CDR: Electoral college (was: Re: More blather from the DEMS on FL]

[Trei, Peter]

> evanmcmullen at yahoo.com] wrote:
> 
> what the hell is the electoral college still doing in existance? it
> should have gone out w/ unlimited presidential terms.... voting with
> their conscience my ass.... voting in a partisan fashion is more like it
> 
[Learn to use your 'Shift' key; it's there for a reason.]

I expect that we still have an electoral college because amending the
Constitution is a very laborious process, and fixing it has no constituancy;
one party is about as likely to benefit from it as another.

As to why we have one in the first place....

At the founding of the US, the franchise was far from universal; women,
slaves, and non-landowners were excluded - it was felt that such 
people were either congenitally unfit, or (in the case of the propertyless)
too shiftless to exercise a vote responsibly. Voting was regarded 
as a very important act, and it was neccesary to restrict it to an
educated, socially responsible elite, to whom the welfare of their society
was a personal interest (this limited franchise also existed in England).

At the same time, the FF wanted to have a government which 
represented the people as a whole.

There was a considerable difference to the formation of society in the
different states; in the North, there were a very large number of small
family farms, the heads of which each qualified as voters. In the South,
most of the land was owned by a much smaller number of owners of
huge plantations, which might have dozens or hundreds of people, but
only one landowner who could vote. Thus, the ratio of voters to the 
general populace differed between North and South.

At the time of the Constitutional convention, Virginia was the most
populous state, but it fell into the Southern mode. If all votes were 
weighed equally in selecting the president, Virginia and the other 
populous plantation system states would get the short end of the 
stick. 

Virginians were a powerful group in the CC, and rammed
through the electoral college system. In this, the number of 
electoral votes was proportional to the total number of people 
(not just voters) in the state (Indians were not counted, and 
slaves counted as 3/5s of a free person each).

As the franchise was gradually expanded, the role of the 
electoral college has become more and more irrelevant.
Since the Civil Rights movement of the early 60's (the last time
a large group gained real voting rights) , it's been about as useful 
as an appendix

This is the first election since then that it's been a problem. That's
why we still have it.

Peter Trei