The Electoral College developed at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, was a compromise among plans for a national popular. The Electoral College acts as a State check on Federal power and mob rule, protecting smaller States ensuring Liberty and justice for all Americans, the premise of the U.S. Constitution.

Alexander Hamilton speaking of the Electoral College: “If the manner of it be not perfect, it is at least excellent.”  

Reason & Value of the Electoral College

What is “undemocratic” is an agreement that means that even if every single voter in a state voted against a presidential candidate who won the national popular vote, the state would still have to give all its electoral votes to that candidate. --Hans von Spakovsky  

The Enduring Value of the Electoral College - By Jeff Jacoby ...In some democracies, such as France, Brazil, or Ghana, the head of state is elected directly by the people. That has never been the system in the United States. At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the framers debated at length the question of how presidents should be chosen. In the end they rejected the idea of electing presidents in a single national plebiscite. They settled, rather, on a federal plan — one in which Americans would come together to choose a president (and vice president), but would do so as citizens of their respective states. That compromise reflected America’s fundamental identity not as a single broad mass of people, but as a union of individual states, each with its own social, political, and cultural character. Massachusetts, Montana, and Mississippi are very different entities. The Electoral College system ensures that those differences are respected, while guaranteeing the right of all adult citizens to participate in the vote. Like anything manmade, the Electoral College has its drawbacks, which its foes loudly bewail. But give those drawbacks a closer look, and they turn out to be fairly insubstantial.

   According to the U.S. Constitution, every four years the president and vice president are chosen by a group of electors, collectively called the Electoral College. The Constitution says electors can’t be anyone in a federal office, but otherwise leaves it up to the individual states to regulate. Today, there are 538 electors. That’s one for each member of the House of Representatives, one for each Senator, and three for the District of Columbia.

   How Electors Are Selected: Every state appoints its electors according to its own laws. Most state parties select their number of electors at the county, district, or state conventions. On Election Day, whoever wins the popular vote in the state typically gets all electors. But results are not certified until the electors meet on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December.

   Faithless Electors: The process of electing the president is usually smooth and transparent – but there have been exceptions. In some cases, electors go against the popular vote result in their state and vote for whoever they want. But electors don’t break faith often. When they do, they usually don’t vote for the other leading candidate. Instead, it’s usually to make a political statement. ...In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled states do have the constitutional power to force electors to vote along with their popular vote. And although every state can prevent faithless electors, they are not required to do so.

   The small states, in particular, worried about a direct election. They were sure that they would be constantly outvoted by the large states.

   Roger Sherman of Connecticut believed that the “largest State will have the best chance for the appointment.” Charles Pinckney of South Carolina agreed. “An Election by the people,” he observed, “[is] liable to the most obvious & striking objections. They will be led by a few active & designing men. The most populous States by combining in favor of the same individual will be able to carry their points.”

   At one point, another delegate from Delaware admonished the large states rather forcefully. “I do not, gentlemen, trust you,” Gunning Bedford thundered. “If you possess the power, the abuse of it could not be checked; and what then would prevent you from exercising it to our destruction?”

   Ultimately, the delegates brokered a compromise. As it operates today, our elections are a blend of democracy (state-level elections among individuals on Election Day) and federalism (an election among the states themselves in the Electoral College vote). Large states have more electoral votes, reflecting their greater populations. But small states are guaranteed a minimum of three votes, no matter what.

   The Electoral College has come under attack in recent months. It’s been called archaic, a relic of slavery—and even worse. Some of these allegations are in danger of becoming conventional wisdom, yet nothing could be further from the truth. To the contrary, the delegates had at least one, much bigger concern that summer: How could the needs of large vs. small states be balanced? They took the matter seriously, discussing the issue of presidential selection on 21 separate days at the Constitutional Convention. The matter prompted more than 30 distinct votes.

   The Electoral College was created with much thought and great care. If nothing else, the system deserves serious study before it is too casually thrown away by a generation that didn’t first take time to understand it.  

Why the National Popular Vote (NPV) Violates Equal Statehood

Federalism: In the United States, the Constitution grants certain powers to both the U.S. government and the state governments. These powers are granted by the Tenth Amendment, which states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”  

