Monday, August 26, 2019

The Electoral College Without Blinders


Mere assertion and repetition do not equal truth.  Sound decisions are based upon knowledge. 

     America began as a backwater province of the British Empire.  But, after “a long train of abuses and usurpations,” the Colonies became “free and independent states.”  And then they struggled to make the transition from a monarchy to a republic. 

     The Articles of Confederation were inadequate in war, and there was no improvement in peace.  The Constitution was written to address those shortcomings.  But, unbeknownst to some, the transition from the Articles to the Constitution continues. 

     At the time of the Convention, there was no way to reduce “the different qualifications in the different States to one uniform rule.”  (James Madison, The Federalist Papers, No. 52)  It was an obstacle that affected options regarding a matter voted upon over thirty times.  How to choose the Executive was, said James Wilson, “the most difficult of all on which we have to decide.”  And the decision that was made created a misunderstood, misrepresented, and misused institution. 

     The Electoral College has two functions.  They are popular choice and national security.  And there can be no doubt about the first, for as Madison said at the Convention, the Executive “is now to be elected by the people” and as Alexander Hamilton later noted, “The President of the United States would be an officer elected by the people…”  (The Electoral College by Lucius Wilmerding, Jr., 3 & 19 and Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers, No. 69 respectively)  Nor is the second a mystery. 

     “Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption.  These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.  How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the Chief Magistracy of the Union?”  (Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers, No. 68) 

     “With all the infirmities incident to a popular election, corrected by the particular mode of conducting it, as directed under the present system, I think we may fairly calculate,” said James Madison in the House, “that the instances will be very rare in which an unworthy man will receive that mark of the public confidence which is required to designate the President of the United States.” 

     “The original intention” is clear, as are the dangers when it is thwarted due to a hangover. 

     “The right of equal suffrage among the States is another exceptional part of the Confederation….  Its operation contradicts that fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail….  It may happen that this majority of States is a small minority of the people of America; and two thirds of the people of America could not long be persuaded…to submit their interests to the management and disposal of one third.”  (Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers, No. 22; emphasis added) 

     In 2000 and 2016, there was a political discontinuitya misalignment of means and ends, a condition where a minority rules the majority.  Thus, the exceptional part of the Confederation contradicted that fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail.

     The problem that could not be resolved at the Convention has been removed.  Now there is a uniform standard because of the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Nineteenth, and Twenty-sixth Amendments.  A seed led to conception and a long pregnancy to birth. 

     The much maligned Electoral College is an idea whose time has come.  Dust off the 1787 DeLorean and the National Popular Vote can jumpstart the flux capacitor.  Then the Electoral College can perform the two functions for which it was designed—popular choice and national security. 

     “One advantage of Electors is,” according to Madison, “although generally the mere mouths of their constituents, they may be intentionally left sometimes to their own judgment, guided by further information that may be acquired by them: and finally, what is of material importance, they will be able, when ascertaining, which may not be till a late hour, that the first choice of their constituents is utterly hopeless, to substitute in the electoral vote the name known to be their second choice.”  (LW, 180-181)

     The focus on popular choice must not obscure the necessity of national security.  The Electoral College is the final check on fraud, an institution that can suppress “the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils…by raising a creature of their own to the Chief Magistracy of the Union.”    

(c)2019 Marvin D. Jones.  All rights reserved.
  

http://www.nationalpopularvote.com

http://www.marvindjones.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-electoral-idea-whose-time.html

http://www.marvindjones.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-electoral-college-is-1787-delorean.html

http://www.marvindjones.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-american-appendix.html