By Mark Rapier
This article was originally published by Mark on LinkedIn and Medium, and has been lightly edited from the original.
Every four years, America is reacquainted with the Electoral College. While it is generally understood, why it exists is less well known.
Purpose and History.
When the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia, delegates held a variety of opinions about the best method for electing the President and Vice President. Some of the options considered were popular vote, election by Congress, and election by governors. The compromises began when all agreed that the people should choose their president. Two factors drove the creation of the Electoral College: the desire to ensure the relevance of smaller states and the difficulty of national communication.
First, the Constitutional Congress wanted to ensure the relevance of smaller states. The United States was originally conceived not as a nation with state-level districts, but as a union of states; the founders wanted to ensure that the process of choosing an executive to lead that union would not lead to steamrolling the smaller states that comprised that union. To solve this, our Constitution provides for a state to be given a number of electors equaling the number of senators and representatives in each state. The number of representatives was determined based on population, one representative per 30,000 people, while each state uniformly had two senators.
Determining the population led to the troubling three-fifths compromise, wherein the population was “determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.” In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment removed the three-fifths compromise but left in the phrase “Indians not taxed.”
The second reason for the electoral college was to solve the problem of cross-country communication. When the country was founded, travel and communication were difficult, and many people were not — and could not — be aware of issues of national importance. Thus, state legislatures chose Electors who were informed on national issues to vote for the president. Over time, this concept became more democratic. By the mid-1800s, most states obligated electors to vote for the candidate based on the popular vote in their state.
A complicating factor arose with the passage of the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929. This act limited the size of the House of Representatives to 435, ostensibly due to the limited physical space available in the Capitol building.
The Population Distribution Today.
In 1920, the U.S. population was 121.7 million. In 1929, there were 48 states, and roughly half of all Americans lived in metropolitan areas. Today, 80% of Americans live in cities, and 335 million people call America home. The combination of growth and urbanization has resulted in an interesting and impactful shift compared to the early 1800s: Twenty metropolitan areas have populations larger than the smallest ten states combined.
Today, the use of the electoral college results in the majority of smaller states receiving little, if any, attention from presidential candidates. Over half of the electors in the college are allocated to the 14 most populous states, which explains why the elections hinge on the results in a handful of states.
I like the concept of the Electoral College. However, when voting in our only national election, our largest cities should not be able to overwhelm so many of our states. I do not have any great ideas for improving the balance in the system, but believe it is worthy of contemplation.
Related Articles and Sources
- Federalist Paper No. 68 | Wikipedia
- The United States Constitution: Annotated | U.S. Capitol Historical Society
- Origins of the Electoral College - Mises Institute
- Largest U.S. Cities by Population | MacroTrends
- Resident population of the U.S. in 2023, by state | Statista
Mark Rapier lives in Arlington, TX, and is a semi-retired IT and Business consultant. Through ACP, he coaches service members as they transition into the civilian workforce. He also volunteers for the National Medal of Honor Museum, which will open in 2025. In his free time, he writes, studies history, and golfs.