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Origins and Design
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Electoral College
In this course, Dr David Andersen explores, explains and analyses the Electoral College and its role in US presidential elections. In the first module, we are introduced to the origins and design of the Electoral College, focusing in particular on the intentions of the Founding Fathers and the problems they sought to address with this system. In the second module, we explore the process by which the Electoral College works and how this has developed since its original conception in the late eighteenth century, including discussion of relevant constitutional amendments. In the third module, we interrogate the strengths and weaknesses of the Electoral College system as it presently operates, before moving on in the fourth and final module to assess some propositions for reforming the Electoral College, focusing on the strengths, weaknesses and likelihood of each of these proposed reforms. This course is particularly relevant for students and teachers of US Politics, as well as those more generally interested in US presidential elections and the US Constitution.
Origins and Design
In this module Dr David Andersen introduces us to the Electoral College, focusing in particular on: (i) its origins and design; (ii) the Founding Fathers’ attempts to reconcile the need to establish a central authority with their hesitancy around bringing a “king-like” figure into the American polity and their desire to avoid making this central authority too powerful; (iii) the original functions of the US President and the importance of the figure of George Washington to this vision; (iv) James Madison’s reflections in The Federalist No. 51 (1788) on the Founding Fathers’ project; (v) the Electoral College as a form of indirect election modelled on the Catholic Church’s College of Cardinals; (vi) the role of the states in this process.
Hi, I'm David Anderson,
00:00:05and I'm an associate professor of the United States politics at Durham University.
00:00:07I'm going to talk about the Electoral College,
00:00:11and I'm going to start by talking about where it came
00:00:14from and what the original point of the college was.
00:00:16So it's important to understand that the
00:00:19Electoral College was created simply to select the
00:00:21United States president and the first time
00:00:25the United States created a federal government.
00:00:27It actually didn't create a presidency.
00:00:30The first version of the United States
00:00:33government was under the articles of Confederation,
00:00:34where there was no executive at all.
00:00:37It was simply a Congress with one representative from each state,
00:00:39and this was a really weak form of government.
00:00:42It was so weak that within five years of its creation,
00:00:45the system showed that it just wouldn't work. So the United States had to try again,
00:00:49and this time
00:00:54they turned to political theory and what
00:00:55most other countries had already accepted.
00:00:57The fact that any government needs a strong executive to play an important role,
00:01:00and some of this
00:01:05the United States framers,
00:01:06the people who wrote the Constitution readily accepted.
00:01:08They knew that in a time of crisis.
00:01:11It was not good to have a legislative body deliberate about what to do.
00:01:14Sometimes you needed a person to act,
00:01:19and sometimes you needed a person to act in the national interest rather
00:01:22than in the regional interest in which
00:01:26elective legislators typically worried themselves about.
00:01:29So they knew they needed some sort of executive within this system.
00:01:32The problem was, they had no idea how to do this.
00:01:38Because a strong executive up to this point in time typically meant a monarch.
00:01:41A king
00:01:46and kings weren't elected.
00:01:47They were anointed,
00:01:50typically through hereditary means where the son of the previous
00:01:51king or the previous monarch would become the king or
00:01:56one person would become powerful enough to
00:02:00overthrow the existing king and assume power.
00:02:03But how do you identify a king like figure within a democratic system?
00:02:06The American framers really didn't have much to go on,
00:02:13so they had to try to figure it out.
00:02:16And in addition to selecting a person,
00:02:19they had to figure out what powers you would give this person
00:02:21how these people would be asked to rule or to govern.
00:02:24And some of these problems they found ready solutions to, uh,
00:02:30one of the easiest things that the American framers were able to do
00:02:34was they settled on who the first King like figure would be.
00:02:38Everybody knew it would be George Washington,
00:02:42and they solved a lot of problems for them.
00:02:44Because George Washington was known to be a respectable figure,
00:02:46he was known to give up power freely.
00:02:49He was known to be very honourable and respectful of
00:02:52his colleagues when he was given a position of power.
00:02:56So in framing the constitutional system,
00:02:59the framers didn't have to worry much about one person
00:03:02sweeping into power and making themselves a permanent king.
00:03:06George Washington was a solution.
00:03:09They also solve the question of what powers to
00:03:11give this figure by turning it over to Congress
00:03:14and in Article two of the Constitution, where the presidency has created
00:03:17the framers of the Constitution say that largely Congress is
00:03:21going to figure out what powers a president will need,
00:03:25and they will delegate those powers to the presidency.
00:03:28So there's two big problem solved, but then they come to the problem of selection.
00:03:31How do you select who's going to be president and really,
00:03:36who's gonna be president after George Washington,
00:03:40and this opens up a whole set of problems and to get a
00:03:44view into what the framers were thinking about and what they're worried about.
00:03:49There's a quote from one of the most important pieces of political theory
00:03:53from this time in the United States from a document called Federalist 51
00:03:57in which
00:04:02the founders talk about what they're worried about and they say,
00:04:03But what is government itself?
00:04:07But the greatest of all reflections on human nature.
