Direct Election of President Considered by Founding Fathers

What Would The Founders Think? ^ | 1/26/11 | Michael Newton

[MichaelNewton]

Many today want to get rid of the electoral college method of choosing our president. For example, there is a book called Why the Electoral College Is Bad for America. It has quite a lot of good information in it, though the author draws the wrong conclusion. Or search Google for “electoral college failure” and browse through some of the 333,000 results. Attacks on the electoral college system accelerated after the 2000 election in which Al Gore won more popular votes but George Bush won the electoral college. The Founding Fathers considered, debated, and voted on different methods of choosing a president during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 before choosing the one they thought best.

Deciding how to select or elect the president was one of the most difficult decisions the Founding Fathers had to make during the Convention. They held at least sixteen votes on this one issue...

[La Lydia]

Getting rid of the Electoral College is a pet project of George Soros.

[Ev Reeman]

The electoral college is constitutional and as such should be kept and in tact.

[Huck]

The electoral college was phony Federalism from the start. I've never read a single article that makes a case for how the end result differs from direct election.

Isn't the vote for president in each state democratic? And isn't each states electoral power relative to its numbers? Then what's the difference?

We may get the occasional popular/electoral schism, but basically it's the same thing. Defenders base their arguments on tradition and appeal to authority--the founders wanted it, so it must be good.

I don't think it makes a difference either way. The electoral system merely puts federalist lipstick on a nationalist pig.

[cripplecreek]

Its probably the only thing that has prevented a second civil war so far. Presidents would be elected by a handfull of far left cities and flyover country would be boiling.

[shibumi]

The subject of the Electoral College and it’s role in preserving the framework of the Republic is a good and suitable subject for discussion, particularly on this forum.

Why then, do you deny us the chance to read your thoughts in their entirety? Would it not be fitting to post your entire essay here?

[Le Chien Rouge]

So many people are clueless about our system of government.

The USA is a democratically elected Constitutional Republic.

Did anyone take civics in high school???

[Wolfstar]

Anyone who wants to completely kill whatever sovereignty and power the states have over the feds will be on board to eliminate the electoral college. Count me out.

[Dusty Road]

One state one vote, if they win the election in that state then they recieve it’s one and only vote.

[Liz]

Electoral College 2012

WIKI The constitutional theory behind the indirect election of both the President and Vice President of the United States is that while the Congress is popularly elected by the people, the President and Vice President are elected to be executives of a federation of independent states.

In the Federalist No. 39, James Madison argued that the Constitution was designed to be a mixture of state-based and population-based government. The Congress would have two houses: the state-based Senate and the population-based House of Representatives. Meanwhile, the President would be elected by a mixture of the two modes.

Additionally, in the Federalist No. 10, James Madison argued against "an interested and overbearing majority" and the "mischiefs of faction" in an electoral system. He defined a faction as "a number of citizens whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."

Republican government (i.e., federalism, as opposed to direct democracy), with its varied distribution of voter rights and powers, would countervail against factions.

Madison further postulated in the Federalist No. 10 that the greater the population and expanse of the Republic, the more difficulty factions would face in organizing due to such issues as sectionalism.

[Ev Reeman]

Exactly.

[paulycy]

Your lack of understanding of the function of the Electoral College is profound.

Using just a raw, direct election means that the biggest population centers get to dictate who the POTUS is. In modern America, that means that the coastal, liberal, urban voters would get their marxist choice every time and the other 47 or so states would mean nothing.

Without going into specific detail, the Electoral College makes it possible for the minority populations of the “flyover” states to have at least a shot at having a say in the outcome, meaning that the POTUS is chosen by a consensus of as many states as possible and not just the most heavily populated urban areas.

This brilliant concept is EXTREMELY important to the health of the Republic and is why George Soros and all other marxists want the Electoral College to disappear so that the marxist urban centers can always choose the POTUS based simply on raw population size and desire to redistribute wealth to those population centers.

[Will88]

Deciding how to select or elect the president was one of the most difficult decisions the Founding Fathers had to make during the Convention.

That sentence implies that the founders had the power to simply decide how to pick the president. They didn't, since the states formed the union and not the other way around.

The founders had to find a method that was acceptable to the original states (or colonies), or the founding would not have taken place.

[Pearls Before Swine]

Although the author didn’t say it specifically, I think one of the benefits of the electoral college is that it gives smaller states a well-defined role and vote. It has often been observed that if the President were popularly elected, candidates would pay the most attention to the largest centers of population in their campaigning. Worse, the effect of concentrated vote fraud in a couple of areas... say, Chicago and Philadelphia, would have a national effect, rather than “just” a statewide effect. (I’m well aware that Florida and Chicago voting irregularities affected Bush-Gore and Nixon-Kennedy, but they did so in their respective states.)

[humblegunner]

(Excerpt) Read more at whatwouldthefoundersthink.com ...

Why not just post it here?

[paulycy]

The founders had to find a method that was acceptable to the original states (or colonies), or the founding would not have taken place.

That's a very good and important point. The individual states were there to make sure their own interests were represented in the way the choice would be made.

Any changes to the system should be made in the same way, with the small states having input so that their interests are protected and not bullied out of the way by the big, marxist urban centers.

[cripplecreek]

We would be a full on marxist nation by now.

Gotta figure, even Obama isn’t far enough left for New York, San fransico, L.A., and Boston.

[Puppage]

The electoral college is constitutional and as such should be kept and in tact.

Agreed. For the simple question of "why should the vote of the island of Manhattan cancel the vote of the entire state of Wyoming?"

The Founding Fathers were nothing short of brilliant.

[Huck]

Using just a raw, direct election means that the biggest population centers get to dictate who the POTUS is.

That's how it works anyway. Haven't you seen the county by county maps? In each state, the majority of the votes of that state come from the heavily populated urban centers. Hence, the electoral votes of each state are weighted in favor of the urban centers.

the Electoral College makes it possible for the minority populations of the “flyover” states to have at least a shot at having a say in the outcome, meaning that the POTUS is chosen by a consensus of as many states as possible and not just the most heavily populated urban areas.

Rubbish. How are electoral votes determined? By population. Hence California has 55 electoral votes, and Montana has 3. How is that any extra advantage to Montana? It isn't. It's six in one, half-dozen the other.

This brilliant concept is EXTREMELY important to the health of the Republic

No, it's actually pretty meaningless.

[Sherman Logan]

Under the Electoral College system it is theoretically possible for a president to be elected by somewhere around 25% of the vote, with about 75% of the vote going to his losing opponent.

All you need is 51% in each of the states that make up a bare majority in the EC, and near 100% in each of the remainder for the opponent.

Won’t ever happen, of course. However, since most Americans believe the president’s legitimate authority derives from popular approval, not obscure 18th century political compromises, it seems reasonable to me that considering an amendment to modify the selection proces is not unreasonable.

That also won’t happen, of course, as it requires the states and interests that get disproportionate influence from the EC to acquiesce in their own disempowerment.

Personally, the amendment I am most in favor of would make amending the Constitution easier to accomplish. Then perhaps we could get back to running our government on a truly constitutional basis rather than the present euphemisms and pretenses.