Abstract
Trump’s election renewed discussion about the Electoral College, mostly centered on its disparity with the popular vote. Yet much commentary about the Electoral College neglects its original purpose grounded in the Founders’ concern to provide for indirect election to many important offices. The Founders’ project entailed determining the people’s aptitude to elect the types of individuals desirable for high office, in an attempt to harmonize their dual commitments to political right and political legitimacy. The Electoral College’s function was soon frustrated by the rise of political parties, yet parties came to serve at least part of that function, with party leaders standing as a moderating force between the people and the presidency. However, the 2016 elections suggest that parties no longer play this intermediary role effectively. Examining the steps that led to this result, we seek to provide a reminder of the enduring thesis that the dangers inherent in republicanism require creative republican remedies.
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Notes
- 1.
This is by no means the first time the EC has come under assault. Shlomo Slonim observes that “[c]lose to seven hundred proposals to amend the Electoral College scheme have been introduced into Congress since the Constitution was inaugurated in 1789.” Shlomo Slonim, “Designing the Electoral College,” in Inventing the American Presidency, ed. Thomas E. Cronin (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989), 33.
- 2.
James Madison, “Federalist No. 57,” in The Federalist , ed. George W. Carey and James McClellan, The Gideon Edition (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2001), 295. All subsequent references to The Federalist are to this edition.
- 3.
Alexander Hamilton, “Federalist No. 68,” 354.
- 4.
These general themes of critique are not new, as the debates in the 1970s , which spurred Martin Diamond’s response, demonstrate, yet they arose with acute intensity in 2016–17. See Martin Diamond, The Electoral College and the American Idea of Democracy (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1977).
- 5.
The Editorial Board, “Time to End the Electoral College,” New York Times. 19 December 2016. NYTimes.com. Web. Accessed 22 Sept. 2017.
- 6.
John Koza, “Adopt Our Plan for a Popular Vote,” USA Today. 10 November 2016. USAToday.com. Web. Accessed 22 Sept. 2017; and John Koza, “At the Next Presidential Election, the Popular Vote Must Win Out,” The Guardian. 10 November 2016. TheGuardian.com. Web. Accessed 22 Sept. 2017.
- 7.
Andrew Trees, “Electoral College is No Way to Show Off Democracy,” USA Today. 14 November 2016. USAToday.com. Web. Accessed 22 Sept. 2017.
- 8.
- 9.
Allen Guelzo and James Hulme, “In Defense of the Electoral College,” The Washington Post. 15 November 2016. WashingtonPost.com. Web. Accessed 22 Sept. 2017.
- 10.
Jeffrey Anderson, “The Founders Knew What They Were Doing with the Electoral College,” The Weekly Standard. 27 December 2016. WeeklyStandard.com. Web. Accessed 22 Sept. 2017.
- 11.
Of course, one could also point to cultural and technological changes, the distinctive 2016 political climate, or even, more fundamentally, the pervasive egalitarian ethos in America that Alexis de Tocqueville described so well. In the 1970s , James Ceaser was already discussing the way that changes in communication technology altered the character of presidential elections in a way that the Founders did not anticipate. See James Ceaser, Presidential Selection (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 68.
- 12.
James Madison admitted that the outsized role of states in breaking a tie and in selecting the president when no candidate received a majority was “an accomodation [sic] to the anxiety of the smaller States for their sovereign equality.” See James Madison to George Hay, August 23, 1823, in The Papers of James Madison , Retirement Series, vol. 3 (1 March 1823–24 February 1826), ed. David B. Mattern et al. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016), 108.
- 13.
The Twentieth Amendment superseded part of the Twelfth Amendment dealing with presidential succession, including the possibility that Congress fails to elect a candidate when the vote has been thrown to them, but it does not alter the nature of the EC.
- 14.
Thomas E. Cronin, “Forward,” in Judith Best, The Choice of the People?: Debating the Electoral College. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), xii.
- 15.
John L. Moore, ed., Congressional Quarterly’s Guide to U.S. Elections, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1985), 254–56.
- 16.
Madison to Hay, August 23, 1823, 109.
- 17.
David Leip, “2016 Presidential General Election Data,” US Election Atlas. uselectionatlas.org. Web. Accessed 25 July 2017.
- 18.
To be clear, the unit rule does not have uniformly negative consequences: It seems to reinforce the federal nature of the system as a whole, and it tempers the influence of particularly partisan or ideological states. It is also worth noting that the unit rule is not the only potentially counter-majoritarian feature of the EC. The original formula for representation was disproportionate by design. However, this original disproportionality was rather modest, while the unit rule exacerbates its counter-majoritarian potential.
- 19.
The original EC still faces another common charge—that it derived from a desire to protect the institution of slavery and is morally contemptible for that reason . By indirectly incorporating the Three-Fifths Clause into the formula for apportioning electors, the EC provided slave states with a disproportionate role in the selection of the president. This arrangement no doubt pleased some citizens of slaveholding states; however, this effect was not the main intent of the EC. To suggest otherwise requires one to dismiss the set of reasons they offered for rejecting alternative proposals, the reasons why they found the Electoral College favorable, and the compatibility between those reasons and their broader understanding of republican government and representation. A fuller response to this charge, unfortunately, is not possible within the constraints of this essay.
