, with 50,992,335 votes to Bush’s 50,455,156. But after recount controversy in Florida and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Bush was awarded the state by 537 popular votes. Like most states, Florida has a “winner takes all” rule. This means that the candidate who wins the state by popular vote also gets all of the state’s electoral votes. Bush became president with 271 electoral votes.

The Electoral College is therefore a barrier, or a weighed, voting system that is designed to give more power to the states with more votes, but allows for small states to swing an election thereby ensuring the absolute fairness for all Americans the Founders craved and quested to achieve. It is interesting that that this flies in the face of the so-called landed class and gave rise to the aphorism “you can’t vote by acre.”

Democrats continue to lead in states with 200 Electoral Votes while the GOP has the advantage in states with 189. States with 111 Votes are “leaners,” and states with 38 Votes are Toss-Ups. When “leaners” are added, the Democrats lead 260 to 240 A total of 270 electoral votes are needed to win the White House. Twelve states with 149 Electoral Votes are either a pure Toss-Up or just slightly leaning to one party or the other. These are likely to be the early battleground states of Election 2008: Florida (27), Pennsylvania (21), Ohio (20), Michigan (17), Virginia (13), Missouri (11), Wisconsin (10), Colorado (9), Iowa (7), Nevada (5), New Mexico (5), and New Hampshire (4). To see state-by-state results (Click here) .