Electoral College:
A Check on Socialism

Nov. 12, 2000

Steve Farrell

Because of all the brouhaha over the Electoral College this week,
which one expects to occur every four years – but never to this
degree – I have whittled away my hours, from dawn till dusk, every
day since election eve, poring over the issue, digging into the
writings of the Founders, in hopes of picking up a few delectable
morsels as to the what, how, and why of the Electoral College.

To my dismay, not morsels, but a world buffet of amazing political
insight is what I have found, which to your dismay (or your joy!) I
will hoard until I am ready to publish the lot of them, later this
week.

So what´s my point? It is this: We have much to learn about the
issue, and we are doing our country a great disservice if we´ve been
guilty of being one of the crowd who have joined in shouting down
our republic in favor of a democracy without paying the price to
know the difference.

One person, one vote, majority rule, all sound like progressive
American ideas, but here´s a reminder: They failed in Greece, they
brought down Rome, and they almost crushed America under the
Articles of Confederation.

Edmund Randolf, one of the distinguished delegates from Virginia,
stated at the Constitutional Convention: "The general object [to
which we´ve gathered together in this convention is] to provide a
cure for the evils under which the United States labored; that in
tracing these evils to their origin, every man had found it in the
turbulence and follies of democracy."

Eldridge Gerry, the delegate from Massachusetts, knew well what
one of those turbulent follies was. He warned of democracy: "[I
have] been taught by experience the danger of the leveling spirit ...
possessed in it." That is, its tendency toward communism and
socialism.

Madison, the very Father of the Constitution, taught the same exact
thing.

In Federalist 10 he warned every American that among
democracy´s many dangers was this chief one: "A common passion
or interest will, in almost every case ... [combine to destroy] ...
personal security or the rights of property ... [and insist on] ...
reducing mankind to a perfect equality ... in their possessions, their
opinions, and their passions."

Marx, of course, told us that the chief object of communism was
the destruction of the right to private property. And Communists
accomplish this by preaching, everywhere they go, democracy, with
an emphasis on equality of ends, rather than Jefferson´s republican
principle of equality before the law.

The cure to all of this, agreed upon at the Constitutional
Convention, was the establishment of a republic with its mixed
modes of representation, its checks and balances, and its
separations of power.

The magnificence of the system is that it established a system which
made it extremely difficult for power to combine, whether in the
hands of the one (monarchy), the few (oligarchy), or the many
(democracy).

The people already had a voice in the House, which was checked
by a Senate elected by the state legislatures (a check devised to
protect property and state rights). They did not want to then
obliterate that check by having the president directly elected by the
people, or dependent upon a majority victory only.

Thus, they insured that the president would be indirectly elected
through electors (who were picked by whatever mode the states
saw fit to establish), and then they set up a representative formula,
identical to the one in Congress, which insured a successful
candidate must seek broad support rather than big city support only.

That is why each state has a guaranteed three electoral votes,
regardless of the size of the state, as a check against the second part
of the formula, which focused on population.

This was an inspired move. Big cities, which are the stuff of big
states, while they traditionally attract wealth, they are also centers
of poverty, where the vast majority of new immigrants trying to
find their way, and old welfare recipients who never seemed to find
their way, are found in their largest numbers.

To then create an election formula that depends upon the popular
vote alone creates candidates who will tend to focus inordinately
upon the poor to get elected. This is a prescription for socialism.

The Electoral College helps prevent this. It insures a candidate must
balance his approach with rural, property, and state rights issues. It
is one of many checks against direct democracy found in our
Constitution, and is therefore a check against socialism. Leave it
alone.