Posted on 04/08/2019 3:09:25 PM PDT by EdnaMode
As the presidential campaign heats up, so too has the movement to abolish or otherwise neutralize the electoral college.
Some advocates argue that the electoral college was originally established to help less-populated states retain power, or to have every part of the country heard from in electing a chief executive. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) claims the system was designed to help the slave states.
But these are modern interpretations of what really happened at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The electoral college was designed with two purposes: to separate the branches of government in an attempt to avoid cabals and to prevent foreign corruption. Some of the Founding Fathers assumed it would almost never actually elect a president. In other words, we could say the electoral college failed to achieve most of what the founders designed it to do.
The electoral college was not a replacement for direct election because that possibility never received serious consideration at the convention. (Only two of 11 states voted for a popular election of the president.) As James Madisons notes make clear, there was very little support for a popular election of the president. The original idea in his influential Virginia Plan was that the new bicameral legislature Congress would itself gather to elect the executive, and the convention repeatedly returned to that idea.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The only “failure”, if you will, is that the Framers intended the electors to choose the president, which is partially undermined by pledged electors.
Technically, nobody here voted for Trump. The vote was for electors who pledged to go to the state capital and vote for Trump. (All but two of the 306 he won did so. Five of Hillary’s 232 electors voted for someone else.)
The Framers did not anticipate that. They anticipated that citizens would pick fellow citizens they trusted, who would then choose the president.
Of course, that went away pretty much after Washington left office.
The author says the founders did not want either a direct election, or Congress to choose the president. Then he claims they thought Congress would end up choosing most of the time anyway. Since it didn’t end up with Congress deciding they would be disappointed. It’s a failure because it works, therefore it should be abolished in favor of direct election which was never seriously considered and which the college was designed to prevent. That’s some tortured logic there.
You want slavery?
The founding fathers would be disguested with someone like Joshua Spivak AND the company he works for - according toi an ‘un-named source’.
MLK and George Washington and Mahatma Gandhi wouldn’t like them either. Even Albert Einstein would want Spivak OUT of OUR country ... along with everyone else at the Washington Post...
In a pure democracy, it is indeed possible for 51% to take away the rights of the 49%.
In the United States, we do not live in a pure democracy. The Founding Fathers brilliantly created a democratic republic. The Electoral College is the cornerstone. It cannot be taken away without an Amendment to the Constitution which is not too easy a task.
Who did it fail?
The Russians agree.
Exactly! I don't think even Obama won a majority of counties. But it *sounds* fair, doesn't it?
The only flaw in the EC is that California and New York get too many electoral votes.
Considering how their numbers are propped up by millions of foreigners, you are 100% correct.
It's not enough to declare displeasure with the Electoral College; by adding the bit about the Founding Fathers agreeing, the author is playing a little psyops with the reader.
Most people who know history know that the states would never have ratified the Constitution if there weren't protections for the smaller states' ability to choose the president.
There is no way that the Founding Fathers would declare the Electoral College to be a failure.
-PJ
Democrats don’t play by the rules.
You are wrong
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Stay tuned!
and they are called the several states in law
CITE- 19 USC Sec. 2601 -EXPCITE- TITLE 19 CHAPTER 14 -HEAD- Sec. 2601. Definitions
(10) The term ‘United States’ includes the several States, the District of Columbia, and any
territory or area the foreign relations for which the United States is responsible.
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