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| No | 36% | 154 votes | Total: 425 votes | |
| Yes | 64% | 271 votes |
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Add to FavoritesThis is always a tough sell because of the sheer number of people who will vote that the electoral college should be eliminated. If the arguments encountered in this debate are typical arguments presented in other debates I have had on this topic, the arguments will include (1) the US was founded as a democracy, (2) the Electoral College did not exist prior to 1804, and (3) modern technology does away with the need for the Electoral College. Each of these arguments is incorrect, and the numbers of people who buy into these falsehoods is the greatest argument for retaining the Electoral College.
Though it sounds nice to say the US was founded on the principle of democracy, it was actually formed as a representative republic. The intentions of the founding fathers were to limit the control the federal government has on the states. The founding fathers recognized that the interests varied from state to state. They put forth that ideal in the formation of Congress, in which each state is granted two Senators and a varying number of Representatives based on population. The argument that the country was founded as a democracy is further eroded by the fact that population, for the purposes of representation in Congress, included calculating slaves as worth three-fifths of a natural person. While some historical facts about the US include racist and misogynist elements, those have been corrected with regard to representation in the federal government. The point is not to defend those ethics as valid, but rather to prove that the US was established as a representative republic and not a democracy.
The argument that the Electoral College was created through the twelfth amendment to the Constitution is also incorrect. The amendment in 1804 served to allow the Executive to select a Vice President running mate. The amendment changed Article II of the Constitution that declared the candidate with the second most electoral votes as the Vice President. This resulted in odd combinations in the Executive Branch of government in that John Adams, the man who would be king, served as Vice President for George Washington, who rejected the offer to become king. Jefferson, who was politically opposed to John Adams, served as his Vice President. Though the government worked through those administrations, the next Vice President, Aaron Burr, who killed the first Secretary of the Treasury in a duel, proved the need for those in the Executive Branch to work in concert with the Executive rather than opposed to the President. Jefferson served his second term with a Vice President not so reckless and power hungry as Aaron Burr. The point, however, is that the contention that the Electoral College exists because of the twelfth amendment is incorrect.
The argument that technology does away with the need for the Electoral College disregards the reason the Electoral College was deemed necessary. That notwithstanding, anyone who watched the votes sway in Florida in 2000 because of technological flaws, or has had his or her identity stolen, should understand that technology is not foolproof. It is a popular argument, but it is unsound in both its reasoning and concept.
I would contend that many of the people who argue against the Electoral College were disgruntled by the election in 2000. However, that was not the first time a President was elected without receiving a majority of votes. Thomas Jefferson had fewer than half the electoral votes in 1800, tying the 99 Aaron Burr received. John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, and Benjamin Harrison, however, became Presidents despite having fewer votes than candidates they defeated. The elections of John Quincy Adams and Rutherford B. Hayes were far more controversial than the election of 2000, which was more in line with the controversial election of Benjamin Harrison. John Quincy Adams lost resoundingly to Andrew Jackson, but manipulated the Electoral College vote by promising a Cabinet position to the third place finisher. Together, they had more than one-half the electoral votes, though Jackson had the most. Rutherford B. Hayes' election in 1876 is, by far, the most controversial in American history. Not only did he lose the popular election to Samuel Tilden, who failed to get more than one-half the electoral votes, the process to elect the President through the House of Representatives in such circumstances was also circumvented. The Republican was elected by a committee of five, which was comprised of three Republicans and two Democrats. The elections of Benjamin Harrison in 1888 and George Bush in 2000 were the result of majority votes in the Electoral College, despite receiving fewer votes than another candidate.
The concept of democracy is not "he with the most votes wins;" it is "majority rules." To contend that the problem with the Electoral College giving us two Presidents who lost the popular vote, discounts that it also has given us Presidents who would not have won "popular majority" without it. Eliminating Hayes, Harrison, and Bush as Presidents who did not get the most votes, James Garfield, Grover Cleveland (twice), Woodrow Wilson (first term), Harry Truman, Richard Nixon (first term), and Bill Clinton (first term) were elected despite receiving fewer than one-half the popular votes cast in elections since 1872. Since no candidates in those elections received more than one-half the popular votes, how would "a majority" be determined? Technology does not resolve that problem; the Electoral College does.
Finally, among the many things the cities of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago likely have in common, is that those three cities have more population than twenty states. Combined, those three cities have more population than the fourth most populous state (Florida), and Texas is the only state that has more population than those three cities except for New York and California (Illinois is the fifth most populated state, despite that Chicago is the third most populated city). To shift the process for electing the President to popular vote rather than leaving it in the Electoral College would be the same as the federal government only representing the interests of urban America.
The Electoral College is certainly not a perfect system. It is, however, the best system to make sure that America remains a representative republic by giving rural America representation in Presidential elections.
