Darrell M. West of the Brookings Institution explains the history of the electoral college and why this antique process for choosing the president should be abolished.
He begins:
The framers of the Constitution set up the Electoral College for a number of different reasons. According to Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper Number 68, the body was a compromise at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia between large and small states. Many of the latter worried that states such
as Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia would dominate the presidency so they devised an institution where each state had Electoral College votes in proportion to the number of its senators and House members. The former advantaged small states since each state had two senators regardless of its size, while the latter aided large states because the number of House members was based on the state’s population.
In addition, there was considerable discussion regarding whether Congress or state legislatures should choose the chief executive. Those wanting a stronger national government tended
to favor Congress, while states’ rights adherents preferred state legislatures. In the end, there was a compromise establishing an independent group chosen by the states with the power to choose the president.
But delegates also had an anti-majoritarian concern in mind. At a time when many people were not well-educated, they wanted a body of wise men (women lacked the franchise) who would deliberate over leading contenders and choose the best man for the presidency. They explicitly rejected a popular vote for president because they did not trust voters to make a wise choice.
In most elections, the Electoral College has operated smoothly. State voters have cast their ballots and the presidential candidate with the most votes in a particular state has received all the Electoral College votes of that state, except for Maine and Nebraska which allocate votes at the congressional district level within their states.
But there have been several contested elections. The 1800 election deadlocked because presidential candidate Thomas Jefferson received the same number of Electoral College votes as
his vice presidential candidate Aaron Burr. At that time, the ballot did not distinguish between Electoral College votes for president and vice president. On the 36th ballot, the House chose Jefferson as the new president. Congress later amended the Constitution to prevent that ballot confusion from happening again.
You will find this to be an interesting account.
There have been a few elections where the popular vote and the electoral vote differed. In recent years, there were two. Al Gore beat George W. Bush by half a million votes while losing the election. Hillary Clinton won nearly three million votes more than Trump, who won the electoral college.
What kind of democracy elects the loser of the popular vote as its leader?
The Electoral College should have been dumped ages ago, enough already. But the GOP and the knuckle headed libertarians will fight this issue to the death. Libertarians hate democracy and say that the US is not a democracy and thank God for that (Steve King, for example). A republic is a representative democracy, so we are a blending of both democracy and republic. One citizen and one vote, what’s the problem with that? We don’t need this bogus intermediary called the Electoral College. Who votes the EC members into their positions? Will the EC be abolished any time soon? Not likely.
Instead, state legislation, The National Popular Vote bill is 73% of the way to guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country, by changing state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), without changing anything in the Constitution, using the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes.
It requires enacting states with 270 electoral votes to award their electoral votes to the winner of the most national popular votes.
Get a clue, Repugnicans. You must tamper with election eligibility and cling to the anachronism of the Electoral College because younger voters hate you and hate your whole crew. Keep it up, and soon you will be the ugly, orange Before Picture.
Based on state-by-state approval ratings, things look pretty dismal for IQ45 in the Electoral College as well in 2020: https://www.newsweek.com/electoral-college-votes-approval-rating-1467956
A quick and easy way to deal with this: We need more states to vote to divvy up their Electoral College votes in accordance with the popular vote in the state. But yes, the whole ugly, anti-democratic anachronism needs to go in the dust bin.
Except those red states that benefit from it will never do so. And as for the poll predictions; the answer to that is only if Democrats fight with bats and fists instead of pillows. The idea that they can run on issues that they can not accomplish because of the Senate an institution that was not directly elected till the 20th century. . An institution like the electoral college that gives unfair advantage to small mostly Republican States, is absurd. They have to run against not just Trump but the entire party.
In the last election Andrew Sullivan called Sanders a demagogue. I have hardly ever agreed with anything to come out of Sullivan’s mouth. On that I agreed and if he was a demagogue then he is my demagogue.
When Obama came in ( and although I didn’t like him I miss him) Moscow Mitch vowed to make him a one term President. Vowing to block everything, keeping the stimulus too low and with a tax cut. Blocking infrastructure spending and trying to gut social programs.
Contrast that to Trump who has increased the Federal deficit by 40% in a supposed boom . He did not do that without Democratic votes in the Senate. That is fighting with pillows. Deficit spending is a stimulus and when democrats are in power it Republicans never fail to prevent it.
The National Popular Vote bill was approved in 2016 by a unanimous bipartisan House committee vote in both Georgia (16 electoral votes) and Missouri (10).
Since 2006, the bill has passed 40 state legislative chambers in 24 rural, small, medium, large, Democratic, Republican and purple states with 271 electoral votes, including one house in Arizona (11), Arkansas (6), Maine (4), Michigan (16), Minnesota (10), North Carolina (15), and Oklahoma (7), and both houses in Nevada (6).
