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Back in 2016, when the election results were announced and the faces of many thousands of millennials crashed so heavily that the resulting thud registered on some seismic meters as small local quakes, there was an overheated argument going on in the media about why the electoral college should\/should not be eliminated.<\/p>\n
It has to do with representation.<\/p>\n
James Madison, the primary architect of the Constitution, and the other representatives believed that the electors would be able to insure that only a qualified person becomes President. They believed that with an Electoral College, no one would be able to manipulate the citizenry. It would act as a check on an electorate that might be duped.<\/p>\n
Madison and the others \u00a0did not trust the population to make the right choice. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention believed that the Electoral College had the advantage of being a group that met only once and thus could not be manipulated over time by foreign governments or others. In view of how things have gone in the past two years, these people \u2013 Madison, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, et al., had enormous foresight.<\/p>\n
The electoral college is part of the compromises made at the Constitutional Convention to satisfy the small states. Under the system of the Electoral College, each state had the same number of electoral votes as they have Representatives (not Senators) in Congress, therefore, no state could have less than 3. The result of this system is that in the 2016 election, the state of Wyoming casts about 210,000 votes, and thus each elector represented 70,000 votes, while in California approximately 9,700,000 votes were cast for 54 votes, representing 179,000 votes per elector. Does this create an unfair advantage to voters in the small states whose votes actually count more than those of people living in medium and large states? Yes, and they were very aware of it from the beginning.<\/p>\n
The Founding Fathers, the creators of our Constitution, did not want direct election to the Presidency. They were deeply concerned that a tyrant could manipulate public opinion and come to power through the popular vote. And how often have we seen that in the 19th<\/sup> and 20th<\/sup> centuries? Yes, and there\u2019s a long list I could show you. They saw it happen in France in 1789. We saw it happen in Russia 100 years ago, and in Germany barely 87 years in the past. And we’ve come close, as well, a couple of times.<\/p>\n Since the electoral college votes are given in their entirety to the majority winner of the state ballot count in elections, the result is that one state with 10 electoral votes may tip the balance toward a specific candidate. We saw this in November 2016, in which the weeping and wailing in the outer darkness of losing a contest showed up on TV screens everywhere.<\/p>\n The electoral vote is always determined by a simple majority count of 2 votes. A candidate may win the popular vote but lose the electoral vote, as happened more than once in presidential elections and happened again in our most recent presidential race. The winner-take-all method used in electoral voting was decided by the states themselves. This trend took place over the course of the 19th century as America grew in size, volume and frontiers. The total number of electoral votes is, in keeping with the growth of this country, 538, of which 270 form the 2-vote simple majority that determines who is elected President of these United States.<\/p>\n