Asklemmy

Source: I teach U.S. history at the high school and collegiate level.

The Electoral College was one of the original pieces of the U.S. democratic system created when our constitution was drafted and ratified in the 1780s. It’s important to remember that the drafters of the constitution were very much experimenting with a modern representative democracy based on the values of the Enlightenment. So to the extent that the Electoral College seems odd, it’s largely a result of the context of its creation - namely, we weren’t sure exactly how our system would function yet.

One of the key tensions that the framers were trying to address in the 1780s was the struggle between anarchy and tyranny. That is, finding the right balance between giving too much power to common people and too much power to the elites. The framers thought that giving too much power to common people would create a “tyranny of the majority” and result in things like demagogue politicians and threatened property rights (the foundation of a stable economic system). However, too much power to elites would result in the same sort of tyranny that we lived under when we were part of the British imperial system.

So one way that they tried to strike the right balance with federal elections was to have popular elections, but to give a group of elites veto power over whomever was elected by the masses. So if someone was elected by the masses who was grossly incompetent for President, the Electoral College, a body composed of elites, could choose someone else. This was dangerous. The Electoral College would risk a crisis in the U.S. democratic system if they rejected the will of the people. So although they could veto the results of a popular election, in theory they would only risk doing so in dire circumstances.

There is also a commonly understood function of the Electoral College that is not as commonly taught and is still controversial in some circles to point out: it was created to enhance the power of slave holding states. Electoral College votes are given to states based on their population. So the more populous your state is the more votes you get. Southern states wanted to count their enslaved persons when it came to allocating Electoral College votes, but they didn’t want to recognize them as citizens or people. They threatened to walk from the brand new union if they weren’t allowed to count their enslaved population for Electoral purposes. So this resulted in something called the Three Fifths compromise where slave-holding states could count each slave as 3/5 of a freed man for Electoral purposes, but they didn’t have to recognize them as citizens or people. I would argue that the fact that the Electoral College has consistently entrenched white supremacy in the U.S. has been one key reason behind its staying power in our governmental system.

Speaking of the modern version of the Electoral College, some political scientists claim that benefits are: -it forces politicians to campaign even in small, less populous regions of the nation rather than focusing on the large population centers. -I’m some cases (like Obama’s election in 2012) it can amplify majorities in the popular vote and make it seem like an electoral winner has a stronger popular mandate -It tends to result in two large parties that must put together broadly popular coalitions in order to win. This is in contrast to something like a parliamentary system when you often get a greater variety of more specialized parties. The claim is that, in theory, this makes parties more moderate and broadly appealing.

Some political scientists point out that some drawbacks are: -It disproportionately benefits regions of the country that are predominantly white, rural, and conservative (and, frankly, racist and patriarchal) -It allows conservatives to exercise minority rule by still winning elections even though they haven’t won the national popular vote in many years. -It dilutes the will of the people by allowing a candidate to become president without winning the popular vote. This has happened twice since 2000.

At the time the electoral college was devised, the only way to reliably get an important message from a state capital to the federal capital was to send a trusted messenger on a horse. The electors are those trusted messengers.

There are benefits?

As a US citizen, it seems like it should be relegated to the last century and not dragged any further into the future.

It helps those with power keep it. Benefits to everyone else, that it may have had, have been eroded by time, demographics, and or technology.

Like most weird things with the American federal government, you have to remember that at the founding, the individual states were much more autonomous, more similar to individual countries than they are now.

Primarily, the electoral college was one of many compromises made between the states so that all of them would sign on and join the union. It was deliberately designed to give smaller states a disproportionate say in the presidential election, to sooth their fears that they would end up being controlled by the larger more populous states (again, at the time, people would have identified much more strongly with their state than with the federal union.) So, the benefit was that it gave the smaller states enough of a say that they were willing to join the union.

If you conceive of the United States as a single nation state, which many today do, but was not historically a universal norm, then there's no real benefit and only serves to help Republicans maintain power, since less populous states tend to vote Republican. This is what most people tend to believe, especially people on the left, and why you largely see most people online oppose the electoral college.