The bill has been enacted by 16 small, medium, and large jurisdictions with 196 electoral votes – 73% of the way to guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate with the most national popular votes.
Not related to this topic but like many of you, I was pleased with Warrens education plan, especially her pledge against high-stakes testing. However, after speaking to some experienced teachers including some in the policy area, it appears her plans are not what they seem.
Warren said : ““As president, I’ll push to prohibit the use of standardized testing as a primary or significant factor in closing a school, firing a teacher, or making any other high-stakes decisions.”
A NYT article confirmed the suspicions held by many and that Warren
” when pressed on the issue, the Warren campaign responded in a way that suggests her plan would do almost nothing to alter the use of standardized testing in K-12 schools.The key words here are “significant factor” and “other high-stakes decisions.”
A few clever posters on this blog mentioned that they were concerned with Warrens choice of words. Any thoughts on this Dianne. Apologies for going off topic.
My thoughts: Kevin Carey was education policy director for the Center for American Progress, the think tank that vigorously supported all Obama policies, including Race to the Top, VAM, high-stakes testing, and charter schools. CAP does not want either Sanders or Warren as the Dem candidate. Would you prefer a candidate who came out against high-stakes testing or one who continues to support it?
The issue of high stakes testing cannot be addressed with a simple answer because tests required by ESSA are still in place and each state has an accountability scheme with statewide tests of one kind or another. Also, the federal structure in support of testing is increasingly tied to international tests, ranking schemes, and standardized vocabularies for delivery of tests by computer.
No president can easily undo all of the architecture of federal and state testing and all of the standards-writing beyond the Common Core. The best we might hope for are incentives for states to return testing to teachers, schools and districts.
At the national level, NAEP tests and secondary analyses of these might be continued but in more subjects, including, for example civics, bilingual fluency, geography and so on.
Kay says:
“after speaking to some experienced teachers including some in the policy area, it appears her plans are not what they seem…”
Please name these “experienced teachers in the policy area” that told you that Elizabeth Warren is not what she seems.
You use a lot of right wing character attacks and your innuendo is a repeat of the kinds of things right wing trolls post:
“the suspicions held by many…” The only people who are “suspicious” are right wing charter supporters.
In fact, you seem to put all your faith in an op ed written by a pro-charter pro-privatization anti-public school propagandist.
Bernie Sanders isn’t saying that Warren’s plans “are not what they seem”. Neither is anyone who believes in public education.
And yet you seem to have spoken to so many people who believe this and the only link you give is a privatizer.
Please note that in the Democratic debates, Sanders and Warren have not attacked one another. They are on the same side of issues and they know it.
Now that Warren has released a clear, thoughtful and strong education plan, I feel good about her candidacy.
The most clear evidence that people who are pretending to be Bernie supporters are really right wing trolls is that whenever their dishonest attacks are challenged with “Bernie is saying the opposite”, they simply disappear.
They aren’t interested in facts. Their goal is to pretend to be a progressive who is just offering “progressive” criticism that proves no Democrat should be trusted. If Bernie wins the nomination they will be here attacking him the same way.
They will be here under another name posting about how corrupt Bernie and AOC are and how they shouldn’t be trusted and they will insist that voting for Tulsi Gabbard and making sure Bernie is defeated is the only way to help make this country more progressive. Because Tulsi is the “true” leader of the progressive movement.
After 2000, you’d think the Democrats would have gotten their act in gear trying to overturn the Electoral College then, but yet there was no action on that front until it became an issue in 2016. Even still, it took until April of this year for a Constitutional Amendment to be introduced and I’ve heard virtually no follow up since then. If Democrats really think the Electoral College was the main reason (well, of course, other than Russia) that Hillary lost, you’d think they’d be focused on almost nothing else.
Gosh, it’s almost like they want an excuse to lose so they don’t have to look at the flaws of the candidates they try to force on us….
dienne77
So Hillary did not get 3 million more votes. Is that fake news.
As for Hillary’s loss I am no fan; but emails cost Hillary the election. Four years of Emails in the news cycle. Emails that no one read, neither the Trumpanzees nor most Americans have a clue that the server emails had nothing to do with the DNC nor the Podesta emails. By the time Comey was forced into an October surprise, I suspect by Giuliani, the Russian emails had been in the news all summer and fall. So yes the Russian email hacks cost the election. Before the Comey memo to the House, Hillary was 10% ahead in all polls after within the margin of error.
