Ray9
Diamond Member
- Jul 19, 2016
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The following is a non-scholarly view of why we have the Electoral College and why we should keep it.
Once again there is an undercurrent of frustration regarding the Electoral College vs. the popular vote in the United States. This controversy seems to crop up whenever the electoral winner has less popular votes than the electoral loser. Superficially viewed this appears to be an overthrow of the collective will of the people but as with many things in life and politics there are complexities to consider. The founders of our country were wary of the direct election of a president by popular vote because of the fear that a factionalized majority could wield too much power outside its sphere of influence. It was a trust issue and the founders, being well aware of the flaws in the human condition, did not want to place their trust in an electoral process contingent on one man one vote to choose a president.
When the Electoral College was first proposed news didn’t travel very fast at all and neither did people. The telegraph and telephones had yet to be developed and there were no automobiles or trains so travel and communication between states was a major undertaking exacerbated by the fact that much of the population was illiterate or semi-literate. When our constitution was ratified at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 there were about the same number of people in the United States as there are in Los Angeles, California today, around four million. There were just thirteen states concentrated along the eastern seaboard from north to south. Each state was fiercely independent and distrustful of central authority. It would have been next to impossible for a candidate to get to the people in each state with a coherent, informative campaign.
The founders had a legitimate concern that individual citizens would lack the necessary information and knowledge to make an informed choice for a president and would vote only for a local candidate resulting in thirteen contenders which would mean the state with the most bodies would elect the president who in turn would have little regard for other states. So it was decided to form a group of electors who did have knowledge and possessed the ability to make decisions on behalf of individual voters so that no state could act to put its foot on scale to influence elections. The Electoral College essentially gave weight to states with lower populations, different customs and varied ideas about how the country should proceed. So the primary concern of the founders was a lack of information.
If we fast forward to contemporary times we see that we still need the Electoral College but for the exact opposite reason-too much information. The founders had no concept of an information age with satellites, television, computers and a world-wide web of internet connectivity where ideas and opinions can travel at the speed of light. They couldn’t predict jet travel or the rise of mass media. But the Electoral College has evolved as a gift to the people that keeps on giving because it acts as a firewall against the propaganda of an embedded status quo that does not have the interests of average people in mind. It has prevented the factionalized majorities of two states, California and New York from imposing their will on the rest of the people. And it’s a good thing we have it because we still see efforts to topple the will of the states. The propaganda of the establishment has unleashed multitudes of Manchurian-candidate citizens drunk with political correctness onto the states where people want to protect their individual liberties and opinions that don’t reflect the body politic of political correctness.
Reasonable citizens are horrified at the response of the losing side of this election. They are witnessing brazen attempts to delegitimize a legitimate election. Everything from communists under the bed to the rise of a dictatorship is being thrown at the result. Political correctness has produced a kind of mass delusional paranoia among factions of the electorate and we should be thankful to the founders that we have the Electoral College to counteract the propagandized psychotic-like hysteria that infects our society
Once again there is an undercurrent of frustration regarding the Electoral College vs. the popular vote in the United States. This controversy seems to crop up whenever the electoral winner has less popular votes than the electoral loser. Superficially viewed this appears to be an overthrow of the collective will of the people but as with many things in life and politics there are complexities to consider. The founders of our country were wary of the direct election of a president by popular vote because of the fear that a factionalized majority could wield too much power outside its sphere of influence. It was a trust issue and the founders, being well aware of the flaws in the human condition, did not want to place their trust in an electoral process contingent on one man one vote to choose a president.
When the Electoral College was first proposed news didn’t travel very fast at all and neither did people. The telegraph and telephones had yet to be developed and there were no automobiles or trains so travel and communication between states was a major undertaking exacerbated by the fact that much of the population was illiterate or semi-literate. When our constitution was ratified at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 there were about the same number of people in the United States as there are in Los Angeles, California today, around four million. There were just thirteen states concentrated along the eastern seaboard from north to south. Each state was fiercely independent and distrustful of central authority. It would have been next to impossible for a candidate to get to the people in each state with a coherent, informative campaign.
The founders had a legitimate concern that individual citizens would lack the necessary information and knowledge to make an informed choice for a president and would vote only for a local candidate resulting in thirteen contenders which would mean the state with the most bodies would elect the president who in turn would have little regard for other states. So it was decided to form a group of electors who did have knowledge and possessed the ability to make decisions on behalf of individual voters so that no state could act to put its foot on scale to influence elections. The Electoral College essentially gave weight to states with lower populations, different customs and varied ideas about how the country should proceed. So the primary concern of the founders was a lack of information.
If we fast forward to contemporary times we see that we still need the Electoral College but for the exact opposite reason-too much information. The founders had no concept of an information age with satellites, television, computers and a world-wide web of internet connectivity where ideas and opinions can travel at the speed of light. They couldn’t predict jet travel or the rise of mass media. But the Electoral College has evolved as a gift to the people that keeps on giving because it acts as a firewall against the propaganda of an embedded status quo that does not have the interests of average people in mind. It has prevented the factionalized majorities of two states, California and New York from imposing their will on the rest of the people. And it’s a good thing we have it because we still see efforts to topple the will of the states. The propaganda of the establishment has unleashed multitudes of Manchurian-candidate citizens drunk with political correctness onto the states where people want to protect their individual liberties and opinions that don’t reflect the body politic of political correctness.
Reasonable citizens are horrified at the response of the losing side of this election. They are witnessing brazen attempts to delegitimize a legitimate election. Everything from communists under the bed to the rise of a dictatorship is being thrown at the result. Political correctness has produced a kind of mass delusional paranoia among factions of the electorate and we should be thankful to the founders that we have the Electoral College to counteract the propagandized psychotic-like hysteria that infects our society