00:04:10If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
00:04:13If angels were to govern men,
00:04:16neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
00:04:18But in framing a government which is to be administered by men over men,
00:04:23the great difficulty lies in this.
00:04:27You must first enable the government to control the governed
00:04:29and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.
00:04:32Now what they're really talking about there is this
00:04:36worry about how do you find a great leader?
00:04:39If men were angels, if we were perfect, benign, wise people,
00:04:44we wouldn't have to worry about selection problems of choosing who leader would be.
00:04:49But we know people aren't angels
00:04:53and then they say. But if angels were to govern men
00:04:57and this is harkening to the idea that maybe among us
00:04:59there are wise kind people who can be selected as our leaders
00:05:03and they quickly throw this out because they're not sure that
00:05:08these people exist or that we know how to identify them
00:05:11So they collapse upon this third option that well,
00:05:15if we agree that just men are going to govern men and we
00:05:18accept that were flawed and there are no perfect people above us,
00:05:23what are we going to do?
00:05:26We're going to have to create a system that does the best that is possible.
00:05:28And this is where the Electoral College really comes from.
00:05:33The framers knew that they needed wise people to be elected among the population,
00:05:37but they weren't sure how to identify these people.
00:05:43So they turned to some available mechanisms
00:05:45that they knew existed.
00:05:48The system that they liked the best was the
00:05:49College of Cardinals from the Roman Catholic Church.
00:05:53Now, the way the College of Cardinals worked is when
00:05:56the existing pope died or resigned from office.
00:05:59All of the cardinals, who are the second highest level
00:06:03of administrator within the Catholic Church would assemble together and talk
00:06:07amongst themselves about who they believed the next pope should be.
00:06:11And the rationale here was
00:06:15the cardinals understood how the church functioned.
00:06:17Yes, they understood the theology of the church, but they also understand,
00:06:21understood
00:06:25the bureaucracy,
00:06:26the administration of the church.
00:06:28So they were the most well educated people
00:06:30to select who is most capable of serving as the next pope and guiding the church.
00:06:33So the framers of the American Constitution looked at this and said, Well,
00:06:39this is actually a good system for our needs because at this time
00:06:43the United States consisted of 13 very
00:06:48independent states that didn't trust each other.
00:06:51They didn't work well together,
00:06:53but they needed to come together and find a leader to serve as an executive,
00:06:55the president.
00:07:00So this is where the Electoral College comes from.
00:07:02The original version of the Electoral College said each state is
00:07:05going to be able to nominate a certain number of electors.
00:07:10That number is going to be tied to their congressional representation.
00:07:13Every state has two members of the Senate,
00:07:18and they have a number of people in the House
00:07:20of Representatives based upon the size of their population,
00:07:23so you'll get an equal number of electors
00:07:26to your congressional representation.
00:07:29But that's where the Constitution then gets rather silent.
00:07:32It tells the states you can decide who you're electors are, however you want.
00:07:35They simply cannot be current federal office holders,
00:07:41so they can't be a senator or a member of Congress.
00:07:44Those electors
00:07:47will then be asked to vote for president.
00:07:49And for the framers, this was a great solution
00:07:52because they didn't believe that you could
00:07:54have those members of Congress elect the president
00:07:58because that would violate the separation of powers.
00:08:01The framers really believed in this concept called classical Republicanism,
00:08:04where people would be elected out of a
00:08:08population and they would represent that population.
00:08:11They were tied to that population.
00:08:14So if Congress elected the president, the president would be beholden to Congress.
00:08:16They would have to make deals with member of Congress to earn their votes,
00:08:22and that means they weren't independent. You didn't have a separation of powers.
00:08:26You had a president who owed favours to members of Congress,
00:08:30and the framers didn't want that.
00:08:34But
00:08:37Congress was probably the only people in the country who understood
00:08:38what a president would be and who the candidates were.
00:08:43You couldn't at this time turned the presidency over to a popular vote because the
00:08:47people of the United States would have no understanding of what a president was.
00:08:53Uh oh, this is a new role of the people.
00:08:57Creating the role in the Constitution didn't
00:09:00fully understand what a president would be.
00:09:02But there was certainly no way the population of
00:09:04the United States would understand what this job entailed,
00:09:07what skills were necessary for it,
00:09:11and there was no mass media to educate them.
00:09:13They would never have the ability to learn about the candidates.
00:09:16So the population also couldn't cast this vote. But
00:09:19by turning over the election of electors to the states,
00:09:23they believe that the states could figure it out. They could elect wise.
00:09:28People who understood government and those wise people could in turn
00:09:31elect a future president.
00:09:35And that was the big solution of the Electoral College.
00:09:37It's changed a lot since then, but that's the original theory,
00:09:42and it's worked decently well
00:09:45
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Andersen, D. (2022, November 03). Electoral College - Origins and Design [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/us-politics-electoral-college
MLA style
Andersen, D. "Electoral College – Origins and Design." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 03 Nov 2022, https://massolit.io/courses/us-politics-electoral-college