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Sources:
H istory of the Electoral College: http://uselectionatl as.org/INFORMATION/I NFORMATION/electcoll ege_history.php
The Original US Constitution: http://www.earlyamer ica.com/earlyamerica /freedom/constitutio n/text.html
The Twelfth Amendment: http://caselaw.lp.fi ndlaw.com/data/const itution/amendment12/
Population by States: http://www.demograph ia.com/db-2000stater .htm
Population by Cities: http://www.infopleas e.com/ipa/A0763098.h tml
Results of Presidential Elections: http://www.infopleas e.com/ipa/A0781450.h tml
The Election of John Quincy Adams in 1824: http://www.president profiles.com/Washing ton-Johnson/Adams-Jo hn-Quincy.html
The Election of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876: http://www.president profiles.com/Grant-E isenhower/Hayes-Ruth erford-B.html
Learn more about this author, Tom Koecke.
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Yes
According to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, over 700 proposals have been submitted to Congress to either eliminate or amend the Electoral College since our country's founding, by far the most proposals for any one topic in American history.
Alexander Hamilton argued for the creation of the Electoral College in the Federalist Paper #68, which in part reads: "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." In laymen's terms, many historians agree that Alexander Hamilton was an elitist who essentially did not trust the judgment of the ignorant, unwashed masses of his day to elect the President. Above all others, he is the man we have to thank for this complicated, undemocratic method of electing our most important national officer. (On a side note, he was just as unlikable in his own time for such arrogance, as evidenced by his duel and subsequent death at the hands of Jefferson's former Vice President Aaron Burr.)
Most arguments for keeping the EC begin with one of two statements: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" or "It hasn't failed us so far." The problem with these statements is the slightly inconvenient fact that neither is true. Indeed, there have been four instances in our nation's history where the EC ignored the will of the people by electing the person who did not win the popular vote: Jackson/Q. Adams 1824; Hayes/Tilden 1876; Harrison/Cleveland 1888; Gore/Bush 2000.
For those strict Constitutionalists who argue that the Founders had good reasons to create the Electoral College, I will admit that they had a valid point - in 1789. Written by men having just lived through the Revolutionary War, the Electoral College called for electors to meet in their respective states on a certain date instead of all congregating in one central meeting, hence creating smaller gatherings with less potential for disruption and violence. Yet the major reason why people today still argue that the EC should remain is the fact that it favors small states by giving them a greater percentage of electors compared to their population size. So in today's terms, how is it fair that 537 votes in Florida, which is not exactly a small state population wise, outweigh over half a million votes from other states?
Making changes to the Constitution in no way denies the brilliance of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, their gift for foresight gave us one of our most important tools: the Constitutional Amendment. It took all of 15 years from George Washington's first inaugural in 1789 to ratify the first amendment concerning presidential elections. The Twelfth Amendment (1804) did away with the practice of electing the President and Vice-President as winner and runner-up, respectively, in the vote count for president. Today we take for granted that every citizen over the age of 18, men and women of any race, rich or poor, can cast their vote for a president who can hold said office for no longer than eight years beginning on January 20th - except for the fact that none of this is in the original Constitution (see Amendments 15, 19, 20, 22, 24, 25, and 26 so I'm not forced to bore you with a civics lesson).
One of the main objections to the Electoral College is its lack of consistency for determining the qualifications of electors. In fact, the only guideline concerning who can be appointed an elector is in Article II, section 1 of the Constitution, which vaguely states that they can be anyone except a senator, representative or other "person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States." More alarmingly, there are also no Constitutional provisions requiring that electors cast their votes in accordance with their state's popular vote, although roughly half of the states have put their own laws on the books in this matter. The only thing almost consistent across the country is that all states except Maine and Nebraska have a winner-take-all system where whoever wins the majority of electors (even if it's just 51%) gets all of the electoral votes for the state. This is the reason why Obama's seven percent win of the popular vote in the 2008 election translated to over a 200% victory in the Electoral College (365 to McCain's 173).
How does this seem like a proportional or democratic process?
Under the current EC system, political campaigns use complex mathematical equations when planning their geographic strategies, letting the numbers-needed-to-wi n run the show instead of the needs of the people. Would our Founding Fathers be proud of the Electoral College system today if they saw the ways in which it is flawed? When anyone asks why the Electoral College should be abolished, the answer should come in the words of the late Tim Russert: Florida, Florida, Florida. The outrage following the 2000 debacle was regrettably short-lived, with people such as the newly-elected Senator Hillary Clinton calling for abolition in front of cameras and then dropping the issue like a hot potato when the news cycle moved on. Many Americans have not forgotten the injustice and national embarrassment of Bush v. Gore, citizens like myself who hope that the next proposal in the long line of 700 plus will finally be successful in ending this antiquated, undemocratic system of electing our President.
Learn more about this author, Rebecca Bauer.
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