If you conceive of these United States as a group of states and not just a giant nation state, then the electoral college allows the separate states some hedge against being dominated by their larger neighbors. Almost no one actually believes this. You'll mostly see Republicans bring up this argument, but by and large they're hypocritical about it(they'll use states rights when it serves them, and federal power when convenient). There are some people who do truly think that the states should be left to govern themselves, as a matter of principle and not just as part of a political game to get their way when convenient, but they are very rare.

EC is great when you've got too many people to tally votes efficiently. So basically it's only use since the advent of the telegraph is to ensure mega cities don't disproportionately affect rural locations via election results. With EC, rural states have more weight than they otherwise would. I still think we should switch to a popular vote for elections.

What I’ve heard is that it prevents “tyranny of the majority”, whereby the majority would just get their way 100% of the time.

I know that sounds like exactly what should happen, but I think the thought is that sometimes the majority does not vote in the country’s best interest.

As an exaggerated example, say there is some budget concern that would allocate all money to urban business and zero to rural. Depriving rural business like farms of this funding would cripple the country’s food reserves. But the majority live in urban environments, so they’d vote selfishly and fuck up the country. So rural voters are given more power to balance it out.

Now in my opinion - I don’t care about any of that. And I think if the majority votes one way and fucks up the country, so be it. Gotta learn to vote in the country’s interest and not your own.

There are no benefits to it now...unless you are part of the minority who exploits and benefits from it.

I am an American. There are none other than ensuring the ruling class continues to wield unbalanced power over the masses.

Upon the founding of this country the office of president was very severely limited in what its function was (technically still is, which has been the great grift of American politics—true power is in congress but no one pays attention to congressional elections).

Nowadays the presidency has expanded a bit from its original design, to the point that it really should be a directly elected office, but it is very difficult to change the constitution of this country so the electoral college remains.

It's an interesting conversation topic. It's easy to mock for being backward and racist. It serves as a good cautionary tale for other governments....

the main 'advantage' i believe is that it allows non-voting people to lend weight to the votes of those who do vote. it allows states to disenfranchise voters, without that impacting their state's influence on national politics. it also allows smaller states a larger proportional influence than their population would make reasonable.

personally, i don't see those as advantages, but i'm not some wealthy slave owner from the 1700s.

You've pretty much got it already, no benefits.

Seeing how many times it's fucked us. I say it's an in lubed dildo that's meant to bring minority rule over the people

The only benefit today is for the GOP. They would never win the presidency without it they are so unpopular.

Drama, mostly.

Seriously, the reason we keep it is that it’s written into the constitution. Now is not the time to use either method to amend, so we’re stuck with it.

There’s no reason for it to exist, though I can see its utility before communications were instant.

Currently: None. I guess you could swing a semi-benefit that it gives more power to smaller states so they don’t “get overrun” by the big boys, but the way most states decide their electors, this happens anyways and would probably be better without the EC. Unfortunately to get rid of it requires a Constitutional Amendment which is very hard to do in this country (only 27 times in 230 years under the Constitution, 11 of which were proposed with the Constitution). There are a couple sneaky ways states are trying to get around this. I think CGP Grey has a video or two all about the Electoral College if you’re interested

Historically: Actually more than people think. It was difficult to spread information around the nation cause it was really big for the technology at the time. The optimistic idea behind it was that a state could hold their elections, the electors would then be informed what the desires of their electorate would be, then they would spend a month moseying up to the Capital (originally NYC, then Philadelphia, then DC) and once they got there they could then vote for the President using not only the desires of their electorate, but the most up to date political information. The cynical view is that this allowed the wealthy and powerful to elect other wealthy and powerful men to be President. Real history probably places the true reason somewhere in between

I'm not sufficiently educated on the subject so I can't argue either way, but the defense I usually hear is that the sparse farmland states and the densely populated city states have different needs, and that the majority of the population living in cities shouldn't be making decisions for the rest of the country. So it gives each state an equal say in the executive branch; Otherwise the most populated states hold all the power.

If there's a problem with this defense of its pro's, please educate me. I'm not being sarcastic.

Originally, the benefit was that the president would be chosen by the established powerful men, not the filthy proles.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Two_of_the_United_States_Constitution#Clause_3:_Electoral_College and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_College#History

I mean it seems like you understand the system perfectly.

It helps candidates that don't actually have a policy win elections anyway. Helps the side that keeps losing popular elections get into office regardless.