As governor he got his state signed on to the national popular vote interstate compact
I’m curious too. The EC has a troubling history - it was invented because of slavery, https://time.com/4558510/electoral-college-history-slavery/
Another strike against the EC - no other country uses one. If it really provided protections, surely another country would have adopted it by now? It’s hardly a secret formula or anything.
Let’s see what the founders had in mind:
The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States. It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue. And this will be thought no inconsiderable recommendation of the Constitution, by those who are able to estimate the share which the executive in every government must necessarily have in its good or ill administration. Though we cannot acquiesce in the political heresy of the poet who says: "For forms of government let fools contest That which is best administered is best,‘’ yet we may safely pronounce, that the true test of a good government is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration.
In other words, it’s supposed to stop someone like Trump from ever being President. Since that clearly failed, maybe we should junk the whole thing.
Even this is generous. The Federalist Papers, IMO, should be taken as a way to sell the new constitution to the populace. They make it sound like the whole thing was more well thought out than it really was. The constitution that came out is just the compromise everyone could live with after debating it for hours. Politicians back then aren’t that different from today; they have their own agendas, their own ambitions, and their own squabbles. They also get tired after long debates and will vote for anything as long as it gets them out of there.
On top of that, a good chunk of what they were thinking at the time–which you can see echos of in the quote above–was deflecting criticism that democracy couldn’t work. The US was the first modern democracy, and there were plenty of aristocrats in Europe (and even some useful idiots domestically) who laughed off the idea of a government run by peasants. The result is a system that doesn’t go all in on democracy, and has all these little exceptions. “No, no, see, the electoral college will stop a populist idiot from taking executive power”.
We’ve changed a lot of those over the years, such as electing senators rather than having them appointed by state governors. In hindsight, these were not necessary at all. It’s time for the electoral college to go.
To be honest, I’m not sure it applies.
The electoral college is an institution where electors cast votes to elect the President. In theory, it allows electors to choose a different president if the population chooses someone terrible.
It’s not /supposed/ to favor red states. However the formula for counting number of electors relies on the number of representatives in the house. That is fixed at 435 by law. To fix the electoral college, we’d have to remove that cap and it would work the way the founders intended.
But then, you’d need a helluva lot of dissenters to change. Is it possible? Sure. Is this system built for current day population and densities? Arguably not
It’s not /supposed/ to favor red states. However the formula for counting number of electors relies on the number of representatives in the house. That is fixed at 435 by law. To fix the electoral college, we’d have to remove that cap and it would work the way the founders intended.
We’d also have to end the popular vote and have all the states go back to having Electors appointed by the state legislatures. That’s what the founders really intended: something more akin to how prime ministers are chosen within a parliamentary system, but with added Federalism by delegating it to the states rather than Congress.
That whole Federalism part of it, which comes from the initial concept of the US being a confederation of sovereign States (kinda like the EU is now) rather than the single sovereign entity it’s mostly become, really was designed to balance power between large-population states and small ones at least a little bit, though. As such, I can’t entirely agree with your first sentence.
Except the scotus recently ruled that electors have to abide by the laws of the state that require them to vote a certain way, so the idea that they are free to vote as they wish is gone.
And part of the reason why it was implemented is that the population in the north was way bigger than the south, and so they were trying to make it more even where southern States would have more representation, so in a way it was meant to “protect red states.”
It’s important to note that the human populations of northern and southern states were fairly close to even, but the south decided that anyone with a bit too much melanin was property, not a human with rights and a vote…and they were very reluctant to give up that system.
Today each state decides how to assign their electors. In my uneducated opinion for the system to be fixed, rather than states being “winner take all”, it would make more sense for each state to allocate electors in proportion to the popular vote within their state.
Consider the possiblity that the president will be elected by the popular vote. That might be dangerous
And, when the president is elected against the popular vote? Like in 2016?
2000 too. Not to mention that in 1980 the electoral college did not protect us from a populist fascist. So I’m not really sure what good Electoral College is. If it doesn’t do the thing the people say it’s supposed to do. Even though all it was ever supposed to do was to protect slave states and conservative power. Which is all it’s ever done.
What it was designed for, to protect the slave states and provide another barrier to populist movements.
Also the EC will never be abolished, despite whatever candidates promise every 4 years. It’s too useful.
While there’s plenty of criticism of the constitution along slavery lines, this isn’t one of them. Sorting the 1790 census by total population and then comparing the percentage of slave population, you’ll see that it’s very mixed. If the EC were to protect slavery, we would expect states with a high slave population to have a lower population overall, but that isn’t the case.
Also of note is that only two states (Maine and Massachusetts) had zero slaves. There were a handful of house slaves in almost every state at the time. Those states didn’t have a heavy economic dependence on slavery, though. It’s the southern states, with their whole economy built around plantation slavery, that are the real problem. But again, they don’t line up in ways that would give them an EC edge.
No, its a pretty well documented critique. The EC increased the South’s delegates by a huge margin.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/electoral-colleges-racist-origins
It feels like the only protections the EC provides is to the GOPs ability to win the presidency. I agree with Walz, the EC needs to go, it’s too easy to game by focusing on swing states.
