The World According to Opa

The Electoral College is an antiquated aspect of the Constitution of the United States. It no longer serves it’s intended purposes, if in fact it ever did, and it stands as an impediment to true democracy. It is long overdue for revocation, but will probably survive as long as the union itself survives.

It was 1956. I was twelve years old and in the 6th grade. Mr. Wasden was our teacher, my first male teacher, and he was a bigger-than-life role model for me. He was tall, a strappingly handsome, square-jawed, third-generation immigrant of Swedish extraction. In the neighbourhood of my youth, which was in South Salt Lake City, Utah, many were also descended from Scandinavian pioneers. So he was very relatable and, given that ours was a Mormon community, he could have sasily been blood-related, an uncle or distant cousin. In hind-sight, he was the physical personification of the 1960s cartoon character on TV, Dudley Do-right. Never mind that Do-right was a Canadian Mountie. I wanted to be as much like Mr. Wasden as I could.

We were learning about U.S. history and past Presidents. It was after our return from Christmas vacation that year and could have been close to either Lincoln’s or Washington’s birthdays. Maybe that was why Mr. Wasden had chosen to teach us about this. This was years before the two calendar holidays were combined to officially commemorate Presidents’ Day as a single national holiday. It was also soon after Dwight D. Eisenhower had won his second term as President of the United States, a heady time for most Americans. Eisenhower, a national hero of the Second World War, was very popular. He had won 58 percent of the popular vote and carried 41 states. You may recall, if you are old enough, that there were only 48 states back then. I know I’m right about that. I just looked it up.

I remember, just like it was yesterday, how astonished we all were when Mr. Wasden told us about the Electoral College. None of us wanted to believe that a presidential candidate could win an election without winning the most popular votes. “But don’t worry,” he said. “It’s only happened twice before in the entire history of the United States, and it’s not likely to ever happen again.”

He was wrong wasn’t he? Not only had he forgotten about the election in 1824 when the House of Representatives met to elect John Q. Adams over Andrew Jackson. It has also happened twice recently.

The election of 1824 was the only time in our history that the House had had to elect the President under provisions of the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The vote was held on February 9, 1825. Although Jackson had received more popular votes than Adams, neither candidate had a majority of electoral votes.

“The President was last chosen by electors over the popular vote back in 1888,” Mr. Wasden told us. “That’s the year that Benjamin Harrison was elected president even though Grover Cleveland had won the popular vote. Before that, it happened the first time in 1876 when Samuel Tilden beat Rutherford B. Hayes in the popular vote but Hayes had won the Electoral College vote.”

Since these three historic happenings, it’s happened twice again… once when George W. Bush won over Al Gore in the 2000 election and again in 2016 with the upset win of Donald Trump over the favored-to-win candidate, Hillary Clinton. Of course, Donald Trump claims that he would have won the popular vote too had there not been so many, over three million of them, illegal immigrants fraudulently voting for Clinton.

The electoral system, for those of you who do not know, is a legacy of the Constitution. It was part of an agreement between the states, including Southern states that had more slaves than free men who were eligible to vote. The Constitution was proposed over the existing Articles of Confederacy to better unite the country. This was during a period of time when most citizens lived far from the few larger cities that existed back then. The Framers of the Constitution rationalised that few citizens of the new country could be expected to know much about the leading political figures of the time, or much at all about issues that involved the nation as a whole. So they decided to leave the “official” decision about who should be President to wise elites like themselves. The Framers thought that they would be a check on demagogues and popular passions of the day. The system also served to ally fears that they knew smaller-population, slave states had about Northern states making future decisions for them. Accordingly, they considered it necessary to ensure the Constitution’s ratification.

The system seems antiquated today. Does it not? Of course, citizens of smaller-population states argue that it protects their interests over the bigger states like California, New York and Texas. But, more than just protecting their interests, it gives these states a decided advantage in Presidential elections. As such, their argument is based on the belief that “the ends justify the means.” In my opinion, the idea doesn’t work like the Founders thought it would. Because of it, we have a would-be demagogue in the White House, the most unpopular President ever, and one that was elected largely based on popular passions of the minority.

My conclusion is that the electoral system is outdated. It is highly unlikely, in my option, to ever be abandoned, however. This is because it serves the political purposes of States Rights people. Notwithstanding, it should be abandoned by Constitutional amendment to make manifest true democracy in America — One Man, One Vote.

Please feel free to post a comment on this, whether you agree or disagree.