The Electoral College
I wrote this paper in Nov 2016 for an English assignment. It was just after the election of Trump and the country was once again crying about EC vs popular vote. The assignment was to choose from a list of topics and write an argumentative paper for or against the topic.
When I wrote this paper I was at the Constitutionalist/Minarchist point in my journey to Ancapistan. While I still believe the Constitution as written was a good founding document, I agree with Spooner “that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.” I hadn’t come to realize that when I wrote this. Enough of that, here is my argument for the Electoral College.
When founding the United States of America the founding fathers established an electoral process for selecting the President. Prior to the establishment of the U.S. government, leaders of free countries were selected in one of two ways: some countries used a true democracy where the person receiving the majority vote won; others let the government representatives elect the leader. The founders of the United States had concerns with both of these options, and created this new process called the Electoral College. The Electoral College is the framework of U.S. government; the United States should keep the Electoral College.
What is the Electoral College? The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration defines the Electoral College as the process of electors being selected by the states, the meeting of the electors to vote for the President, and the counting of the votes by Congress (National Archives, n.d.). The number of electors a state has is equal to the total number of seats the state holds in both Congress and the House of Representatives (currently 538, with 270 votes required to elect the President). With the exception of only Maine and Nebraska, the states give all of their electoral votes to the majority winner of that state.
Why the Electoral College? The founding fathers sought to establish a representative republic rather than a democracy. Their concerns with democracy was that if the majority voice is the only voice that counts then cities with a large population would be the decision makers. They feared that this would lead to a mob-rule type of situation. David Harsanyi wrote, “Diffused democracy weakens the ability of politicians to scaremonger and use emotional appeals to take power. It blunts the vagaries of the electorate” (Harsanyi, 2016). They felt that every individual American should have a voice in the goings on of the Federal Government. Bertel Sparks wrote of the founding fathers in 1969:
Being a highly educated group, their knowledge and understanding of history had taught them that tyrannical power was not confined to any one form of government. It could exist whether its form was that of a monarchy, aristocracy, theocracy, or even a democracy. (Sparks, 1969)
These fears are the reason they established a three tiered government in which the three separate branches balance each other out. The legislative branch would be appointed by the individual states with each state having an equal number of senators and a proportional number of representatives in the House based on each states population. The judicial branch would be composed of judges selected by the President, and lastly, the executive branch (the President and Vice President) would be selected via the Electoral College.
Opponents of the Electoral College claim that it is outdated and unfair. Exactly who decides what is “fair”? As discussed in the previous paragraph, the founding fathers knew what fair was. Fair is allowing each state equal representation in selecting a President. Fair is not allowing the voices of citizens in heavily populated states such as New York to muffle the voices of those in sparsely populated states such as North Dakota. This is exactly the mob-rule that the founders feared. Without the Electoral College, the potato farmer in Idaho loses his voice. The Electoral College forces the President and those wishing to be President to consider all Americans.
Several presidential elections in the past few decades have resulted in a candidate winning the national popular vote but losing in the Electoral College. Every time it has happened it has ignited uproar amongst those who voted for the losing party. But would it really matter? Without the Electoral College, the campaign trail would receive a massive overhaul. Candidates would spend all of their time campaigning in the largely populated cities of New York, California, and Florida—these three states account for twenty-five percent of the U.S. population—ignoring the vast majority of the country, especially rural Americans. Further, Lawrence W. Reed argues that without the Electoral College, Americans would be plagued with recount after recount with no end in sight (Reed, 2001). This would inevitably prolong the term of the sitting President, making the battle for a recount even more enticing when the sitting President happens to belong to the same political party as the losing candidate.
The founding fathers envisioned a country that was established of the people, by the people, and for the people. The Electoral College helps to ensure that the voices of all of the people are heard. The Electoral College was then, and is still to this day, the only way to guarantee against tyrannical rule of the mob. It, along with the rest of the U.S. Constitution, is no more outdated than da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. It is their masterpiece, and has sustained this government for well over two hundred years. It is the foundation that has held this country together with one of the longest running governments of modern times. This is why the United States should not abolish the Electoral College.
References
Harsanyi, D. (November 18, 2016). Ignore the mob. Reason. Retrieved from http://reason.com/archives/2016/11/18/ignore-the-moblong-live-the-electoral-co
National Archives and Records Administration. (n.d.). What is the electoral college? Retrieved December 01, 2016 from https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/about.html
Reed, L.W. (March 01, 2001). Keep the electoral college. Foundation for Economic Education. Retrieved from https://fee.org/articles/keep-the-electoral-college/
Sparks, B. (April 01, 1969). Why have an electoral college? Foundation for Economic Education. Retrieved from https://fee.org/articles/why-have-an-electoral-college/