An email about the Electoral College has been circulating since 2016 when Donald Trump won the electoral college while losing the popular vote.  It has landed in my inbox three times, and most recently just a few weeks ago. If we run into a popular vote / electoral college incongruity again in November, this defense of our poorly understood system will surely be reinvigorated.  Unfortunately, the spirit of party infuses the debate over the value of the Electoral College.  Ideology should not, however, mangle the history.  My purpose today is not to take a position on what should be done about how we elect our presidents, but to set the history straight.

 This is how the email begins:

319 Square Miles

– It will take you approximately 39 seconds to read this email. Please read and pass it on.  Last month the newly convened, Democratic-controlled House of Representatives introduced a bill to eliminate the electoral college.  It seems that, since they couldn’t win the last presidential election under the rules that have existed for almost 250 years, they want to change the rules. Below is an excellent explanation of why this is a very bad idea.

– In their infinite wisdom, the United States ‘ Founders created the Electoral College to ensure the States were fairly represented.  Why should one or two densely populated areas speak for the whole of the nation?

            The email continues with a claim that of 3,141 counties in the United States, Trump won 3,084 of them and Clinton won 57. The statistics presented in this email have been fact-checked and debunked many times yet the message lives on.  I suppose it’s just too much fun to have one more political point to be outraged over, so folks “read and pass it on.”  The number crunching doesn’t really interest me that much. OK, Clinton actually won 487 counties; Trump still won significantly more.  The real problem is the way the writer gets the history of the Electoral College so woefully wrong.  The gist of the message rests on three faulty assertions:  1) the rules have “existed for almost 250 years,” 2) “in their infinite wisdom, the United States’ Founders created the Electoral College to ensure the States were fairly represented, and that a few densely populated areas would not speak for the entire country”, and 3) abandonment of the Electoral College will permanently benefit Democrats and hurt Republican chances at winning the presidency.

“The rules that have existed for almost 250 years”

            As originally framed, the multi-step process of electing a president that the framers created is not how we elect presidents today.  Not even close.  State legislatures were to select a number of wise and independent men, called electors, equal to the total number of their representatives in Congress.  Each elector was given two votes.  It was expected that the electors would cast one vote for a local favorite, so the second vote must go to a candidate from out of state.  When casting the second vote, it was hoped that the electors would look to a prominent statesman and patriot with a national reputation—a Jefferson or an Adams. This process would winnow the field of candidates down to the top contenders but would not necessarily produce a winner.  The framers expected the electors to scatter their votes across a broad range of regional candidates.  The top five would then go the House of Representatives where each state would cast one vote.  George Mason predicted that nineteen times out of twenty the election would end up in the House.  First place would be president and second place would be vice president. 

            It was a complicated system but the framers hoped that it would assure that the president would be selected by thoughtful men; and that turmoil, corruption and foreign intrigue would be avoided. John Jay wrote in Federalist 64 that the Electoral College “will in general be composed of the most enlightened and respectable citizens… and their votes will be directed to those men only who have become the most distinguished by their abilities and virtue.”[i]  Alexander Hamilton elaborated on the College’s many advantages in Federalist 68:

“[The electors would be] men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation…. [and] will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations…. It was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder… in the election of a magistrate, who was to have so important an agency in the administration of the government as the President of the United States… 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.”[ii]

            The system jammed up pretty quickly.  With the rise of the two-party system, the tactical coordination of electoral votes that would be required to assure that the first and second place winners were from the same party was not possible in a time of slow communication.  After the chaotic election of 1800 that almost gave us an Aaron Burr presidency, the Constitution was quickly amended.  Today each elector casts one vote for a president running with a vice president.

            The other significant changes from the original system were the idea that winner-takes-all, and that electoral votes are determined by popular vote. States quickly realized that the winner-take-all system exploited the benefit they could give to their preferred candidate.  Once a few states adopted this policy, states that continued to allow electors to distribute their votes among multiple candidates would hurt the chances of the legislature’s top choice.[iii]  In 1800, only two states used the winner-take-all system. By 1836, it was the tradition in every state but South Carolina.  Today, all but Maine and Nebraska allocate all of their electors to the winner of the statewide vote.

            The most significant change from the original formula, where a collection of wise men would select the president, to holding statewide popular votes to determine the electoral vote is poorly understood.  The framers did not collectively disdain the idea of the popular vote.  Two of the most influential delegates at the Convention, James Wilson and Gouverneur Morris, spoke in support of holding a popular election for the president.  This confidence in the people’s ability to decide was expressed in how quickly the states began holding popular elections to determine the electoral vote.  Within a few decades of ratification, most states were letting the people decide.

