QUORA: ‘Where do you stand on the question of deleting the electoral college as it can and has clearly obviated the vote of the majority twice in recent history?’

QUORA: ‘Where do you stand on the question of deleting the electoral college as it can and has clearly obviated the vote of the majority twice in recent history?’

I posted this answer:

The Electoral College did not and does not “obviate the vote of the majority.” True, the Electoral College count sometimes doesn’t align with the national popular vote count. But, so what?  There is nothing sacred about the national popular vote. The Electoral College breaks down the election into 51 separate popular vote contests—the 50 states and the District of Columbia. To understand why this is necessary, one must consider its purpose within the broader context. 

The Electoral College is part of the constitutional checks and balances designed by the Founders to prevent concentrations of government power. For example, the United States Constitution supersedes the state constitutions, allowing the federal government to act as a check on states’ power. Likewise, since the elected legislatures of the states have the responsibility under ARTICLE II, SECTION 1, CLAUSE 2 of choosing the electors "in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct," the states can act as a check on federal power.

Also, the Electoral College acts as somewhat of a power balance between large and small states.

Likewise, the Electoral College acts as a check on populism, which can be quite tyrannical. Instead of one huge national majority acting as a single overbearing power, candidates must win enough smaller majorities among the individual states (and the District of Columbia), each of whom may have differing interests, to accumulate the necessary electoral vote majority. The point is to check populist power as a means of limiting concentrations of government power, by inserting the elected legislatures between the popular votes and the presidency. This is believed to be a way of tempering the more irrational democratic mob impulses that occasionally arise among the people. (The state legislatures can, of course, change the method of allocating its electors. And the people can, of course, change the legislature at election time in their respective states. To repeat, the Electoral College does not “obviate the vote of the majority.” It all, ultimately, goes back to the voters.)

America was never to be a nation of majority rule. It was to be a country of individual self-rule--that is, of individual rights. Individual rights, not the wishes of electoral majorities, is what government is intended to protect. Constitutional scholar Timothy Sandifur on James Madison’s thinking:

“In ‘the extended republic of the United States,’ a ‘great variety of interests, parties and sects’ would prevent ‘a coalition of the majority of the whole society’ from coming together in ways that might harm the minority or the individual.

“There was always a risk of oppression in any form of government, of course, because factions would seek to benefit themselves at the expense of their rivals. . . The . . . solution was a constitution of limited powers, with a system of checks and balances by which ‘the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority.’

“Madison consistently recognized that the essential goal of the Constitution was not to expand democratic authority or give voice to the ‘will of the people’—an idea he regarded skeptically—but to establish a political system that would enable the majority to accomplish its legitimate goals while protecting minorities against oppression. [from The Genius of James Madison by Timothy Sandefur for The Objective Standard]”

This does not mean that populism doesn’t have its place: It gets its expression, for example, in the powerful U.S. House of Representatives. But the intricate structure of checks and balances embedded in our constitution checks populism just as it checks state power, presidential power, court power, and legislative power through its two branches. The purpose of this structure is to protect the primacy of individual liberty, not “majority rule” or “the will of the people.” The Electoral College is a part of that structure, helping to fulfil the goal of breaking up society “into so many parts, interests and classes of citizens.” 

That’s why the Electoral College of the United States of America exists. Eliminating it would cut the states out of the equation, concentrating more power into the national government, thus advancing America ever closer to the very tyranny the College was set up to help prevent. Keep in mind that freedom is not the right to vote. Freedom is the right to live your life regardless of other people’s votes.

Related Reading: 

QUORA: ‘Why does the Electoral College of the United States of America exist?’

Was the Electoral College a ‘Compromise to Protect the Institution of Slavery?’

Voting Rights are Not the ‘Most Fundamental Right’—or Even a Fundamental Right

Avoid ‘Majority Rule’—Keep the Electoral College in Fact and in Spirit

The Conscience of the Constitution—Timothy Sandefur

QUORA: What's to stop a state . . . from making a law that just says their parties electors are chosen by default?'

Does the Electoral College Allow 'a Minority of Americans to Control Us All?'

Avoid ‘Majority Rule’—Keep the Electoral College in Fact and in Spirit

Wouldn't going by Popular Vote be an even worse system than the Electoral College?

QUORA: Can't We Make the Electoral College More Democratic?

All of my posts on the Electoral College, including answers to QUORA inquiries.