From: stecher@atlas.socsci.umn.edu (Jack Stecher)
Subject: Re: Electoral College
Summary: Where did these assumptions originate?
Organization: Department of Economics, Univ of Minn
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 19:12:07 GMT

Recent posts on the electoral college have asserted that the system was
designed to prevent people from "voting selfishly," and have debated the
merits of such.

How did we get this assumption?  My impression was that the electoral
college was designed because we were voting for a federal, not a national,
office.  The idea was, I thought, that since we were a collection of states
(and not a single nation), each state should have a voice in selecting
the leader of the confederacy.

Suppose, for example, the Secretary General of the UN were elected by worldwide
popular vote.  Residents of the Vatican might object that they have little
clout compared with, say, the population of China, and little assurance that
such a system would protect their sovereignty.  The fact that the Vatican has
fewer residents than China is mitigated by the fact that the UN's authority is
not (at least in principle) directly over the citizenry of either.  Such was
the conception, as I had understood it, behind giving unequal representation
in the Legislature:  larger states were granted extra Representatives, but
the same number of Senators.  The principle of representation having been
settled for the Legislature, the founders quite naturally used the same concept
for the role of the states in selecting the chief executive.

This is not to say that the US has remained a loose federation, with respect
for states' rights.  Perhaps now that the federal government has become a
national government, there is reason to change our electoral concept to that
of a national election.  Such, I believe, was the reasoning behind the 17th
Amendment, when the role of the federal government seemed sufficiently expanded
to warrant direct election of Senators as an accountability measure.

As a libertarian, I'm inclined to favor repealing the electoral college along
these lines:  The Presidency is a national office, and has been such at least
since Woodrow Wilson.  As such, the electoral college serves little function,
but costs the taxpayers extra money.  We libertarians oppose superfluous
government, and the electoral college seems an example of just that.

My libertarian arguments in favor of keeping the electoral college goes
something like this:  The fact that the Presidency is de facto a national
office in no way makes it such de jure.  Repealing the electoral college
would entrench a notion that is contrary to the principle of decentralization
and encourages expanded federal authority over individuals' lives.  Moreover,
when we move away from the founders' conception of the role of the federal
government, we reinforce the dangerous notion that the Constitution is somehow
dated, and must adapt to current circumstances.  A better way to tinker with
the Constitution would be to reinforce the limitation on the Presidency as
a federal, not national, office, perhaps by replacing the electoral college
representation with a one-state one-vote system.  Even this would undermine
our current balance of larger states deserving a greater say versus states'
rights.  Perhaps a better reform would be to amend the Constitution to permit
secession, so that states needn't think as the federal government as anything
like a national government.

I derive the foregoing arguments based on what I'd been taught was the reason
for the electoral college.  Now, I read claims that the electoral college was
created to prevent selfish voting.  Did I learn civics incorrectly, or were
the posters just blowing hot air?

Jack Stecher
stecher@atlas.socsci.umn.edu
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian