Editor’s note: This commentary is by Peter Berger, an English teacher at Weathersfield School, who writes “Poor Elijah’s Almanack.” The column appears in several publications, including the Times Argus, the Rutland Herald and the Stowe Reporter.
Alexander Hamilton is in the news, and not just for outrageously expensive theater tickets. The Electoral College he championed is again the subject of hot debate. Like many of his ideas for the new United States government, it had opponents back then as it does today.That opposition over the years has often been spurred by discontent with a particular election’s results. In 1829 Andrew Jackson called for eliminating the Electoral College in his first annual presidential message to Congress. That was one election cycle after 1824, when he’d lost the contest for president to John Quincy Adams even though Jackson had received more popular votes.
More recently, Democrats blamed Electoral College math for denying Al Gore the White House. In 2012 when it appeared Mitt Romney might win the popular vote but lose in the Electoral College, Donald Trump denounced it as a “total sham,” a “travesty,” and a “disaster for democracy.” This year he reversed himself and announced the Electoral College was “actually genius” after it made him president, even though he’d won fewer popular votes than Hillary Clinton.
It won’t be easy, especially after this election, but let’s leave behind our 2016 candidate preferences and partisan fervor, and examine the constitutional election system itself. It would also further our discussion if you could suspend your assumption that the popular vote is necessarily the more legitimate vote. Finally, set aside the connection some critics assert between slavery and the Electoral College. While James Madison did note the Electoral College’s effect on states with large slave populations, the Constitutional Convention conducted two extensive debates focused on slavery, and the Electoral College wasn’t mentioned in either.
Alexander Hamilton advanced the clearest rationale for the Electoral College in “The Federalist,” a collection of newspaper essays written at the time to urge ratification of the new Constitution. Hamilton assured readers that even if the system for electing the president were “not perfect, it is at least excellent.”
He argued that while the Electoral College wouldn’t allow for direct election of the president, it would express the “sense of the people” by allowing them to choose representatives “most likely to possess the information and discernment” necessary for the “special purpose” of wisely selecting someone worthy of “so important a trust.”
We may wince at his lack of confidence in the average voter, but we can’t allow our proper devotion to self-government to blind us to its limitations. Winston Churchill described democracy as “the worst form of government except for all the others.” He offered as evidence “a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” Today’s stew of public gullibility and internet “fake news” confirms that his concern is still relevant.
In any case, we don’t live in a democracy. We’re a democratic republic. This means that power resides with the people, but we delegate that power to representatives who run our government for us. We don’t feel cheated or disenfranchised when we don’t get to vote every time Congress passes a law, but we retain the power to vote our congressman out of office.
The founders through our Constitution specifically delegated certain powers to the new federal government, but they also specifically reserved other sovereign powers to the states.
In the same way, Hamilton considered electors our chosen representatives, tasked by us with choosing a president for us, just as other representative bodies ratified the Constitution itself. You may not find that democratic enough, but neither is it undemocratic.
Some founders did advocate the direct election of the president. Others favored election by Congress or the state legislatures, methods Hamilton feared would leave the president beholden to other elected officials and bodies. That’s why he favored the Electoral College, whose members would meet only once in their respective home states for “the single purpose of making the important choice.” He hoped this would prevent “cabal, intrigue, and corruption” in the electoral process.
He was, incidentally, especially concerned about “the desire of foreign powers” to corrupt “our councils.”
It’s been a long time since the Electoral College functioned as a deliberative body. The Constitution allows each state to determine how it chooses its electors. All but two states have opted to award their electoral votes, winner-take-all, to whichever candidate captures the most popular votes in their state, with Maine and Nebraska assigning their electoral votes more proportionally by congressional districts. Electors are bound variously by state law or pledge to respect the popular vote in their states. If states were to adopt a proportional formula, the electoral vote total might more closely reflect the national popular vote.
This, however, wouldn’t satisfy direct election advocates or prevent in every case a popular vote winner from losing in the Electoral College. It also wouldn’t satisfy a prime constitutional intention.
We’re not only a nation of people. We’re a nation of states. This isn’t a theoretical or merely administrative distinction. The founders through our Constitution specifically delegated certain powers to the new federal government, but they also specifically reserved other sovereign powers to the states. Sadly, states’ rights and powers have over the years been sullied by association with slavery and segregation, but we can’t allow those deplorable institutions to discredit the valid, essential constitutional principle they hid behind.
There is a sense in which it seems unfair for a candidate to win more votes from the people and still lose an election. But consider an election map in our nation of states where, by virtue of states’ populations, the winning candidate is the choice of only 10 states while the losing candidate wins in 40. Does that not also seem unfair?
Congress’ design addresses both concerns. The House of Representatives apportions power according to each state’s population, while the Senate awards states equal power, regardless of their population, simply for being states. By determining each state’s total electoral votes based on its number of House members plus two for its two senators, the Electoral College honors these same values to elect the presidents of these United States.
Regardless of how you esteem the Electoral College, it’s not the greatest danger facing the republic. Thomas Jefferson opposed the Electoral College, but he identified a far greater peril – no nation can be both free and ignorant.
How many voters have read the Constitution? How many congressmen have read “The Federalist”? How many citizens and candidates know how our government works? How many who don’t can we afford?
Our body politic hangs on tweets. Our leader peddles policy in 140 characters.
The voters we need to worry about aren’t in the Electoral College.
The dangerous, and endangered, voters are us.
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