I was debating this subject with some of my friends. It is in my view that’s the US is at a point the Electoral College should be done away with, relying on popular vote for determining the presidential candidate. We came close to seeing that with the last election.
There argument is that 5 main cities would basically control the outcome of the vote. I see it in terms a glass jar: of the 291,275,494 living in the US the eligible 212,688,715 people each put a vote in for the candidate of their choice. Whomever has the most votes wins. The one aspect I would personally change is that in order to vote a person has to pass the basic test one takes to be a citizen of this country: basic history, political understanding, etc.
With regards to the Electoral College consider what the founding fathers were trying to solve. They faced the difficult question of how to elect a president in a nation that:
- was composed of thirteen large and small States jealous of their own rights and powers and suspicious of any central national government
- contained only 4,000,000 people spread up and down a thousand miles of Atlantic seaboard barely connected by transportation or communication (so that national campaigns were impractical even if they had been thought desirable)
- believed, under the influence of such British political thinkers as Henry St John Bolingbroke, that political parties were mischievous if not downright evil
How, then, to choose a president without political parties, without national campaigns, and without upsetting the carefully designed balance between the presidency and the Congress on one hand and between the States and the federal government on the other?
The Constitutional Convention considered several possible methods of selecting a president.
- One idea was to have the Congress choose the president. This idea was rejected, however, because some felt that making such a choice would be too divisive an issue and leave too many hard feelings in the Congress. Others felt that such a procedure would invite unseemly political bargaining, corruption, and perhaps even interference from foreign powers. Still others felt that such an arrangement would upset the balance of power between the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.
- A second idea was to have the State legislatures select the president. This idea, too, was rejected out of fears that a president so beholden to the State legislatures might permit them to erode federal authority and thus undermine the whole idea of a federation.
- A third idea was to have the president elected by a direct popular vote. Direct election was rejected not because the Framers of the Constitution doubted public intelligence but rather because they feared that without sufficient information about candidates from outside their State, people would naturally vote for a "favorite son" from their own State or region. At worst, no president would emerge with a popular majority sufficient to govern the whole country. At best, the choice of president would always be decided by the largest, most populous States with little regard for the smaller ones.
- Finally, a so-called "Committee of Eleven" in the Constitutional Convention proposed an indirect election of the president through a College of Electors.
Should the electorial college stay or be discontinued?