Why We Need the Electoral College

How the Founders' Plan Saves Our Country from Mob Rule

Tara Ross

• Publisher: Regnery Gateway
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781621577072
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Campaigns & Elections
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Is the Electoral College anti-democratic?Some would say yes. After all, the presidential candidate with the most popular votes has nevertheless lost the election at least three times, including 2016.To some Americans, that's a scandal. They believe the Electoral College is an intolerable flaw in the Constitution, a relic of a bygone era that ought to have been purged long ago.But that would be a terrible mistake, warns Tara Ross in this vigorous defense of "the indispensable Electoral College." Far from an obstacle to enlightened democracy, the Electoral College is one of the guardrails ensuring the stability of the American Republic.In this lively and instructive primer, Tara Ross explains:

• Why the Founders established the Electoral College—and why they thought it vital to the Constitution
• Why the Electoral College was meant to be more important than the popular vote
• How the Electoral College prevents political crises after tight elections
• Why the Electoral College doesn't favor one party over the other
• Why the states are the driving force behind presidential elections and how efforts to centralize the process have led to divisiveness and discontent
• Why the Electoral College is inappropriately labeled a "relic of slavery"

Every four years, the controversy is renewed: Should we keep the Electoral College? Tara Ross shows you why the answer should be a resounding Yes!

PART ONE

THE FOUNDERS’ INVENTION

CHAPTER ONE

A REPUBLIC, IF YOU CAN KEEP IT

As Benjamin Franklin left the Constitutional Convention, he was spotted by a Philadelphia matron. She was curious. What had the delegates been doing behind closed doors all this time? “Doctor,” she called out to Franklin, “what have we got, a Republic or a Monarchy?”¹ For the first time all summer, Franklin was free to answer the question. His response was simple: “A Republic, if you can keep it.”²

Unfortunately, the statement is often misquoted. Too many Americans have been told that Franklin responded: “A democracy, if you can keep it.”³ The mistake reflects Americans’ declining understanding of their own heritage.

The Founders would not have made such a mistake so easily. They were well aware of the important differences between a republic and a democracy, and they knew better than to create a simple democracy.⁴ The Founders wanted to be self-governing, of course. They had just fought a revolution in part because they had no representation in Parliament. They weren’t likely to abandon the principle of self-governance so soon. But their desire to be self-governing was tempered by their study of history: They knew that pure democracies have a tendency to implode. The Founders would surely be surprised to find that modern Americans hold simple democracy in such esteem. The Founders’ goal had been to create something different—and better. They knew they needed something unique if the citizens of a diverse nation, composed of both large and small states, were to live together peacefully.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION

The Constitutional Convention of 1787 got off to a slow start.⁵ Delegates were supposed to meet in Philadelphia on May 14, but travel was tough in those days. Most delegates couldn’t make it on time, and only a handful were present on that Monday morning. Indeed, a quorum wasn’t achieved for almost two weeks. Finally, on May 25, those who were present decided to proceed, even though some states still had no representatives in attendance.⁶

The delegates had been given the task of revising the Articles of Confederation, the governing charter of the United States since 1781. The Confederation Congress hoped to restrict the Convention to “the sole and express purpose of revising the articles of Confederation,” but many states had given their delegates much broader authority,⁷ and it’s likely that at least a few delegates went into the Convention believing that a mere revision of the Articles would not be enough. Certainly delegates such as James Madison and Alexander Hamilton felt that a stronger national government was needed to handle interstate commerce and foreign relations, among other matters.

Only twenty-nine delegates were present when the Convention finally got under way, but fifty-five would eventually attend at least some portion of the Convention. Nineteen delegates never made an appearance, and Rhode Island refused to send any delegates at all. The delegates’ average age never exceeded forty-three. Benjamin Franklin was the oldest at eighty-one, while Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey was the youngest at twenty-six.

Despite their youth, the delegates were unusually accomplished. Most had served in Congress or the colonial or state legislatures. They were well versed in the works of such philosophers as John Locke and Baron de Montesquieu. They were students of history, and they could speak knowledgably about the successes and failures of other political systems. Many were lawyers. Notably, their deliberations were relatively free of the partisanship that plagues modern American politics. Remember that political parties hadn’t been created yet. Instead, the delegates’ strongest allegiances were to their home states. Perhaps most importantly, though, the delegates were realistic about human nature. They knew that people are fallible and that power corrupts.

Thomas Jefferson, then serving as an emissary in Paris and not himself a delegate, was certainly impressed when he read the names of the delegates. “It is really an assembly of demi-gods,” he wrote to his friend John Adams.⁸ Indeed, the Convention of 1787 was a historically singular assembly. Nothing of its kind had ever occurred before—and nothing of its kind seems likely to occur again.

George Washington was the Convention’s president, but he contributed little to the discussions. He considered it inappropriate for the presiding officer to express himself on pending matters.⁹ Moreover, the former general was already being called the “Father of the Country,”¹⁰ and he may have worried that his celebrity would give his opinions too much weight. Whatever his motivations may have been, Washington never rose to speak until the last day of the Convention. He voted with the Virginians, however, and he was known to favor a stronger national government.