- 20.
Herbert J. Storing, “In Defense of the Electoral College,” in Toward a More Perfect Union: Writings of Herbert J. Storing, ed. Joseph M. Bessette (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 1995), 396.
- 21.
Alexander Hamilton, “Federalist No. 9,” 38.
- 22.
James Madison, “Federalist No. 10,” 43.
- 23.
Storing, “In Defense of the Electoral College,” 397–98.
- 24.
James Madison, “Federalist No. 39,” 194.
- 25.
Hamilton , “Federalist No. 68,” 351. Hamilton is not dissembling here. For how little the EC was an item of debate during the ratification struggle, see, for instance, Forrest McDonald, The American Presidency: An Intellectual History (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994), 182–208; and Jack N. Rakove, Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1996), 244–87.
- 26.
Hamilton , “Federalist No. 68,” 352.
- 27.
Ibid., 352–53.
- 28.
Ibid., 352.
- 29.
Madison , “Federalist No. 10,” 46.
- 30.
Ibid.
- 31.
Hamilton , “Federalist No. 68,” 352.
- 32.
See, for instance, Diamond, The Electoral College and the American Idea of Democracy; Slonim, “Designing the Electoral College”; and James P. Pfiffner and Jason Hartke, “The Electoral College and the Framers’ Distrust of Democracy,” White House Studies 3, no. 3 (2003): 261–71.
- 33.
Rakove, Original Meanings, 259.
- 34.
Alexis de Tocqueville , Democracy in America, trans. and ed. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), I.1.8, 127.
- 35.
Ibid., 124.
- 36.
Hamilton , “Federalist No. 68,” 352.
- 37.
Marjorie Randon Hershey, Party Politics in America, 16th ed. (Pearson: Boston, 2015), 6.
- 38.
Ceaser, Presidential Selection, 91.
- 39.
Ibid.
- 40.
See Hershey, Party Politics in America, 132; and James W. Ceaser, Reforming the Reforms: A Critical Analysis of the Presidential Selection Process (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1982), 14.
- 41.
Hamilton , “Federalist No. 68,” 353.
- 42.
Madison to Hay, August 23, 1823, 110. Madison’s proposed amendment was as follows: “The Electors to be chosen by districts, not more than two by any one district; and the arrangement of the districts not to be alterable within the period of———previous to the election of President. Each Elector to give two votes: one naming his first choice, the other his next choice. If there be a majority of all the votes on the first list for the same person, he, of course to be President: if not, and there be a majority (which may well happen) on the other list for the same person, he then to be the final choice: if there be no such majority on either list, then a choice to be made by joint ballot of the two Houses of Congress, from the two names having the greatest number of votes on the two lists taken together.”
- 43.
Hershey, Party Politics in America, 18.
- 44.
Ceaser, Reforming the Reforms, 11.
- 45.
Hershey, Party Politics in America, 19–20; and Ceaser, Reforming the Reforms, 22–23.
- 46.
Ceaser, Reforming the Reforms, 23.
- 47.
Ibid., 27.
- 48.
Ibid.
- 49.
Ibid., 6, 31.
- 50.
Hershey, Party Politics in America, 78; and Ceaser, Reforming the Reforms, 7.
- 51.
Whether it, in fact, gauges the people’s sense more rigorously is debatable. A sort of perverse filtering still characterizes primary elections. Primaries attract a disproportionate number of activists from the parties’ ideological extremes . Extremely low voter turnout in primaries means that, in a two-party system, a fraction of largely activist citizens choose the final two candidates. In 2016, for example, just nine percent of Americans and fourteen percent of eligible voters voted for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump as nominees. See Alicia Parlapiano and Adam Pearce, “Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees.” New York Times, 1 Aug. 2016. NYTimes.com. Accessed 27 July 2017.
- 52.
Aaron Bycoffe, “The Endorsement Primary.” FiveThirtyEight.com. Updated 7 June 2016. Web. Accessed 22 Sept. 2017.
- 53.
“Which Presidential Candidates are Winning the Money Race?” New York Times. 22 June 2016. NYTimes.com. Web. Accessed 19 Sept. 2017.
- 54.
Nicholas Confessore and Karen Yourish, “$2 Billion Worth of Free Media for Donald Trump,” New York Times. 15 March 2016. NYTimes.com. Web. Accessed 21 Sept. 2017.
- 55.
Bycoffe, “The Endorsement Primary”; Aaron Bycoffe, “A Huge Number of GOP Leaders Aren’t Endorsing This Year,” FiveThirtyEight.com. 15 April 2016. Web. Accessed 21 Sept. 2017.
- 56.
Eli Stokols, “Sen. Jeff Sessions endorses Trump,” Politico.com. 28 February 2016. Web. Accessed 21 Sept. 2017.
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German, Z.K., Burton, R.J., Zuckert, M.P. (2018). The Aim of Every Political Constitution: The American Founders and the Election of Trump. In: Sable, M., Torres, A. (eds) Trump and Political Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74427-8_12
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