We’ve all experienced something like the following. The topic of politics comes up at a party, and someone in the group, seeking some way to say something smart but not divisive, will just toss out that we need to get rid of the Electoral College, the Constitution’s structure for electing the U.S. president and vice president.
The expectation is that everyone present will readily agree. And usually that is precisely what happens because few people have ever heard the other side.
We celebrate democracy so much, so often, that it seems like a no-brainer: the popular vote should always prevail. What possible reason would there be for any other system, much less this convoluted one in which states appoint electors who then weigh in with their choice?
Well, a cocktail party is not the ideal time to take up the topic but let’s just say it very clearly. The Founders were too smart, too well read in history, too aware of the complications and geographical diversity in the United States, and respectful of the federal system, to embrace something as crude and unsustainable as direct democracy.
Under such a system, the large population centers would dominate everyone else, and result in the worst excesses of mob rule.
The purpose of the Electoral College is to provide a fairer weighting between the states, which were seen as the primary political jurisdictions in the U.S. system. The federal government had defined roles and defined limits while everything else was left to the states. The U.S. president needs to represent the whole and therefore the states would serve as an essential buffer.
This is why the United States is a republic on the old Roman model and not a democracy of the form that Aristotle said can only work in small homogenous territories. A direct democracy in which the popular vote elected the president would disenfranchise all small states and, within them, everyone who lived outside the large population centers. Essentially five or so of the most populous cities would elect the president and there would be no reason to campaign anywhere else.
