Comments on: Graduating From the Electoral College https://www.ourvalleyvoice.com/2016/12/01/graduating-electoral-college/ In-depth, locally-produced coverage of the Central Valley. Thu, 23 Apr 2026 19:43:55 -0700 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: Don Manro https://www.ourvalleyvoice.com/2016/12/01/graduating-electoral-college/#comment-7045 Don Manro Sat, 10 Dec 2016 22:11:07 +0000 http://www.ourvalleyvoice.com/?p=21695#comment-7045 Member of the Electoral College, Bill Conley, of South Carolina stated that: "The electoral college was put in place to keep areas with large populations from controlling the election. . . . If not for [the] Electoral College, candidates would only visit large cities and the rest of the country would have no say." This conclusion is obviously a bias against direct popular election and the principle of one person--one vote. Furthermore, it could be no worse than the present phenomenon of having our elections decided in eight "battleground states" having less than one quarter of the total number of electors? This population concentration issue was only a minor consideration of the framers at the Constitutional Convention. (See Federalist Paper no. 10.) While Madison was in favor of popular election of the President, he acknowledged that for small populations, delegations are more subject to limitations on good choices and to the higher probability of factionalism and corruption. The overriding concern against popular election of the President, however, was the effect of the massive slave population in the southern states on their popular representation and taxation. The convention delegates solved this with the three-fifths of a person compromise and the system of state-elector representation consisting of what is now referred to as the Electoral College. These two concerns are no longer with us, as the population size of the Federation is no longer small and the size of the population of disenfranchized persons has diminished considerably since passage of the Fourteenth Amendment (although, the numbers of prisoners and persons with felony convictions who are inelligible to vote in many states would be sufficient to decide a close contest). The travesty of the outcomes of the 2000 and 2016 general elections should be enough to galvanize a popular movement against the obsolete system of electing the most powerful polititian on earth. Member of the Electoral College, Bill Conley, of South Carolina stated that: “The electoral college was put in place to keep areas with large populations from controlling the election. . . . If not for [the] Electoral College, candidates would only visit large cities and the rest of the country would have no say.” This conclusion is obviously a bias against direct popular election and the principle of one person–one vote. Furthermore, it could be no worse than the present phenomenon of having our elections decided in eight “battleground states” having less than one quarter of the total number of electors?

This population concentration issue was only a minor consideration of the framers at the Constitutional Convention. (See Federalist Paper no. 10.) While Madison was in favor of popular election of the President, he acknowledged that for small populations, delegations are more subject to limitations on good choices and to the higher probability of factionalism and corruption. The overriding concern against popular election of the President, however, was the effect of the massive slave population in the southern states on their popular representation and taxation.

The convention delegates solved this with the three-fifths of a person compromise and the system of state-elector representation consisting of what is now referred to as the Electoral College. These two concerns are no longer with us, as the population size of the Federation is no longer small and the size of the population of disenfranchized persons has diminished considerably since passage of the Fourteenth Amendment (although, the numbers of prisoners and persons with felony convictions who are inelligible to vote in many states would be sufficient to decide a close contest).

The travesty of the outcomes of the 2000 and 2016 general elections should be enough to galvanize a popular movement against the obsolete system of electing the most powerful polititian on earth.

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