lpetrich
Contributor
In my answer to What are the greatest flaws of the Constitution of the United States? - Quora, I wrote about several flaws, with this one being on the top:
The Electoral College.
The Founders considered several possibilities for electing the President, considering such possible electors as the voters, Congresspeople, and state governors. They decided on the Electoral College, and Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper #63 argued for it.
He argued that the electors would be better able to do a careful job of assessing possible candidates than ordinary people would, and that they could do a good job of resisting foreign meddling and demagoguery.
However, the Electoral College has totally failed to live up to AH’s intentions. Soon after the US government got going, the politicians split up into parties, and the EC soon became a rubber-stamp body. In fact, some states mandate that their EC delegations vote for the winning candidate, and electors who fail to do so are sometimes called faithless electors, a rather negative sort of description.
Most recently, Donald Trump was the sort of candidate that AH was worried about. He was supported by a foreign power, he is a demagogue, and his character is so repulsive to many people that many Republicans called themselves “Never Trumpers”.
Aside from that, the EC weights small states more than big states, and many voters’ predictability results in a few “swing states” becoming kingmaker states. Candidates thus spend most of their time trying to woo voters in those states rather than in those that they are very likely to win or lose. It is doubtful that AH would appreciate Presidential elections being decided by those few states that are on the fence.
The Electoral College.
The Founders considered several possibilities for electing the President, considering such possible electors as the voters, Congresspeople, and state governors. They decided on the Electoral College, and Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper #63 argued for it.
He argued that the electors would be better able to do a careful job of assessing possible candidates than ordinary people would, and that they could do a good job of resisting foreign meddling and demagoguery.
However, the Electoral College has totally failed to live up to AH’s intentions. Soon after the US government got going, the politicians split up into parties, and the EC soon became a rubber-stamp body. In fact, some states mandate that their EC delegations vote for the winning candidate, and electors who fail to do so are sometimes called faithless electors, a rather negative sort of description.
Most recently, Donald Trump was the sort of candidate that AH was worried about. He was supported by a foreign power, he is a demagogue, and his character is so repulsive to many people that many Republicans called themselves “Never Trumpers”.
Aside from that, the EC weights small states more than big states, and many voters’ predictability results in a few “swing states” becoming kingmaker states. Candidates thus spend most of their time trying to woo voters in those states rather than in those that they are very likely to win or lose. It is doubtful that AH would appreciate Presidential elections being decided by those few states that are on the fence.