Now if you think the American Public has the slightest clue about Neo Liberalism you would be delusional. The Obama to Trump voter is a myth. The disgruntled white working class voter is a myth. I have far more contact with them than you and when confronted with the long term harm Trump is doing to Unions ,to Union construction the most right leaning workers. The go to answer is; there are more important things than my job. Like what? I say, they answer ” American values”. And those “values voters ” were motivated to vote.
Their values are certainly not the ones written by Emma Lazarus.
If Marxian determinism was responsible for the election, it was in minority voters staying home. In Detroit, in Flint, in Philadelphia, in Milwaukee there was up to 7% lower turn out in 2016. Partly because Obama was not on the ticket and partly because they saw little improvement.
Now resume your fantasy.
Joel,
Thank you.
One thing that also depresses me is that the very people who claimed they were trashing HRC and encouraging people not to vote for her because they wanted a more progressive future insisted that the Supreme Court didn’t matter and they were wrong and because they were wrong we will have a right wing anti-Democratic Supreme Court for decades.
It will be hard to enact any progressive agenda if the Supreme Court approves gerrymandering and suppressing votes. I don’t understand the view that empowering a far right wing neo fascist government is the way to a progressive future. But I’m sure there were people in Nazi Germany insisting the same thing.
The National Popular Vote bill was introduced in 2006.
It was approved in 2016 by a unanimous bipartisan House committee vote in both Georgia (16 electoral votes) and Missouri (10).
Since 2006, the bill has passed 40 state legislative chambers in 24 rural, small, medium, large, Democratic, Republican and purple states with 271 electoral votes, including one house in Arizona (11), Arkansas (6), Maine (4), Michigan (16), Minnesota (10), North Carolina (15), and Oklahoma (7), and both houses in Nevada (6).
The bill has been enacted by 16 small, medium, and large jurisdictions with 196 electoral votes – 73% of the way to guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate with the most national popular votes.
Only We the People should elect our President
On Sun, Oct 27, 2019 at 9:02 AM Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> dianeravitch posted: ” Darrell M. West of the Brookings Institution > explains the history of the electoral college and why this antique process > for choosing the president should be abolished. He begins: The framers of > the Constitution set up the Electoral Colleg” >
Even though I teach government all day long, this article was a great refresher and offered some new information, too. (Yet another bookmark for this blog.)
The discussion of “faithless electors” is always interesting. It made me think about…in another sense, don’t we have a “faithless president” right now -as in a president who lacks faith in our U.S. Constitution and some of the other, basic institutions that make up our Republic? What to do about him?? Well, time will tell.
You can blame the Republican Party for choosing Trump and keeping the Electoral College. But that’s only part of how they’ve seemingly weaponized our elections in new and very potent ways. What I find to be particularly disturbing is the G.O.P.’s ceaseless efforts to disenfranchise voters. The Electoral College is a relic that is embedded in our society. Yeah, it stinks. But schemes to hinder or just plain prevent our fellow citizens from casting their ballots are truly disgusting.
I’ve never read a reliable report that supports Trump and his ilk’s wild and crazy claims about voter fraud -their faked up excuse for trying to hamstring voting.
I work in a rural school district where conservative voters far outnumber liberals. During the course of my career I’ve personally registered hundreds of eligible students along with a fair number of adults, too. So, my own vote has probably been offset many, many times over, every election. Well, so be it. Good! Registering voters might be one of the most important things I’ve ever done in a classroom -other than trying foremost to be kind, respectful and understanding to each and every student I have the honor of getting to know.
I had a good friend of mine back in high school…..his mother was a clerk at the town hall. We grew up in a scenic, New England town with the requisite Congregational Church, its white steeple looming above the Common. My friend’s mother was a tried and true Republican. And, I remember when she retired how she said registering voters was the single most important accomplishment in her long career.
THAT was the type of classy, respectful Republican I remember from years past. Electoral College or not!
What I find to be particularly disturbing is the G.O.P.’s ceaseless efforts to disenfranchise voters. I think that the Florida state legislature should just come clean and pass a resolution naming the disenfranchisement of brown voters the official state pastime.
What is the difference between Donald Trump and the Hindenburg?
Both are flaming Nazi gasbags, full of hot air and shaped like dirigibles. But the former has no guidance system.
Reports on Twitter that Trump was golfing when Special Forces moved in on Baghdadi. CIA didn’t tell him in advance for fear he would tell. As soon as Trump knew about the raid, he calledPutin but not Pelosi or Schiff.
Oh my Lord. OFC.
Considering the history of urban areas dominating rural areas in history other than ours, I must argue that any system that disperses power, especially the power of the majority over the minority, is a good one. Conversely, systems that tyrannize the minority or the majority are a bad idea. Like D77, I expected some revisions after the 2000 election, but with none forthcoming, I am befuddled.
