| Shadow1980 said: The Electoral College wasn't "intended" to stand by any statewide popular vote. Quite the opposite. The Constitution as originally written allowed states to set whatever rules they want for selection of electors. For our first four elections, a majority of states had their legislature choose their electors, with zero input from the citizens. That method remained commonplace until the 1820s when it rapidly fell out of favor; by 1832 only South Carolina lacked any sort of popular vote method for elector selection, and it didn't switch to the popular vote until 1868. The states only allow its residents to have a vote as a consideration. They aren't obliged to honor a damn thing. But the EC wasn't intended to be a rubber stamp, regardless of the state's elector selection rules. The electors are not constitutionally mandated to vote a particular way, and faithless electors have been around for 200 years, albeit in very limited numbers. Alexander Hamilton argued again the EC being a rubber stamp in the Federalist Papers No. 68. But by and large the EC has been little more than a rubber stamp its entire existence, and 31 states have laws mandating that its electors act as such. Trump has repeatedly shown that he was exactly the kind of person Hamilton warned about 228 years ago and the EC was arguably designed to stop. Two weeks ago the Electoral College had one last chance to justify its existence, and it failed. The EC is a superfluous entity, an unrepresentative body designed by a group of men because they happened upon it as something that most of them could agree upon. Some thought the president should be selected by a national popular vote, and most originally felt he should be selected by the Congress. We ended up with the EC after much debate and compromise, and we ended up with it at least in part for the same reasons the Three-fifths Compromise existed. It is a relic of a time when the franchise was extended only to white land-owning males, who in most cases could still only vote for House members. It is an institution whose time has long passed, that only continues to exist because of sheer inertia. The trajectory of America has been increasingly democratic. Most electors were chosen by state legislatures, and now they're all chose by statewide popular vote. Senators were originally chose by state legislatures, and because of concerns of rampant corruption as well as legislative deadlock the 17th Amendment was passed, making Senators elected by and directly accountable to the citizens of their state. Originally only white landowning males could vote, but after decades of attempts to bring about universal suffrage now any adult citizen can vote regardless of race or gender. Poll taxes and other attempts at disenfranchising minorities and other citizens are now nominally illegal. Yet the Electoral College remains as an institutional impediment towards "one person, one vote" for all citizens. Nearly all the people who stand by it and think it should remain the system of electing presidents into perpetuity are those who don't think much of representative democracy in the first place, who express apathy if not outright antipathy towards various voting rights amendments and laws (many of them rail against the 17th Amendment and have insinuated dislike of the 24th, and some even go as far as to—perhaps half-jokingly, perhaps entirely serious—advocate for repeal of the 19th), and who think winning elections is a mandate to gerrymander congressional districts and disenfranchise as many people as legally possible to rig the system to favor themselves. And that's all I have to say about that. |
Well if the states would could originally choose how to select their electors then that means they couldn't proudly proclaim themselves to be democratic, now could they ? There must be a reason why all state legislatures came to agree to choose their electors by popular vote instead of having them decide by themselves and some states having laws prohibiting pledged electors for voting other candidates ...
You are correct that states could originally justify any method to select their electors but it matters not when practically ALL STATES unanimously agreed for the electors to represent the states popular vote a long time ago ...
Alexander Hamilton is just one framers of the consitution out of the many who envisioned what the electoral college should be but since the constitution has such a loose interpretation the electoral college will act like a rubber stamp that you so currently loathe ...
It's pretty clear in the consitition that the president should be represented by the states, it says nothing about the national popular vote ...
The electoral college is a part of the great compromise between the popular vote (Virginia plan) and the state (New Jersey plan) representation ...
You should at least try to see the rest of the framer's wisdom behind it instead taking just Alexander Hamilton's warning ...
