So I’m a New Zealander and I have a pretty good idea on how the electoral college system works but it honestly sounds like something that can be easily corrupted and it feels like it renders the popular vote absolutely useless unless I’m totally missing something obvious?
So yeah if someone could explain to me what the benefits of such a system are, that would be awesome.
Edit - Thanks for the replies so far, already learning a lot!
At the time the electoral college was devised, the only way to reliably get an important message from a state capital to the federal capital was to send a trusted messenger on a horse. The electors are those trusted messengers.
IIRC there was also a desire to put some distance between the unwashed masses and the election. James Madison, for example, was clear in his writings that he feared the system would devolve into mob rule by whichever group could whip up the most angry followers (January 6, 2021 anyone?). The presidential electors have an opportunity to be the adults in the room if the election is a hot mess and cooler heads need to prevail (though they can also swing the other way and wreak havoc so it’s a double-edged sword).
Also, back then there was still a lot of disagreement about how the US would work. Was it going to operate be a single, unified country or would it be more like an EU style organization with a unified defense? IE Federalists vs Anti-Federalists? The electoral college was a compromise to let each state run its own elections and only franchise who they wanted. It’s important to remember that the US was not founded as a universal suffrage nation, and has only slowly and after much painful internal struggle expanded civil rights.
In general, complicated electoral policies help maintain the status quo and a disconnect between the people and the state. It makes the people always think that things are bad because they didn’t use the system right. Come on guys we need more voters. Come on guys we need to focus on swing States. Actually guys we need to vote in Congress too. Guys we also need local elections. Omg guys, we forgot about the supreme court!!
Rather than revolting against your government, you will always be presented with another route forward that won’t take you there.
It’s an interesting conversation topic. It’s easy to mock for being backward and racist. It serves as a good cautionary tale for other governments…
Definitely an interesting topic for sure!
I guess most other governments would never need a system like that given I don’t imagine there’s any other country in the world that is made up of as many States as the US.
We have an interesting electoral system in NZ called MMP which is essentially a first across the post system so even if a party gets more votes than anyone else, it they didn’t get enough to cross the post/finish line, they don’t win and so a coalition can be formed by smaller parties that got less votes to get across the finish line and therefore the country is then run by multiple political parties.
I mean it seems like you understand the system perfectly.
Drama, mostly.
Seriously, the reason we keep it is that it’s written into the constitution. Now is not the time to use either method to amend, so we’re stuck with it.
There’s no reason for it to exist, though I can see its utility before communications were instant.
Originally, the benefit was that the president would be chosen by the established powerful men, not the filthy proles.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Two_of_the_United_States_Constitution#Clause_3:_Electoral_College and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_College#History
After reading that second link, it definitely seems like they’re saying the average citizens weren’t smart enough to decide who should be president lol.
Thanks for the links.
That’s the reasoning, yes. Not so much “not smart enough” as “not civic-minded enough”, that is to say, people are short-sighted and selfish.
And, in a rural, agrarian society, not educated or up to date on recent events enough to vote in an informed way. Paternalistic, sure, but not completely unreasonable given the era.
I honestly believe this is still the case today.
How many people voted for Biden because he promised to forgive student loans? Something that causes terrible inflation, wrecks our already strained debt, and only benefits themselves?
How many people voted for Trump because he promised to cut taxes at the expense of our budget? Something that causes inflation, wrecks our already strained debt, and only benefits themselves?
People are very short sighted and vote very selfishly. Not everyone, but a large chuck of Americans are this way, and this is why every candidate usually throws in a couple promises like this just to appeal to those selfish voters.
the main ‘advantage’ i believe is that it allows non-voting people to lend weight to the votes of those who do vote. it allows states to disenfranchise voters, without that impacting their state’s influence on national politics. it also allows smaller states a larger proportional influence than their population would make reasonable.
personally, i don’t see those as advantages, but i’m not some wealthy slave owner from the 1700s.
Don’t forget the 18 people from Wyoming who really enjoy it too, they get to be counted the same as hundreds of thousands of new yorkers
It helps candidates that don’t actually have a policy win elections anyway. Helps the side that keeps losing popular elections get into office regardless.
Makes it easier for the establishment to control the outcome.
I am an American. There are none other than ensuring the ruling class continues to wield unbalanced power over the masses.
Upon the founding of this country the office of president was very severely limited in what its function was (technically still is, which has been the great grift of American politics—true power is in congress but no one pays attention to congressional elections).
Nowadays the presidency has expanded a bit from its original design, to the point that it really should be a directly elected office, but it is very difficult to change the constitution of this country so the electoral college remains.
It helps those with power keep it. Benefits to everyone else, that it may have had, have been eroded by time, demographics, and or technology.
When the definition of “everyone else” excluded people without property, women, and minorities, it served its purpose quite well. In fact it continues to serve the purpose of overrepresenting property owning white men. Not as well as back in the 1800s, mind you.
There are no benefits to it now…unless you are part of the minority who exploits and benefits from it.
Like most weird things with the American federal government, you have to remember that at the founding, the individual states were much more autonomous, more similar to individual countries than they are now.
Primarily, the electoral college was one of many compromises made between the states so that all of them would sign on and join the union. It was deliberately designed to give smaller states a disproportionate say in the presidential election, to sooth their fears that they would end up being controlled by the larger more populous states (again, at the time, people would have identified much more strongly with their state than with the federal union.) So, the benefit was that it gave the smaller states enough of a say that they were willing to join the union.
If you conceive of the United States as a single nation state, which many today do, but was not historically a universal norm, then there’s no real benefit and only serves to help Republicans maintain power, since less populous states tend to vote Republican. This is what most people tend to believe, especially people on the left, and why you largely see most people online oppose the electoral college.
If you conceive of these United States as a group of states and not just a giant nation state, then the electoral college allows the separate states some hedge against being dominated by their larger neighbors. Almost no one actually believes this. You’ll mostly see Republicans bring up this argument, but by and large they’re hypocritical about it(they’ll use states rights when it serves them, and federal power when convenient). There are some people who do truly think that the states should be left to govern themselves, as a matter of principle and not just as part of a political game to get their way when convenient, but they are very rare.
Just look at how the EU government works, they ended up with a very similar system, just with a parliamentary twist. It’s a bit of a natural compromise when you have a bunch of nations with their own identity coming together to form a larger body.
The main benefit is that it pushes a lot of issues to a more fault tolerant system.
Technically, the election of President was not supposed to be decided by the people. Only two state legislatures devolved the authority to choose the Electors in the Electoral College to a vote when Washington was elected. All states voted for the President after the Civil War, but the layout wasn’t even.
In its current state, the Electoral College provides a fire break between the different states in how they vote. The states are supposed to run all elections, which may have impacts on who gets elected.
The system becomes easy enough for a lawyer to understand
I’m not sufficiently educated on the subject so I can’t argue either way, but the defense I usually hear is that the sparse farmland states and the densely populated city states have different needs, and that the majority of the population living in cities shouldn’t be making decisions for the rest of the country. So it gives each state an equal say in the executive branch; Otherwise the most populated states hold all the power.
If there’s a problem with this defense of its pro’s, please educate me. I’m not being sarcastic.
The most populated states still hold a lot of power in # of votes in electoral college. It’s not inherently good that small states hold a disproportionate power (vs population) in the electoral college.
In the real world, states may as well vote together as blocks. Only a few states flip to a different party every election.
I think you’re thinking of the Connecticut Compromise, which established a bicameral Congress with a population-weighted House and state-weighted Senate.
