The History Behind the U . S . Electoral College
Ana Alicia Garza
In 2016 , television personality , Donald Trump , and former Secretary of State , Hillary Clinton , ran a tight race that became one of the most contested and unruly in US history . Despite the emergence of Russian interference and public scandals , Clinton received almost three million more votes than her opponent but the election was won by former president , Donald Trump (“ 2016 Presidential Election Results ,” 2017 ). To many , this is awfully undemocratic but the Electoral College has allowed this to happen for centuries .
During the 1787 Constitutional Convention , the Founding Fathers met to discuss what presidential elections would look like for their country and how to make them as politically palatable to all states . When debating whether or not to introduce a simple popular vote , many believed that the majority of the nation ' s voters would lack the ability to be fully informed of each candidate and who they righteously believed would be best for the country ( VanFossen , 2020 ). Other proposed ideas gave congress and legislators the power to choose but they were ultimately deemed incompetent due to their suseptability to pick a certain candidate for self-indulgent reasons .
Eventually , the Convention came up with the Electoral College , which consists of a group of electors ( equal to the amount of representatives in congress ) who de facto vote for their state ’ s popular vote winner . However , there was still more to consider before ratifying that system . Late 18th century US faced issues of slavery and suffrage which would grant the North more power over the South in a direct election ( Amar , 2020 ). In spite of this , James Madison proposed the idea which is now known as the Three-fifths Clause : each slave would count as three-fifths of a person when counting the population of a certain state to determine the number of electors that they are entitled to ( Roos , 2019 ).
The Electoral College was a “ glued-together solution ” to a problem that the Constitutional Convention couldn ’ t solve ( CNBC , 2020 ) and it has proven to affect democracy on multiple occasions . The 2016 election was just one of five different instances where the popular vote did not correspond to the winning candidate . It is entirely contradictory to have inaugurated five presidents which were not wanted by the majority of voters . As stated by Jesse Wegman , a member of the New York Times editorial board , the system in place at the moment is a clear indication that democracy in the US is “ not fair , not equal and not representative ” ( Gonchar & Daniels 2020 ).
Even though the system is in place with the purpose of balancing the interest of each state — regardless of their population — candidates end up campaigning merely in swing states which further challenges the democratic aspects of the system . Historically Republican or Democratic states lack the attention from candidates who can already count on the electoral votes from that particular state . It goes without saying that there are pros and cons to each electoral system seeing as they all meet different priorities . Nonetheless , the Electoral College was the result of a compromise that stemmed from racist principles and an attempt to cover up for them . Essentially , each citizen ’ s vote carries a different weight and it all lies on the population of the state they live in and the candidate that they are in favor of . The concept of electors being the ones who ultimately vote for president goes to show that the system itself does not accurately represent the voice of the people and it negates everything the US supposedly stands for .
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