The delegates worked through the sweltering summer with the windows and blinds in Philadelphia’s State Hall closed. They considered it imperative that the discussions be conducted secretly so all delegates would feel free to speak their minds. Throughout the debates, the thirty-six-year-old James Madison took comprehensive notes. He said later that his labor in that hot room throughout the summer nearly killed him. “I was not absent a single day, nor more than a casual fraction of an hour in any day, so that I could not have lost a single speech, unless a very short one,” he later confirmed.¹¹ Others took notes too, but Madison’s notes remain the best source on the debates in the Constitutional Convention.

Of all the issues that shaped the summer’s deliberations, none was more important than the ever-present tension between the large and the small states.¹² Friction among the states was perhaps unavoidable. Each had operated with nearly sovereign independence for decades, first as a colony, then as a state under the Articles of Confederation. It would be no easy matter to convince the states, especially the smaller ones, to sacrifice their much-valued sovereignty to a new union of states.

The delegates would spend months in a deep, intellectual discussion and debate. Absolutely everything was on the table. Should Americans have one or several presidents? Would the nation rely on “one state, one vote” representation or “one person, one vote”? Should Congress propose constitutional amendments or would the states be better stewards of that responsibility? Should states have a veto over congressional legislation? The delegates discussed the successes and failures of ancient Greece and Rome. What lessons could be learned from history? How could a diverse nation composed of both large and small states govern itself, even as it treated minority groups fairly? How could it protect itself against government officials who would abuse their power?

Surely such philosophical discussions are rarely heard in the halls of today’s Congress! This eminently qualified group of men understood how hard it would be to protect freedom in the face of so many challenges. They were determined to make it happen anyway.

THE EVILS OF DEMOCRACY

The authors of the Constitution have been accused of all sorts of dishonorable motives. Conventional wisdom has it that America’s Founders were too “aristocratic.”¹³ They were elitists who “distrusted the people,” so they “placed elaborate barriers between them and the actual power to govern.”¹⁴ When it came to selecting the president, the Founders certainly “did not trust the people with such an important task.”¹⁵

Such statements betray a gross misunderstanding of the motives that drove the delegates at the Constitutional Convention. True, they were skeptical of simple, unfettered democracy. They knew that people are imperfect. Emotions can grip a mob and propel voters into unreasonable action. History shows that minority groups tend to be tyrannized in such situations. But the Founders were, if anything, equal-opportunity skeptics. While they didn’t always trust voters, they didn’t trust another group of people, either: those who are elected to hold office. The Constitution they created is therefore full of checks and balances aimed at everyone—voters and officials alike. The Founders knew that unrestrained power is always dangerous. No person or group is immune from mistakes, selfishness, and greed.

The delegates’ skepticism was supported by their deep knowledge of history. They knew how and why other governments had failed. Indeed, about two years before the Constitutional Convention, an interesting exchange occurred between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Jefferson was then in Paris, where he had easy access to a wide variety of books. Did Madison want some? Yes! Madison certainly did. He quickly took Jefferson up on the offer, asking for “treatises on the antient or modern foederal republics, on the law of Nations, and the history natural and political of the New World; to which I will add such of the Greek and Roman authors where they can be got very cheap, as are worth having and are not on the common list of School classics.”¹⁶

Madison studied these works, developing strong ideas of what would and would not work in a constitutional government. When the Convention opened, many of his ideas formed the basis for the delegates’ discussions.¹⁷ His study had convinced him that Americans would need something better than a simple democracy. Unfettered majorities such as those found in pure democracies tend toward tyranny. In a pure democracy, Madison later explained,

[a] common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert results from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.¹⁸

Others agreed with him, and the rhetoric became quite strong during the Constitutional Convention. Early in the debates, Elbridge Gerry, a delegate from Massachusetts, forcefully asserted that “[t]he evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy.”¹⁹ Edmund Randolph of Virginia concurred that “the general object was to provide a cure for the evils under which the [United States] laboured; that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.”²⁰ Later in the Convention, Randolph reaffirmed his words, noting that the “democratic licentiousness of the State Legislatures proved the necessity of a firm Senate. . . . to controul the democratic branch of the [National] Legislature.”²¹

Other delegates also sought controls on the impulsiveness and emotion that they believed would sometimes characterize public opinion. As Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania remarked, “Every man of observation had seen in the democratic branches of the State Legislatures, precipitation—in Congress changeableness, in every department excesses [against] personal liberty private property & personal safety.”²²

The arguments against pure democracy continued after the Constitutional Convention had concluded. Madison spoke to Jefferson of the danger that could arise when the government becomes “the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents.”²³ Alexander Hamilton continued these arguments against democracies in a speech before the New York ratifying convention on June 21, 1788:

It has been observed, by an honorable gentleman, that a pure democracy, if it were practicable, would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position in politics is more false than this. The ancient democracies, in which the people themselves deliberated, never possessed one feature of good government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure, deformity.²⁴

Others in the founding generation concurred. John Adams, who signed the Declaration of Independence and later became president, declared, “[D]emocracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”²⁵ Another signatory to the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Rush, warned, “A simple democracy . . . is one of the greatest of evils.”²⁶ A third signer, John Witherspoon, agreed: “Pure democracy cannot subsist long, nor be carried far into the department of state—it is very subject to caprice and the madness of popular rage.”²⁷ And Fisher Ames cautioned the delegates to the Massachusetts convention that ratified the Constitution, “A democracy is a volcano...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part One: The Founders’ Invention
• Part Two: Presidents Who Lost the Popular Vote
• Part Three: Who’s in Charge Here?
• Conclusion
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C
• Appendix D
• Appendix E
• Notes
• Index