“In their infinite wisdom, the United States’ Founders created the Electoral College to ensure the States were fairly represented, and that a few densely populated areas would not speak for the entire country”

            I hear James Madison chuckling across the decades at the idea of the framers creating the Electoral College out of “their infinite wisdom.” It was more a product of their very finite patience and stamina.  Madison, identified in textbooks as the “Father of the Constitution,” was never happy with the system that the framers created and referred to it as “the faulty part of the Constitution.”[iv]  The Constitutional Convention did not finalize the details of the presidency until September of 1787, at the very end of a long hot summer.  The delegates had been laboring since May, attendance was dwindling, and they wanted to go home.  There was talk of calling it quits without finishing the draft, and holding a second convention.  The painful thought of abandoning the project, giving up on all those hard-fought compromises, and starting over, motivated many of the worn-down delegates to agree to a disagreeable system.  The “final arrangement” of the presidency, wrote Madison, occurred “in the latter stages of the session…it was not exempt from a degree of the hurrying influence produced by fatigue and impatience.”[v]

            How to elect the president had been one of the most confounding questions that the framers grappled with.  Many wanted Congress to select the president, some thought he should be popularly elected, another option was for voters within each state electoral district to select one or more presidential electors, others argued that the nation should be divided into three districts with each one electing a chief executive, perhaps each state would select a “favorite son” and then Congress would choose from the (at that time) thirteen choices, or possibly fifteen congressmen could be chosen by lottery and they would immediately meet in private and select the president.  The debates meandered.  The delegates could not reach consensus. 

            Finally, on the morning of September 3^rd, a committee that had been given the thankless task of settling on a plan for how to elect the president presented their conclusion.  The president would be elected by Congress.  It was done…well maybe not.  John Dickinson, an infrequent attendee at deliberations due to his poor health, warned that the Constitution would be rejected if the people played no role in selecting the president.  As a result of the musical 1776 and HBO’s John Adams, Dickinson is primarily known to posterity as the guy who wouldn’t sign the Declaration of Independence.   Perhaps more so than any other delegate, however, he should be known as the framer ultimately responsible for the Electoral College.  Not willing to toil with the problem any longer, the exhausted framers acquiesced to one of the plans that had been bandied about but rejected in the early days of the Convention.   

            Defenders of the Electoral College mistakenly believe that it was designed to protect the smaller states.  Today it works to dilute the voice of the voters from the largest states, but that was not what the framers intended.  After all, if the system was properly working the number of electors in each state would accurately reflect the population.[vi]  The framers expected the large states would dominate the electoral vote, then the power of the small states would be amplified when the final selection went to the House. 

            There are only two reasons why the Electoral College was acceptable to the framers, none of which are relevant today.  First, as mentioned above, the electors would be more knowledgeable and discerning than the populace.  Second, the Electoral College enlarged the voice of the slave states.  Madison, who supported the idea of having the president popularly elected, wrote “there was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.”[vii] 

            In other words, the creation of the Electoral College was a compromise that allowed for the political reality of slavery.  Popular election was a disadvantage for the slave states.  The 3/5s Compromise, that had been hashed out by the framers when it came to determining how many seats each state would have in the House, counted every five slaves as three citizens.  More seats in the House meant more electors for the state.  For example, at the time of ratification both New Hampshire and South Carolina had the same number of free citizens.  Yet South Carolina had two more seats in the House (and two more electors) as a result of partially counting the 100,000 slaves.  Both Massachusetts and Pennsylvania each had more free citizens than Virginia, nonetheless Virginia’s 300,000 slaves gave them five additional seats—the largest delegation in the House and therefore more electors than any other state.  Up until the Civil War, the slave states consistently had about one-third more House seats—and therefore electoral votes—than they deserved due to the 3/5s Compromise.

Abandonment of the Electoral College will permanently benefit Democrats and hurt Republican chances at winning the presidency

            In 2000 and 2016 a Democrat won the popular vote and a Republican won the presidency.  As a result, many argue that without the Electoral College a Republican can’t win.  I don’t think that two elections predict the future—especially when one of them featured the two most unpopular candidates in the history of US elections.  Taking a broader view, since the founding of the “Grand Old Party,” Republicans have won over 50% of the popular vote in nine elections (Grant, T. Roosevelt, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Eisenhower, Nixon, HW Bush, and Reagan).  The Democrats have done that only twice (F. Roosevelt and LBJ).  When the Republican party offers a reasonable choice and manages to avoid promoting a candidate who merely has a talent, in Hamilton’s words, “for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity,” but instead offers a candidate “of merit” in whom the people can place their “esteem and confidence”[viii] they should still be able to win the popular vote.

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[i] John Jay, “The Federalist Papers: No. 64” The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed64.asp

[ii] Alexander Hamilton, “ The Mode of Electing the President, From the New York Packet.
Friday, March 14, 1788.The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed68.asp

[iii] In 1823 James Madison backed a Constitutional amendment that would thwart the winner-take-all tradition, and have the electors popularly elected by districts within each state.   

[iv] “From James Madison to George Hay, 23 August 1823,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/04-03-02-0109. [Original source: The Papers of James Madison, Retirement Series, vol. 3, 1 March 1823 – 24 February 1826, ed. David B. Mattern, J. C. A. Stagg, Mary Parke Johnson, and Katherine E. Harbury. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016, pp. 108–111.]

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Today elector votes are not equitably distributed.  For example, Wyoming, has three Electoral College votes, California has 66 times as many people — but only 18 times as many Electoral College votes. The larger the state (e.g., Texas, Florida, New York) the less power does each voter have in an election

[vii] James Madison, “Madison Debates, July 19, 1787,” The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_719.asp.

[viii] Hamilton, “The Mode of Electing”