A reader makes the case to replace the electoral college,
whose “need has vanished” and whose use brings damaging angst (July 5).
Her case is less convincing when it is apparent when her
motive seems to be driven by her contempt for President Trump. Bush’s victory in 2000 played a part here,
but I have no doubt she would have written the same letter if that outcome had
been different.
I think the reader underestimates the knowledge and intellect
of the average person at the time of our founding and vastly overestimates the
political acumen of people today. Having
access to the internet is no guarantor of an understanding of wise political
policy for a nation.
The only alternative to the electoral college is a popular
vote, and the Founders were wary of that for anything. The clearest evidence of that is the
existence of the Senate. If the
selection of the President should be left to a majority vote of the people,
then why not all of our laws? We would then
only need one house of Congress, the House of Representatives. We certainly would not need or want a Senate
where a state as small as Rhode Island has as much political impact as states
like Texas and California.
They knew masses of people can be easily swayed, and they
wanted to slow down the process of political decision-making.
But to quote the source she used to begin her letter, “It
was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most
capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under
circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all
the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice.” The Federalist Papers, no. 68
The Founders’ concerns were not that most people didn’t live
in cities or that they didn’t have political parties to give them the right
information. In fact, they also didn’t
think of this position as one for which people would campaign, especially one
where people would need enormous amounts of money that people would donate to
their cause. They just felt this task was
simply too great for the average person.
In time this was circumvented by states having the people vote for electors
who had already committed themselves to a particular candidate.
The Founders were greatly concerned that larger states would
have an unduly effect on the nation’s policies, because they had so many more
people. In the last election, Trump’s support
was widespread, while Clinton’s was confined to the coastlines and a few spots
in-between, like Chicago.
So if you were to travel the country, you would find more places that favored Trump
than Clinton, and that was how it was designed to be.
