The electors and the ‘sense of the people’

Alexander Hamilton is in the news, and not just for outrageously expensive theater tickets. The Electoral College he championed is again the subject of hot debate.

Opposition has often been spurred by election results. Andrew Jackson recommended eliminating the Electoral College in his 1829 presidential message to Congress. That was one election cycle after 1824, when he’d lost the presidency to John Quincy Adams even though Jackson had received more popular votes.

More recently, Democrats blamed electoral math for denying Al Gore the White House. In 2012 when it appeared Mitt Romney might win the popular vote but lose in the Electoral College, Donald Trump denounced it as a “total sham,” a “travesty,” and a “disaster for democracy.” This year he reversed himself and announced the Electoral College was “actually genius” after it made him president, even though he’d won fewer popular votes than Hillary Clinton.

It won’t be easy, but let’s set aside our 2016 candidate preferences and partisan fervor, and examine the Constitutional election system itself. Let’s also disregard the connection some critics assert between slavery and the Electoral College. While James Madison did note the Electoral College’s effect on states with large slave populations, the Constitutional Convention conducted two extensive debates focused on slavery, and the Electoral College wasn’t mentioned in either.

Alexander Hamilton advanced the clearest rationale for the Electoral College in The Federalist, a collection of newspaper essays written to urge that states ratify the new Constitution. Hamilton argued that the Electoral College expressed the “sense of the people” by allowing them to choose representatives “most likely to possess the information and discernment” necessary for the “special purpose” of selecting someone worthy of “so important a trust.”

We may wince at his lack of confidence in the average voter, but we can’t allow our proper devotion to self-government to blind us to its limitations. Winston Churchill described democracy as “the worst form of government except for all the others.” He offered as evidence “a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” Today’s stew of public gullibility and Internet “fake news” confirms his concern is still relevant.

In any case, we don’t live in a democracy. We’re a democratic republic. Power resides with the people, but we delegate that power to representatives who run our government for us. We don’t get to vote every time Congress passes a law, but we retain the power to vote our Congressman out of office.

In the same way, Hamilton considered electors our chosen representatives, tasked by us with choosing a president for us, just as other representative bodies ratified the Constitution itself. You may not find that democratic enough, but neither is it undemocratic.

Some founders did advocate direct election of the president. Others favored election by Congress or state legislatures, methods Hamilton feared would leave the president beholden to other government officials. That’s why he favored the Electoral College, whose members would meet only once in their respective states for “the single purpose of making the important choice.” He hoped this would prevent “cabal, intrigue and corruption,” including interference by “foreign powers.”

It’s been a long time since the Electoral College functioned as a deliberative body. The Constitution allows each state to determine how it chooses its electors. All but two award their electoral votes, winner-take-all, to whichever candidate captures the most popular votes in their state. If states were to adopt a proportional formula, as Maine and Nebraska have, the electoral vote might more closely reflect the national popular vote.

This, however, wouldn’t satisfy direct election advocates or prevent in every case a popular vote winner from losing in the Electoral College. It also wouldn’t satisfy a prime Constitutional intention.

We’re not only a nation of people. We’re a nation of states. This isn’t a theoretical or merely administrative distinction. Our Constitutional founders specifically delegated certain powers to the new federal government, but they specifically reserved other powers to the states. Sadly, states’ rights and powers have been sullied by association with slavery and segregation, but we can’t allow those deplorable institutions to discredit the valid, essential Constitutional principle they hid behind.

There is a sense in which it seems unfair for a candidate to win more votes from the people and still lose. But consider an election map in our nation of states where the winning candidate is the majority choice in only 10 while the losing candidate wins in 40. Does that not also seem unfair?

Congress’s design addresses both concerns. The House apportions power according to each state’s population, while the Senate awards states equal power, simply for being states. By determining each state’s electoral votes based on its number of House members plus two for its two Senators, the Electoral College honors these same values.

Regardless of how you esteem the Electoral College, it’s not the greatest danger facing the republic. Thomas Jefferson opposed the Electoral College, but he identified a far greater peril — no nation can be both free and ignorant.

How many voters have read the Constitution? How many Congressmen have read The Federalist? How many citizens and candidates know how our government works? How many who don’t can we afford?

Our body politic hangs on tweets. Our leader peddles policy in 140 characters.

The voters we need to worry about aren’t in the Electoral College.

The dangerous, and endangered, voters are us.

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Winston Churchill described democracy as “the worst form of government except for all the others.” He offered as evidence “a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” Today’s stew of public gullibility and Internet “fake news” confirms his concern is still relevant.

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