the Electoral College

There seems to be a lot in the news lately about popular vote as opposed to the Electoral College.  I do not always appreciate someone trying to explain to me something as convoluted and complex as this appears on the top so I did some research of my own and I would like to share with you my findings.  I am no expert with regard to the Constitution of the United States nor am I an expert in the field of Electoral College and why we use the Electoral College when voting for the President and the Vice President of the United States.  So, I will try to keep it as simple as possible so as to not get confused while trying to explain my findings.

Let us begin with what the Constitution of the United States says about electors.  Section One of Article Two states the executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.  He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows:  Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

The Electoral College was created for two reasons.  Number one - to create a buffer between population and the selection of a President.  Number two - as part of the structure of the government that gave extra power to the smaller states.  The founding fathers wanted to prevent a direct election to the Presidency.

There are about twelve states plus the District of Columbia that have formed a compact to pool all of their electoral votes to the winner of the National Popular Vote (NPV), they call themselves the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC).  Colorado is the most recent to join all have pledged their votes to the winner of the NPV,  Other compact members include Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington and California.  The pact will take effect after states with a collective 270 electoral votes — the number needed to win the presidency — agree to join.  The NPVIC now has 181 electors.  Similar legislation is pending in New Mexico, with five electors, and Delaware, with three.

When the voters in each state cast votes for President, they are voting to select their state's Electors.  There is no Constitutional provision or Federal law that requires Electors to vote according to the results of the popular vote in their states, only intent.  Currently, voters choose presidential electors from the political parties.  The Electoral College has 538 electors, corresponding to the number of seats held by states in the U.S. Senate and House, plus three votes for the District of Columbia.

In December 2008, Jonathan Soros, son of George Soros (owner and financier for Open Society), wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece insisting the election of the U.S. president by the method established by the Constitution of 1787 is “antidemocratic by design.”  Well – of course it is.  Our founding fathers did not come here to start a democracy, they came here to form a Republic.

“The Constitution is no longer in line with our expectations regarding the role of the people in selecting the President,” Soros added.

The prevailing spirit of the Constitution is antidemocratic, and is so by the very deliberate and express design of the framers thereof.  The Founding Fathers were students of history and knew that democracies were doomed to chaos and violence.

In The Federalist, No. 10, James Madison wrote a republic is able to “refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice, will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations.”

Madison added “democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”  A very vital aspect of the republican frame upon which our federal government is built is the Electoral College.

The men who constructed our federal government zealously guarded against allowing a harmful influence of democracy to infect the inner workings of our nation.  In the case of the Electoral College, the Founders intended the body of electors to be a deliberative convention of wise men brought together solely to soberly choose a president from among the available candidates.

In The Federalist, No. 68, Alexander Hamilton explained how the method chosen by him and his colleagues of electing the president was still influenced by the will of the people.

The Founders wanted the sense of the people to be reflected in the choice of the individuals — the electors — in whom so important a trust was to be confided.

Opponents say the initiative subverts an electoral college that ensures that smaller states aren't trampled when it comes to choosing a president.

So, why all the interest in the NPV taking over as the deciding factor of who wins the presedency?  Look at your demographics today.  The greatest populations reside in states most often governed by democrats.  And, quite candidly democrats sometimes experience difficulties counting votes and sometimes count votes from people that have been dead for a very long time and from time to time allow voter’s registration cards to fall into the hands of non U.S. citizens.  Maintaining our status quo with the Electoral College is the only way we can protect our Presidency without a complete overhall of the U. S. Constitution.

I have done the math and this is what I come up with.  Out of our 50 states and the District of Columbia there are about 17 states plus the District of Columbia that cast a blue ballot.  There are about 33 states that cast a red ballot.  There are 208 electors from the blue states and 330 from the red states.  All a person needs do is pull the vote from the top 11 states that have the largest number of electors to win an election for President of the United States.  I have embedded an excel spreadsheet with those numbers onto this word document for your review if you like.  You may have to save this to your desktop or somewhere else convenient as it might appear to you as a read only document; you will have to change that in order to open the spreadsheet.