American Notebook: The Electoral College: A Note on American Political Mythology
Roche, John P.
After every close presidential election, the stage is set for an inquest: one can count on debates, congressional investigations, learned letters in The New York Times, elaborate outbursts of...
...Paradoxically this myth has been advanced both by lachrymose conservatives, bewailing our departures from the "prudential wisdom" of the fathers, and by opponents of the College who deplore the founders' undemocratic convictions...
...It is odd that those v;ho acclaim Madison the father of the "separation of powers" and "federalism" have overlooked his last-ditch fight for this universal system...
...I am both tired of and annoyed at the generally accepted myth that the Framers of the Constitution fearing the "mob," established a Council of Wise Men to choose the President...
...this was accepted on the ground that the Senate already—in its treaty and appointment powers—had enough authority over the executive...
...But the manner of selection was not based on any fear of the masses—indeed, the most "radical" states were the most vigorous exponents of states'-rights—but on the conviction that these representatives were merely agents, ambassadors of the sovereign state governments...
...After every close presidential election, the stage is set for an inquest: one can count on debates, congressional investigations, learned letters in The New York Times, elaborate outbursts of anal scholarship, all concerned with the poor old Electoral College...
...The Electoral College was neither an exercise in applied Platonism nor an experiment in indirect government based on elitist distrust of the people—it was a jerry-rigged improvisation which has subsequently been endowed with a high theoretical content...
...third, if the state legislatures agreed (as six did in the first presidential election), the people could be directly involved in the choice of electors...
...First, the state legislatures had the right to determine the mode of selection of electors...
...Conversely, the only sensible alteration in terms of democratic theory — direct election — would be butchered in the states in the unlikely event that it survived twothirds passage in the House and Senate...
...It was seen as a technique for end-running the state legislatures and loosing a new Leviathan...
...The House of Representatives was to be popularly elected in the states with membership proportional to population, the House would choose the Senate, and the Senate and House together would pick the President...
...In the Brearley proposal, the election went into the Senate, but a motion 'from the floor substituted the House...
...THE FRAmExs were extremely practical politicians—and by this time fatigued and eager to get home—so the Electoral College entered the Constitution with little debate...
...To a body of working politicians, the merits of the plan were obvious: Everybody got a piece of the cake...
...FIRST the institutional setting: under the prevailing states'-rights ideology of the period, members of the Continental Congress and the Congress under the Articles of Confederation were (except in Rhode Island and New Hampshire) selected by the state legislatures...
...Clarification will hardly have any impact on either rhetoric or decision, but from a certain antiquarian passion I insist on laying some facts on the table...
...second, the small states received a bonus in the 'form of a guaranteed minimum (3 votes) while the big states got acceptance of the principle of proportional power...
...Without tracing in detail the elaborate infighting that took place in the Convention, I think it is safe to say that the selection and term of the President was the most fought-over issue...
...From the viewpoint of a practical liberal, this is so much time wasted: the only revision which could possibly be adopted by three-quarters of the states would be worse than what we now have...
...In short, the Framers in their wisdom did not endow the United States with a College of Cardinals...
...The sticky issue was turned over to a committee chaired by Judge Brear ley of New Jersey which finally on September 4, 1787, a bare two weeks before adjournment, came forward with roughly the present arrangement...
...The delegates to the Constitutional Convention were chosen in this fashion...
...Thus to a states'-rights spokesman, a program incorporating direct popular election of federal officials was immediately suspect as a derogation of state sovereignty...
...No one seemed to think well of it and what evidence there is indicates that the fathers assumed that once George Washington had finished his tenure as President, the Electoral College would cease to produce majorities and the chief executive would be chosen by the House...
...The common knowledge that Washington was to be the first President seems to have muffled debate on this section in the state ratifying conventions—in traditional American fashion, the delegates settled for immediate certainty and were prepared to let the future take care of itself...
...As David Hume emphasized in his Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences, "there is no subject in which we must proceed with more caution than in [History], lest we assign causes which never existed and reduce what is merely contingent to stable and universal principles...
...However, since these rites are scheduled for this year, there is one aspect of the Electoral College that should be clarified...
...and, finally, if no candidate received a majority, the right of decision passed to the national legislature with each state exercising equal strength...
...The Madisonian model for the new general government, submitted to the Constitutional Convention as the Randolph Plan, utterly circumvented the state legislatures...
...Only with reluctance did Madison later concede the state legislatures the right to nominate candidates for the upper house with the lower chamber still exercising the right of selection...
...Madison and his friends favored election for a fixed term by the national legislature, the states'-rights caucus argued for election by state legislatures or executives, while James Wilson was almost alone in favoring direct public election, and in despair ever the possibility of compromise even suggested an electoral college of 15 chosen by lot from the national legislature...
...There was a note of irony in this since everyone present knew who the first occupant of the office would be...
...James Madison observed that the selection would be made in the House nineteen times in twenty and no one seriously disputed his point...
Vol. 8 • April 1961 • No. 2