Trump loves the electoral college—and the uneducated.
I remember from a class I took many years ago…democracy is the rule of the majority with the consent of the minority. Of course, there are those two critical components to this issue.
And, as an aside: I woke up this morning thinking about how UNsustainable this all is. And, I don’t just mean sustainable in the sense of preserving the environment. I’m thinking the way things are going in our country…the present course we are taking cannot be maintained.
The health care system in the United States, with its costs that are consistently outpacing inflation, is a good example. It is not sustainable.
Either enough of our citizens come together and, through our government, make some decisions collectively. Or, will it be the “law of the jungle”, survival of the fittest? Some of the Trump supporters I talk to seem to assume they will come out on top in such a Darwinian struggle. Considering the free market forces already weighted against them, that seems like a false and tragic delusion for many of them…
And, pubic schools…anyone who reads this blog knows the challenges being encountered there…
To be fair, democracy seems to be having some big problems around the world right now. It’s not just the U.S. Why? Maybe the rapid advancement of technology/globalizaton is one cause?
I am heartened to see the brave protesters in Hong Kong standing up for what’s right.
Well, time to go to school. Have a good day, everyone.
Roy Turrentine
Seriously ” I expected some revisions after the 2000 election, but with none forthcoming, I am befuddled.”
And how was this going to happen. The Senate itself is an undemocratic relic.
So you were going to see Republicans vote to achieve a 2/3 majority for an Amendment to give up power.
Or you expect the small states to yield the unfair advantage they have.
A constitutional convention would be in order; except we would wind up a monarchy.
Thanks for all these comments. When I said I expected some solution to the 2000 election, I was speaking a bit tongue in cheek. While one might expect reasonable men to determine a tiebreaker before a contest, such expectations were out of order by 2000. An increasingly divided electorate, further divided by the appointing of extremely conservative judges and refusal to compromise with opponents that characterized the Bush administration.
John, your comments about sustainability parallel my own thought on that subject for the last three or four years. I think sustainable policy is the biggest challenge to modern governments. The attrition rate of teachers suggests the unsustainable (not to mention basically stupid) aspect of the reformer ideology. Ballooning premiums in the health insurance business suggest the unsustainable nature of the present health care system, as you wisely point out.
And the retreat of democracy is the most troubling trend since Mussolini and Franco.
Thanks for the comments
Voters in the biggest cities in the US have been almost exactly balanced out by rural areas in terms of population and partisan composition.
16% of the U.S. population lives outside the nation’s Metropolitan Statistical Areas. Rural America has voted 60% Republican. None of the 10 most rural states matter now.
16% of the U.S. population lives in the top 100 cities. They voted 63% Democratic in 2004.
The population of the top 50 cities (going as far down as Arlington, TX) is only 15% of the population of the United States.
The rest of the U.S., in suburbs, divide almost exactly equally between Republicans and Democrats.
The National Popular Vote bill is 73% of the way to guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country, by changing state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), without changing anything in the Constitution, using the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes.
It requires enacting states with 270 electoral votes to award their electoral votes to the winner of the most national popular votes.
All voters would be valued equally in presidential elections, no matter where they live.
“They explicitly rejected a popular vote for president because they did not trust voters to make a wise choice.” — Indeed, because people are dumb. George Carlin was 100% on the money. He also prophetically warned to not hope for better schools, and said about existing school system that it upbrings obedient workers, “people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation.”
Now, the Electoral College would not prevent a candidate winning in states with 270 electoral votes from being elected President of the United States
Now 48 states have winner-take-all state laws for awarding electoral votes to the statewide winner.
2 award one electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district, and two electoral votes statewide.
Neither method is mentioned in the U.S. Constitution.
The electors have been and will be dedicated party activist supporters of the winning party’s candidate who meet briefly in mid-December to cast their totally predictable rubberstamped votes in accordance with their pre-announced pledges.
The current system does not provide some kind of check on the “mobs.”
The National Popular Vote bill is 73% of the way to guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country, by changing state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), without changing anything in the Constitution, using the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes.
It requires enacting states with 270 electoral votes to award their electoral votes to the winner of the most national popular votes.
All voters would be valued equally in presidential elections, no matter where they live.
The electoral college benefits those who want to keep the two-party system. https://www2.law.temple.edu/lppp/electoral-college-two-party-system/
I assume my nephew should cross that off his list of a colleges to apply to.
Doesn’t sound very good.
Having done a good number of college tours the past year with my daughter, and filling out the FAFSA form, and actually driving another human being I love so dearly to sit through the torture session known as the SAT, blah, blah, blah, etc..etc… etc… I really appreciate this comment. Yeah…..thanks.