 Do You Understand the Electoral College? - PragerU Video By Tara Ross ...The President and Vice President of the United States are not chosen by a nationwide, popular vote of the American people; rather, they are chosen by 538 electors. This process is spelled out in the United States Constitution.
   Why didn't the Founders just make it easy, and let the Presidential candidate with the most votes claim victory? Why did they create, and why do we continue to need, this Electoral College? The answer is critical to understanding not only the Electoral College, but also America.
   The Founders had no intention of creating a pure majority-rule democracy. They knew from careful study of history what most have forgotten today, or never learned: pure democracies do not work. They implode. Democracy has been colorfully described as two wolves and a lamb voting on what's for dinner. In a pure democracy, bare majorities can easily tyrannize the rest of a country. The Founders wanted to avoid this at all costs.
   ...The Presidential election happens in two phases. The first phase is purely democratic. We hold 51 popular elections every presidential election year: one in each state and one in D.C. On Election Day in 2012, you may have thought you were voting for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, but you were really voting for a slate of presidential electors. In Rhode Island, for example, if you voted for Barack Obama, you voted for the state's four Democratic electors; if you voted for Mitt Romney you were really voting for the state's four Republican electors.
   Part Two of the election is held in December. And it is this December election among the states' 538 electors, not the November election, which officially determines the identity of the next President. At least 270 votes are needed to win.
   Why is this so important? Because the system encourages coalition-building and national campaigning. In order to win, a candidate must have the support of many different types of voters, from various parts of the country. Winning only the South or the Midwest is not good enough. You cannot win 270 electoral votes if only one part of the country is supporting you. But if winning were only about getting the most votes, a candidate might concentrate all of his efforts in the biggest cities or the biggest states. Why would that candidate care about what people in West Virginia or Iowa or Montana think?
   ...The Electoral College is an ingenious method of selecting a President for a great, diverse republic such as our own -- it protects against the tyranny of the majority, encourages coalition building and discourages voter fraud. Our Founders were proud of it! We can be too. 

Blue States Ready to Subvert Electoral College - The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact means the winner takes all votes. - By Lewis Morris - The weapon of choice in their effort to destroy one of our last vestiges of federalism is the Compact. You may recall that the Compact, which began in 2007, calls on its state signatories to pledge their electoral votes in presidential elections to whichever candidate wins the national popular vote. The Compact goes into effect when there are enough states on board to reach 270 electoral votes. It currently has 181. It’s unlikely to reach the magic number by the 2020 election, but it hopes to be a game changer by 2024. Fortunately, the Compact has pretty much exhausted the pool of true-blue states, making the going tougher for states with split legislatures that are solid red. Republican voters in general don’t have a problem with the Electoral College. 

   ...What would you think as a voter if the majority of your state voted for one candidate, but the state decided that, since the other candidate won the national vote, your vote was being awarded to someone you did not support? You wouldn’t feel like your vote mattered, that’s for sure. If anything, 2016 proves that we do need an Electoral College. Clinton almost had it locked up by campaigning in only a handful of urban areas — mostly the big blue vote buckets like LA, NYC, Chicago, and San Francisco. None of this can be explained to leftists, though. They cannot win in the arena of ideas, so they want to change the rules of the game. So far, they have been very clever about exploiting the so-called problems of the Electoral College. The first thing to remember is that there is no problem with the Electoral College. Except if you are a Democrat who can only win by pitting segments of the nation against one another.

 

Why the 'Excellent' Electoral College Is Well Worth Keeping - by Jeff Jacoby ...Critics of the Electoral College denounce it as undemocratic — but what could be less democratic than state legislatures deliberately nullifying the choice of a majority of their state’s voters? For a nation like ours — ideologically quarrelsome, geographically vast, socially diverse — the advantages of the Electoral College far outweigh its drawbacks. It guarantees that no one can become president without demonstrating an appeal that crosses state, regional, and communal lines.

   ...Above all, it balances federalism with democracy: It preserves the central role of the states in American life without sacrificing the principle of one-person, one-vote. With good reason, Alexander Hamilton pronounced the Electoral College system an “excellent” arrangement. With good reason it has endured for 225 years. Presidents come and presidents go, but the Constitution’s system for choosing them is here to stay. 

 

Election 2016 Numbers

Election 2016 By State

Election 2016 By County

 

John Michael Saraceno: This is one of the best cases for the Electoral College... So easy a progressive can understand!

For all the people who fell asleep in civics class...

1: There are 3,141 counties in the United States. Trump won 3,084 of them. Clinton won 57.

2: There are 62 counties in New York State. Trump won 46 of them. Clinton won 16.

3: Clinton won the popular vote by approx. 1.5 million votes.

4: In the 5 counties that encompass NYC, (Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Richmond & Queens) Clinton received well over 2 million more votes than Trump. (Clinton only won 4 of these counties; Trump won Richmond) Therefore these 5 counties alone, more than accounted for Clinton winning the popular vote of the entire country.

5: These 5 counties comprise 319 square miles. The United States is comprised of 3,797,000 square miles.

6: When you have a country that encompasses almost 4 million square miles of territory, it would be ludicrous to even suggest that the vote of those who inhabit a mere 319 square miles should dictate the outcome of a national election.

Large, densely populated Democrat cities (NYC, Chicago, LA, etc) don’t & shouldn’t speak for the rest of the country. And this children is WHY you have an Electoral College. It's a safety net so that EVERYONE's vote counts.

 

 

 

Why the Electoral College prevents the Tyranny of the Majority

Exodus 18:17-27 is the basic foundation of our Republic and its premise of how representative Republic is framed. The Electoral College was designed to keep this foundation from being undermined by preventing parts of the country being tyrannical over the other parts.

