QUORA: ‘Was the Electoral College really intended as a device against tyranny of the majority?’

 QUORA: ‘Was the Electoral College really intended as a device against tyranny of the majority?’

I posted this answer:

Yes; that, among other paths to tyranny.

The Electoral College is part of the checks and balances designed 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 of choosing the presidential electors "in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct," the states as independent governmental entities can, through the Electoral College, act as a check on executive federal power. 

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

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 in individual states, each of whom may have differing interests, to accumulate the necessary electoral vote majority. Furthermore, by requiring voters to select a group of Electors in each state, who would then join other groups of Electors from other states to choose the president, the chance of an irrational and impassioned majority from directly electing a charismatic tyrant. Placing an intermediary body between the popular vote and the choosing of the president makes the rise of an authoritarian much less likely; or, as Hamilton put it in Federalist 68, “an intermediate body of electors, will be much less apt to convulse the community with any extraordinary or violent movements. . .” The point is to check populist power as a means of limiting concentrations of government power.

America was never to be a nation of majority rule—or, for that matter, minority rule. It was to be a country of individual self-rule--that is, of individual rights. Individual rights, not the unrestrained wishes of electoral victors, is what the 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, where members face election every two years by direct popular vote, bypassing the state legislatures; where each state’s representation is proportional to population, which in turn counterbalances the senate, where each state has equal representation regardless of population. 

The intricate structure of checks and balances embedded in our constitution checks, but does not negate, populism just as it checks, but does not negate, state power, presidential power, court power, and legislative power. The purpose of this structure is to protect the primacy of individual liberty. The Electoral College is a part of that structure. That’s why the Electoral College of the United States of America exists. 

Related Reading:

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?’

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?'

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?