Introduction
There has been a great deal of discussion on the matter of the electoral college. In the last year, we have heard the Democratic party declare that if Amy Coney Barrett was affirmed, they would abolish the electoral college, stack the court, and abolish the filibuster. People have lined up on both sides to argue for or against the electoral college. So why do we need the electoral college, why isn’t it working the way it should today, and why did the Founding Fathers institute it in the first place?
Why Do We Need an Electoral College and Why Was It Instituted?
First and foremost, we hear the democrat side arguing that we don’t need the electoral college because it gets in the way of the popular vote. So let us examine the why behind that argument. A popular vote means that whoever has the simple majority would elect our president. Who has the majority of the population? Cities. What states have the largest populations? Those with the largest cities. Which voting constituency is largely centered in the cities? Democrats.
So, given that, what happens if you have a popular vote? Cities like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and more will dominate and will essentially select for us. The smaller states and rural areas will have no say because they don’t have the population or votes to make themselves heard. This is great if your party is on the winning side. It is horrible and tyrannical if your party is not on the winning side. I have seen the results of this first hand in both states that I have lived in for any significant period.
First, I saw it in New York where the city literally ran all the policies. Not many of us in the rural communities, even those who weren’t particularly right wing, liked the policies being made, but we could do nothing about it because the numbers voting in the city overwhelmed us. This is what has led to Upstate New York’s talk of secession from New York city. They are tired of being underrepresented and taken advantage of for the benefit of the city. So, they figure that maybe they should start worrying about their own interests, elect their own officials, and let the city sink on its own without them.
Second, I see it in Illinois. Many of our districts are more toward the middle of the political aisle or are right wing. But Chicago overwhelms all of that with its massive number of voters and, once again, it drives policy for all of Illinois even though most of us are sick of the corruption and garbage policies they get away with. But can we do anything about it? Not much. We don’t necessarily give up, but we are getting fed up.
This story goes much the same way for other states with large cities with a different voting constituency from the rest of the population. Now imagine that on a nation-wide scale. The Founding Fathers warned that if the President were elected by a majority vote, not only would it lead to tyranny of the majority (since the majority could simply ignore the minority’s wishes due to their larger portion of power in the government), but it would also undermine the stability of the country. Eventually, the minority–regardless of which side they are on–gets tired of being misused and abused at the whims of the majority and decides they’re done. This is exactly why the colonies rebelled against England in the first place. The Founding Fathers saw the danger firsthand and wanted nothing to do with it.
So that’s why we need the electoral college. It isn’t there so that the wishes of the people can be overridden. It is there to ensure that the smaller states and the voting minority still gets a voice in their own country. It is to ensure that no one political party can grab power by persuading a majority over to their side and then keep it by retaining that majority. It is to ensure tyranny is harder to achieve through our system.
Why Isn’t The Electoral College Working?
One of the main reasons the electoral college is so messed up now is because people had the same brilliant idea that so many people these days have. They thought, it isn’t fair that we have a group of people elected by the State legislatures and not by the people who can vote against the popular vote. So what did they do? States decided to mandate that their electors all vote with the popular vote, thereby negating the very role the Founders wanted the electoral college to play. Now, you don’t have to like what the initial goal was for them to understand that there is no point to having the electoral college at all if they’re just going to be a facade for the politicians to pretend that we aren’t what we are rapidly becoming at their insistence: a democracy.
The Founding Fathers loathed democracy. Benjamin Franklin said of it that “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what they are going to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.” I could not agree more. What history has shown time and again, and what the Founding Fathers understood very well, is that democracy always results in tyranny by the majority because the majority is capable of imposing its wishes on the minority with little to no possible resistance or check on their power. Our politicians would love it if we became a true democracy because it would mean whoever could grab the largest numbers would win for as long as they could keep a larger following. This is what we’re starting to see happen in our country, and it should terrify every single freedom-loving American no matter what their affiliation because the secret of democracy is this: at some point, the majority ceases to be the majority and they become the oppressed minority. You won’t be the winning majority forever, and in all seriousness, God help you when the oppressed minority becomes the majority.
I have warned many people on the right about the unwise calls for the government to seize power in the favor of a “silent” majority (or in other words, in favor of the right). We may be oppressed and ostracized as the social minority in the culture in places like Hollywood and the media, but advocating for government control in our favor is to operate under the exact same “democratic” philosophy as the left does. They too want the government to take control to force you to do as they please. They simply want different policies enacted. Both sides will be sorry if they get their way. More power to the government or to some amorphous majority means nothing short of tyranny over the minority or whichever group those in power don’t like. And human beings are fickle creatures. The winds of power change. You may win today and find yourself in front of the firing squad tomorrow. Don’t play with the fire of government.
Playing with fire in the form of government is exactly what got us here. Ignoring the spirit of the reasoning behind the electoral college to protect those who would otherwise be swept under the rug by the majority is the reason why states changed their laws. Only two states (Maine and Nebraska) still have electoral colleges that function in a manner consistent with the spirit of the Founders. Instead of making their electoral college vote with whoever wins a simple majority (even if that majority is very, very close), these two states split the votes by the percentage won. So if it were fifty/fifty in the state, then the electoral votes would be split evenly between the candidates, for example. This ensures that the voting minority still is given a voice. To do otherwise is to nullify the whole point of the electoral college in favor of majority rule.
Conclusion
The solution, then, is not to abolish the thing standing between us and the chaos of mob or majority rule. The solution is to reform it back to the way it was meant to be. States need to stop giving the whole of the electoral vote to whoever manages to get 51% of the votes. That invalidates the whole purpose of the electoral college, which was always intended to protect the minority and the little guy (at the beginning, this was more focused on the tiny colonies and still is, in the main) from a majority that, if given the chance, would gladly force their will on everyone. Unless we want the entire country to be run by a few blue states whose opinions often don’t even reflect that of mainstream, average American Democrats, the last thing any of us should want is the abolition of the electoral college.
Freedom-loving Americans on both sides of the aisle need to quit calling for its destruction and start calling on their State legislatures to stop playing political games and return the electoral college to its original intent: a safeguard for us all should we find that we are the ones in the minority in any given election cycle. No matter who you are, I think, we should be able to agree on this point. Protecting the voice of every American, even if we don’t like what they choose to do with it, is of the utmost importance. If we do not, then we choose to uphold a philosophy that says individual choice should be taken away if the majority deems a given potential choice harmful.
The vast reach of this philosophy can extend to touch everything and anything we hold dear. It is a poison that will erode our liberties bit by bit until there is nothing left and Americans on both sides of the aisle wonder where they went to. Saddest of all in that end will be the reality that our choices and our bad philosophy landed us there. We will not be able to blame God, our neighbor, karma, fate, or anything else. We will have only ourselves to blame because we chose to champion the destruction of the philosophy and the institutions that stood between us and our loss of liberty. The electoral college is just one such institution, and calling for its destruction just one more stepping stone in our path to ruination should we choose to continue on this road.
To better understand the electoral college and other pieces of our Founding, check out the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers as well as the minutes and notes recorded by Madison during the Continental Congress, which led to the framing of our Constitution. These documents lay out the various arguments over how our government would run and explain the why behind each, which is imperative if we are to understand what our liberty is built on and why we must not remove that foundation if we wish for our liberty to be preserved. You can also find more articles on the history surrounding our Founding and leading up to it here in the series I am running on early American history. These articles are sourced and include a number of primary sources and writings that will aid you in discovering for yourself the real history behind the time period.
