Why the Electoral College?

I have been asked recently by a number of friends the reason for the Electoral College in the upcoming Presidential election.  Considering that I have both undergraduate and Master’s degrees in Politics, one would assume I’d be a good person to ask.  And while it’s true that a few years ago I had a ready answer at the tip of my tongue, motherhood, moving, and life put that portion of my brain into hibernation. 

In an effort to wake up my poor, neglected political mind and to answer my friends’ question, I went to the only place one can go in order to properly answer the question:  The Federalist Papers and Madison’s own notes from The Constitutional Convention.  How blessed we are to still have the resources at our fingertips!  (It was pure pleasure to go downstairs to my bookshelves and dust off these trusty volumes.)

We’re smart today.  We’ve learned from the past, and even if we don’t know the answer, we can get the answer to any question via Wikipedia or Google (God bless them!).  But sometimes we forget.  Technology doesn’t change human nature, and since human nature is what the Founders wrestled with while writing our Constitution, it makes sense to go back and review their own arguments in favor (and some against) the Electoral College.

Madison records that on Thursday, July the 26, 1787, Colonel Mason recounted the various suggestions for appointing the Executive (i.e. the President – they hadn’t yet settled on a title for the chief executive).  They were:

1. Election by the “people at large” or what we call a popular election.  Those against it pointed to the fact that the people at large were very unlikely to understand the qualifications necessary for an individual to be President, and even if they did understand the weighty requirements of the Oval Office, the people at large were unlikely to really know if an individual candidate had the qualifications to adequately carry out the job.  To quote Mr. Gerry, “The people are uniformed, and would be misled by a few designing men.”  The biggest argument against popular election, however, remains today, and that is, essentially, majority tyranny over the minority – that a few areas of high population would control who is elected President, and that areas of lower population not be represented at all.  In some ways, the Electoral College serves a similar purpose in Presidential elections as the Senate serves in the legislative branch – it equalizes representation among the states.  If you have a problem with the Electoral College, you ought also to have a problem with the Senate as it is wholly "unequal" representation based on population.
2. Election by state legislatures.  Those against this pointed to the fact that if state legislatures elected the President, then the President would be likely to cater to the state legislatures’ whims.  The office of the President as they envisioned it, was to be a sort of check against state legislatures (and the federal legislature for that matter) running wild, and how could a President be elected by the very group he was to later hold accountable.  To put it briefly, the Founders saw this as a conflict of interests.  (Remember, too, that at this point, Federal Senators were elected by state legislatures, not by popular election.  If the President was elected by state legislatures as well, that could have given them power of election in two branches of the federal government.)
3. Election by the Executives (i.e. Governors) of the states.  This was seen as a dangerous option because the President could easily become subservient to the governors.  State governors, “being standing bodies, they could and would be courted, and intrigued with by the Candidates, by their partisans, and by the ministers of foreign powers.” (Wed. July 25, 1787)  So the President would cater to whatever Governors would garner the most votes.  
4. Election by electors chosen specifically and only for the task of electing the President. (This is what we now know as the Electoral College.  I address problems with this in a bit.)  
5. Each citizen eligible to vote would be required vote for more than one candidate for President, among which at least one vote had to be cast for someone not from the citizen’s home state.  (This was proposed by Mr. Williamson.)  The problems with this were rife, including how would individuals know candidates outside their states (before the invention of radio or TV), and how would the logistics of this be enforced, and what real benefit was it over a general popular election?  These were all questions that kept this option from moving forward.
6. Mr. Dickenson even proposed that every citizen not “popular within his own state” would not be permitted to vote.  In Madison’s notes from July 26^th, he states that even Mr. Dickenson who proposed the idea recognized the inconvenience and logistical difficulties with this and rejected it himself.
7. A lottery to select electors from Congress.  Madison records that this suggestion elicited the response, “We ought to be governed by reason, not by chance.”

In thinking back over the Electoral College discussions I’ve been a part of throughout my education, the discussion is often approached in the wrong vein.  It’s approached by first establishing what’s terrible about the Electoral College and then supposing that a better option exists. 

I don’t think the Founders felt that way when they wrote the Electoral College into the Constitution.  Instead, (and from reading between the lines a bit in Madison’s notes from the Constitutional Convention) the Founders seemed to think the Electoral College wasn’t a perfect method of electing a President at all.  It caused representation issues (citizens who lived in states with higher populations actually had “less of an individual vote” because of the number of electoral votes per state), logistical issues (the Electoral College met once for one purpose – why not use a body that already existed like the legislature?), consistency issues (states got to choose how to elect their Electoral College representatives, and they got to determine by what criteria the electors would vote), etc. It was actually a really bad method of electing a President.

Although the Electoral College was far from a perfect method of electing a president, it was determined, after days of debate, sending the issue back to committee, and again debating it with the whole Continental Congress, that it was still the best (most agreeable) option for electing the President.  It was the worst option except for all the others that had been suggested.

I like to consider myself intelligent.  I have a BA from Hillsdale and an MA from Georgetown, and I’ve studied and gotten very good grades under some very strict/difficult instructors.  But I do not fancy myself in any way more intelligent or to have a better understanding of human nature and government that the men who pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor in order to separate from England.  And it was many of the same men (who did the aforementioned in the Declaration of Independence) who then gathered to birth our nation through the writing and eventual adoption of the Constitution. 

I’m not smarter than them.  I don’t have better arguments than they do.  I haven’t observed human nature and understood it in the tense contexts that they had seen.  If I were to stand against the Electoral College it would be to stand against Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and the whole Continental Congress.  It’s not that there aren’t other ways the President could be elected – it’s just that they deemed the Electoral College the most favorable option.  And they left behind their reasons for that belief. 

For myself, I am in favor of the Electoral College.  And I hope after reading this you have a more informed opinion, whatever yours may be.