What’s All This Electoral College Stuff Anyway?

by Thomas Reiner, ©2024

(Apr. 2, 2024) — “The Electoral College needs to go, because it’s made our society less and less democratic.” — Pete Buttigieg

Once upon a time, American junior high school students were required to take snoozefest Civics classes which at the time seemed more worthless than Algebra. Article this and Article that cloaked in cryptic and confusing language.  The worst culprit was the lesson about the oft-maligned Electoral College, which is the Constitutional method we use to elect the President of the United States. College? In our rapidly forming minds, College was for Keggers. Most of us finally figured it out and we are now Legal Voters^TM. Apparently, Mr. Buttigieg slept through class and still professes ignorance of the exceptional brilliance and cohesiveness of the Electoral College.  Even Arizona has an active politician who has actually voted against the Electoral College.  

Let’s start with this “democratic” stuff that Mr. Buttigieg is huffing about.  The United States has always been a Constitutional Republic, not a Democracy. Democracies are an unstable form of government that are doomed to an eventual death of Oligarchy or Dictatorship.  Pure votes are subject to the political whims of the moment which leads to instability the quicker the winds shift. Ancient Athens was a pure Democracy and went poof.  Venezuela went from democracy to dictatorship in about two nanoseconds.  Poof! The French Revolution went from les droits de l’homme (the rights of man) to the guillotine in only four years. Poof! Constitutional Republics purposely slow things down, allowing our intellectual side to take control over our animal instincts.  

Now for this popular vote stuff versus our beautiful Electoral College.  A nationwide popular vote just naturally seems like the fair way to go.  Right?  Bzzzt…Wrong!  America is composed of States which have individual needs and are entitled to a proportionate say as to who the Big Cheese shall be.  Using a 1790 example, America was born out of thirteen Colonies into States, not an amorphous population of four million people. People in Vermont (population 85,000) had an entirely different view of America than the more populous Virginians (747,000). Maple syrup is different from cotton. A popularly elected President would care only about Cotton but the Electoral College-elected President would care 90% about Cotton and 10% Maple Syrup.  States require proportional representation in the election of the President.  That is why the Electoral College is more fair than popular election and why the Colonies agreed to join America in the first place.  We are the United States of America, not the United People of America.

There is a more ominous reason for the Electoral College. Current trends are huge populations centralizing in urban areas typically within a handful of coastal states.  However, the majority of states are not coastal and many have rural ambitions. A “Democratic” Popular Election would forever lock out or drown out the voices of the internal States. Candidates would have no need to visit the “flyover” states ever again. Historically, this could eventually lead to Civil War where these States insist on leaving the Union just as the Colonies separated from the King.  Please be careful about what you think you know.

The title is an homage to the wonderful Bob Pease who wrote “What’s All This…Stuff Anyway” articles for Electronic Design which were both technical and humorous.  We miss you, Bob.