My comment when Iposted this at Oped: https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Darrell-M-West-Explains-t-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Democracy_Donald-Trump-Versus-The-Constitution_Electoral-College_PLAY-TAPS-FOR-THE-CONSTITUTION-AND-BILL-OF-RIGHTS-191028-210.html#startcomments
1776 was more than 3 hundred years ago, and that was before this TRANSFORMATIONAL ERA. Everything changes when something transforms society… i.e. humankind settling down and raising crops and animals (instead of hunting and gathering) gave us cities and nations. But at the time, the unintended consequences were all in the future! And now, in this transformational era comes the anarchy of cyberspace, where images and memes sell disinformation to a stressed, fearful and ignorant citizenry. https://www.opednews.com/articles/The-ignorance-about-univer-by-Michael-Payne-Congress_Funding_Healthcare-Reform_Insurance-191025-432.html
Information technology also changed everything… families, religious values, neighborhood, communities, and in the absence of the beneficial values that informed the framers and our society until image technology, and TV came along. http://scott.london/reviews/mander.html
Here is a ‘must see’ Jerry Mander video, made about television’s impact in 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3NBEurnIqY
I read his book on this subject, Four Arguments for the Elimination Of Television” in the eighties. This is the subject that I studied and which I write about for decades!
Who could have imagined in 1776 that ‘tweets’ could fire top government employees, and would be used by a USA president (as all evidence demonstrtes BTW ) to signal to a dictator inTurkey, that we were removing our troops and FYI bypassing the entire government (and military generals) with real information and knowledge of what plans were actually in place, and what stratagies were crucial… ya know — the facts!
So back to the electoral process which gave us Bush instead of Gore, and Trump instead of Clinton, and could give us Trump for 4 more years!
No matter how you feel about what Clinton might have done as President – the people elected her by 3 million more than voted for him! But now, instead we have in front of us a president who believes HE IS PERMITTED TO DO whatever he wants.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/09/17/trump-says-constitution-lets-him-do-whatever-i-want-president-constitution-day-students-learn-otherwise/?wpisrc=nl_answer&wpmm=1 He consults no one , and cares not a whit how it effects anyone. He just did that in Syria… endangering our soldiers, betraying our allies in front of the world, and interfering with final assaults on ISIS!
Moreover, to state that there is poor management at the top of our most important government offices, from the EPA to the state and justice department is to mistake the obvious… our government has been gutted. I have all the evidence in my files; this is no opinion!
This winner of the ELECTORAL COLLEGE, who wants a second term has proven that he is ignorant of history, and of how a real government works, and he has also shown himself, over and over, to be an impulsive child showing all the earmarks of a narcissistic personality disorder ( according to genuine experts examining 3 years of his behavior) — someone who works only for himself and is a legend in this own mind — so that if he thinks it (in that “genius’ mind of his) he does it!
Maybe, the mob could thrive with a Don at the head, but for us — we the people — the bottom line is that this man has demolished a complicated government — one that was not perfect— but filled with educated, experienced career people whose job it was to advise the President! Wise men were revered in ancient cultures… for a reason!!! No society or nation thrives when decisions are based on lies and misinformation.
Yeah, we need a GREAT leader to be president, but at least someone who can read, and knows history, and how to evaluate facts, and above all who LISTENS and THINKS ABOUT FACTS before telling the world to ‘watch out!
No, “We won’t Get Over it: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/20/opinion/trump-impeachment-united-states.html We dare not fail this test of our constitutional government because millions of our people starving, and millions are homeless. If the Electoral College gives us 4 more years of this man who admires ‘strongmen’ and expects -“ya know -“quid pro quo there will be no return to the rule of law.
“for us — we the people — the bottom line is that this man has demolished a complicated government” — many people think that the only job of a citizen in a democratic country is to cast their vote. Well, there are other ways of expressing discontent, starting from peaceful rallies. As long as people will be wining and waiting for four years to prop up another khalif little will change.
Now we need to urge state legislators, in states with the 74 more electoral votes needed, to enact the National Popular Vote bill.
There have been hundreds of unsuccessful proposed amendments to modify or abolish the Electoral College – more than any other subject of Constitutional reform.
To abolish the Electoral College would need a constitutional amendment, and could be stopped by states with as little as 3% of the U.S. population.
Instead, state legislation, The National Popular Vote bill is 73% of the way to guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country, by changing state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), without changing anything in the Constitution, using the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes.
It requires enacting states with 270 electoral votes to award their electoral votes to the winner of the most national popular votes.
All voters would be valued equally in presidential elections, no matter where they live.