The Electoral College bears no relationship to the purposes for which it was implemented & it makes no useful contribution to our country's democratic or republican ideals. At this point, it exists to privilege right wing authoritarianism.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detai ... ns-an-edge
Electoral College
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_Icarus
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Electoral College
"One of the hardest things for me to accept is the fact that Kevin Graham has blonde hair, blue eyes and an English last name. This ugly truth blows any arguments one might have for actual white supremacism out of the water. He's truly a disgrace." - Ajax
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_EAllusion
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Re: Electoral College
One of the things that doesn't get mentioned as often as it should in articles like this is that the electoral college was designed in the context of a Presidential election system that didn't work as intended basically immediately. The idea is that electors would meet in a location, partially just to manage the logistics of an election in society limited to horse-based communication, have a vote among multiple candidates like a traditional contested party convention, and the election would then be thrown to the House among the top 3 candidates. The House election wasn't meant to be a rare contingency plan. That was meant to be part of the normal anticipated process.
Washington was a consensus candidate and then the system broke down due to the formation of the two-party system instantly after his time in office was up. And when the House eventually actually did elect the President, it was an unmitigated disaster.
Yes, the electoral college is designed the way it is to give disproportionate influence to small states (though that disproportionate influence has grown considerably when the US stopped increasing the number of Representatives with population growth as originally intended). Yes, electors no longer exercise independent judgment as a counter-majoritarian check against demagoguery. But even if you could wave those things away with a magic wand, the system is still no where near what it was intended to be. And if it did work that way, it would suck.
It's not a coincidence that when the US has had a heavy hand in designing other country's democracies, they don't set up a system like this.
Washington was a consensus candidate and then the system broke down due to the formation of the two-party system instantly after his time in office was up. And when the House eventually actually did elect the President, it was an unmitigated disaster.
Yes, the electoral college is designed the way it is to give disproportionate influence to small states (though that disproportionate influence has grown considerably when the US stopped increasing the number of Representatives with population growth as originally intended). Yes, electors no longer exercise independent judgment as a counter-majoritarian check against demagoguery. But even if you could wave those things away with a magic wand, the system is still no where near what it was intended to be. And if it did work that way, it would suck.
It's not a coincidence that when the US has had a heavy hand in designing other country's democracies, they don't set up a system like this.