The Electoral College

11/9/2018—Republicans are busy trying to justify what they call the Electoral College. But what they are defending is not the framers’ Electoral College.

In the first place, no voters were supposed to select the President. The President was supposed to be selected by the delegates—electors—who were themselves elected however the State legislatures decided. That method did not matter that much because the President was not elected by the people. The framers did not want an election of any kind directly for the President because they feared would elect a demagogue. So the decision as to who should be President was left to a group of presumably smart and geographically dispersed men. Needless to say, such a group would never have selected Donald Trump in a million years. So this idea that dispersed voters should elect the President has nothing to do with the Electoral College.

Second, “strip out California” in order to give some democratic legitimacy to President Trump is truly politically immoral. The President was not supposed to be a policy maker. But now, unfortunately he is. All Americans are stuck with President Trump’s bad policies. Take tariffs—all those Californians are just as stuck with them as is everyone else.

The framers never selected minority rule. If they used an election, the winner was the person with the most votes. Period. So, if we now are going to have an election for President, which we do, the framers would never have said the loser should govern.

By the way, a much better argument for President Trump is that he campaigned intelligently in the system we have. If he had had to have had more votes, he would have tried to get them. He needed States, so he got those.