The Founders Didn’t Want Trump to Happen
How ironic that the structure of the electoral college, which the founders placed in the Constitution to assure that elites would control presidential elections resulted in the mob rule they were trying to prevent.
Were presidents selected through the popular vote rather than the electoral college, Hillary Clinton would be president today. The electoral college is in the Constitution for two main reasons. The first was to assure that interests of the smaller of the original 13 states were not trampled by those of the bigger states. By assigning one electoral vote in the presidential election for each representative and senator, they were assured of somewhat disproportionate influence in the election as even the smallest states, Delaware, Rhode Island and New Hampshire had at 3 electoral votes.
The second reason was that for all of our praise of the United States in leading the way both now and historically as the nation’s leading democracy, the founding fathers did not trust democracy and structured the constitution, state constitutions, state laws, and election law in particular to minimize the political power of most people. In 1791, when the Constitution was adopted, most of the 50% of the population that was female could not vote, slaves – who were most black people in the new country – could not vote, most Native Americans residing within the 13 states could not vote. States had broad latitude to exclude persons from voting on the basis of non-land ownership and later literacy requirements and poll taxes. In summary, in the beginning almost all voters were land-owning white males.
But for the drafters of the Constitution, even that was not sufficient control of elections to national office. Voters in presidential elections were not voting directly for their preferred candidate; rather for an “elector” pledged to vote for the candidate they supported in the “electoral college” convened following the election. Until 1913, U.S. Senators were elected by state legislatures rather than by the voting public. While not a constitutional matter, only recently were presidential primaries influential in the selection of the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. As recently as 1960, when the parties nominated John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, there were only 15 primaries and the vast majority of delegates to conventions were party leaders and leaders selected in state party conventions, not by popular vote.
The United States government of the 1780s was more “democratic” than any other nation in the world, but the notion of democracy was quite severely limited by today’s standards. While the new United States did not suffer from the hereditary roots of European nations, its leaders nevertheless had a distinct sense of the righteousness of their own privilege, owing to their notions of power, civilization, religiosity, land ownership and right to own slaves, and they assured to not risk surrendering leadership to anyone not of that community whom they did not trust.
The Constitution’s authors were well aware that the popular interest could easily diverge from their propertied interest and were not prepared to chance that popular interest having much influence on government. They feared that the “democracy” was given to emotional actions, lacked proper education and reflection, and was an unruly rabble given to violence that might not be controlled. True, they had conducted a revolution against the British colonial administrations, landowners and merchants who reported to England and ostensibly governed the colonies. But having had their revolution, they did not want another one. Because most blacks and women could not vote, the electoral college was created to assure that unruly white men would not undermine the plans of the more educated and moneyed white male establishment.
How ironic, then, that a Donald Trump, championed by many of the least educated, least cosmopolitan, and most short-sighted citizens of the nation should win the election because of the very electoral college put in place to prevent exactly that kind of emotion-driven politics.