Exodus 18:17-27 (BBE) - And Moses' father-in-law said to him, What you are doing is not good. Your strength and that of the people will be completely used up: this work is more than you are able to do by yourself. Give ear now to my suggestion, and may God be with you: you are to be the people's representative before God, taking their causes to him: Teaching them his rules and his laws, guiding them in the way they have to go, and making clear to them the work they have to do. But for the rest, take from among the people able men, such as have the fear of God, true men hating profits wrongly made; and put such men over them, to be captains of thousands, captains of hundreds and of fifties and of tens; And let them be judges in the causes of the people at all times: and let them put before you all important questions, but in small things let them give decisions themselves: in this way, it will be less hard for you, and they will take the weight off you. If you do this, and God gives approval, then you will be able to go on without weariness, and all this people will go to their tents in peace. So Moses took note of the words of his father-in-law, and did as he had said. And he made selection of able men out of all Israel, and made them heads over the people, captains of thousands, captains of hundreds and of fifties and of tens. And they were judges in the causes of the people at all times: the hard questions they put before Moses; but on every small point they gave decisions themselves. And Moses let his father-in-law go away, and he went back to his land.

The Hijacking of a Presidential Election - By Jon N. Hall - ...Because Trump didn’t get any electoral votes in California and New York, when we subtract the electoral votes of those two states, Clinton won just 143 electoral votes in the rest of the nation while Trump’s electoral total remains unchanged at 304. In the Electoral College, which is what we use to elect our presidents, Trump beats Clinton by more than 2-to-1 when California and New York are excluded. Even if the votes of the seven faithless electors were given to Clinton, Trump would still have trounced Clinton by more than 2-1 in the 48 states of “real America.”

   It takes a bare minimum of 270 electoral votes to win the presidency. Had Clinton received all 46 electoral votes in the blue wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, she would have gotten 273 electoral votes. She then could afford to lose only the least populous of those three states, Wisconsin, and still prevail, but only if she were also awarded all seven votes of the faithless electors. In which case, Clinton would have won with a grand total of 270 electoral votes.

   ...Some progressives think we should junk the Electoral College and elect presidents with the popular vote. Other progressives think we should rejigger the College and allocate its votes in a way that is closer to the popular vote. But if one believes in federalism, the above data argues just the opposite. We can’t have the preferences of two populous coastal states being imposed on the other 48 states merely because they have some tiny majority. That’s especially so when those two states are so very different from the rest of the country. Let California have its tent cities, its free healthcare for illegal aliens, and its San Francisco values, but leave us “hicks” in the heartland alone.

Given the above, I think we can say that in 2016 the Electoral College worked as intended, and that America got the correct president, the one she needed. Even so, the electoral vote is derived from the popular vote, so there’s still the nagging little question of what the legitimate popular vote count really was.

 

Preventing 'The Tyranny of the Majority' - By Edwin J. Feulner ...Being a republic, we also don’t pick our president through a direct, majority-take-all vote. We have an Electoral College. And a lot of liberals don’t like that. Their attacks on the College are nothing new, but the defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016 renewed their fury. After all, as they never tire of pointing out, Mrs. Clinton captured more of the popular vote than Donald Trump did. They see the Electoral College as an impediment to their political victories, therefore it’s got to go.

   ...Were it not for the Electoral College, presidential candidates could act as if many Americans don’t even exist. They could simply campaign in a small handful of states with big populations. Who would care what the people in Iowa think? Or Wyoming? Or any number of other states with smaller populations? The people in “flyover country” don’t get enough attention as it is, but without the Electoral College, they’d be completely at the mercy of the majority.  

No, the Electoral College Is Not a ‘Shadow of Slavery’s Power’ - by Tara Ross - The discussions at the Constitutional Convention were shaped more by the delegates’ study of history and political philosophy, as well as their own experiences with Parliament and the state legislatures. They wanted to avoid the mistakes that had been made in other governments. They sought to establish a better constitution that would stand the test of time.
...The delegates were discussing separation of powers. Slavery was not their focus. Indeed, the debates about the presidential election process never focused on slavery. Instead, the delegates discussed whether legislative selection or a national popular vote was preferable. The division was between large and small states, not between slave and free states.
   Some of the larger states had slaves, some did not. Some of the smaller states had slaves, some did not. All of the small states, however—slave and free—were worried about the dangers of a simple national popular vote. As slavery opponent Gunning Bedford of Delaware had said so eloquently, the small states simply feared that they would be outvoted by the large states time and time again.
   The Electoral College had everything to do with balancing power between large and small states in America’s new experiment in self-governance. It had nothing to do with slavery. What an inconvenient truth for those who would like to eliminate the system.
Excerpts from “The Indispensable Electoral College: How the Founders’ Plan Saves Our Country from Mob Rule” (Regnery Gateway, 2017).