Transcripts For CSPAN3 Lectures In History Electoral College

In fact, why most political scholars kind of hate the Electoral College. Its not popular among the Political Science set. Youll get a whiff of George Edwards book which hopefully youve read most of it, if not all of it. You get an argument against the Electoral College. He lays out all the comments for it, which is helpful for allowing each person to sort of make up their mind about what they think about this institution generally speaking. So this is really i do a whole week on this one because its how we elect the president but very few americans understand the full extent of the process. At the very least if you take a course in the american presidency, you should walk away understanding how the process we use to select our chief executive officer works, but also because its also really important in how it structures how elections turn out. Just like how we started our discussion of president ial nominations by talking about the history of nominations processes and taking a relatively deep dive into the process rules nominations today, we should start out president ial elections the same way, taking a deeper dive into the single most important institutional process of how we support the president. George c. Edwards classic book, why the Electoral College is bad for america. Im sure dr. Edwards has made a good amount of money on it by now, its in its third edition. In the book he explains how the Electoral College system works, highlights key problems with the system, lays out in response to the typical arguments made in favor of Electoral College. Today all were going to focus on is how the system works and what the outcomes of the Electoral College have tended to look like. Next time well turn towards arguments about pros and cons of the Electoral College and sort of consequences of the Electoral College for how Candidates Campaign and how the president ial elections tend to shake out. Today all i want to accomplish is for you all to fully understand the system, where it came from and how it works. It tends to be more involved than people think. Okay. Why do we have the Electoral College in the first place . A lot of that stems from their just being a desire among many of the delegates at the Institutional Convention to compromise and come to some sort of resolution regarding setting out what the terms would be for their new constitutional government. If you recall we talked about this earlier in the semester that one of the overriding concerns for the delegates was they needed to come to a compromise and produce a new document, a new constitutional document by the time they were done in philadelphia, which meant all of them were somewhat inclined towards compromise. There was a real fear at the time if the convention failed to produce a reformed political system for the United States, the country would splinter into multiple regional parts and would be more easily conquered or reconquered by european powers who essentially sitting across the atlantic kind of eyeing the United States already for political dysfunction. That inclination to compromise led to a clear acquiescence to the vehement interest including smaller state interests. They wanted to ensure those schaller states as well as slave states, wanted to be sure their voices were amplified in the new governmental system and pushed pretty hard and pretty consistently on that point all throughout the debates on most things including the debates over how to select the president. As i told you during the second week of class, most of the debate about president ial office at the Constitutional Convention centered on how the president would be selected or elected. In fact, the convention spent 22 combined days debating this specific topic and took more than 30 different votes on 30 competing proposals and amendments to proposals about how they would do this election. Throughout 22 days and 30 votes, there are largely three main options debated how we would elect president. Three main camps with other various sort of subcamps and compromise proposals thrown out there. Three main avenues considered by different delegates at the convention. One option was to have the president selected by congress. It was either the house or the senate would actually meet to consider candidates and cast votes to directly select the executive. This would sound a lot like parliamentary system where the Prime Minister is or was formally a member of the National Legislature and designated as their leader by Majority Party or coalition and assumed sort of an executive office. Another option laid out there was that the president should be elected not by the congress but state legislatures, each of the state legislatures would take a vote on the preferred candidate and the states whatever candidate got support from the most states would become the new president. Then a third main option that was considered was from a subset of members of the convention who really wanted a direct popular vote for the president , largely arguing that was the only way to ensure that the president ial office had any sort of separation from being inclined to be dominated by either the states or the congress. Then of course there was some other proposals. Alexander hamilton largely made a proposal about Something Like Electoral College, an Electoral College that would choose a president for life and pick a new one when the president died. You had a lot of different ideas thrown out there about how would be the president and how would we get to the president. There was certain concerns that drove the tenor of these debates around certain options. There were things many of the founders were concerned about achieving or avoiding through the method of president ial election. Im going to run through some of these. One of these concerns was avoiding what they referred to as legislative intrigue. A related concern was making sure that there was president ial independence. Legislative intrigue essentially was a term of the time for schemes among members of congress to select certain president s for certain selfinterested reasons. That is to select a president that would empower those specific members of congress, rather than selecting a president who would do a good job or achieve certain policy aims. This ties into president ial independence. There was concern if the selection of the president was driven by congressional intrigue that essentially you would have a reality where the president , whoever was selected, would be entirely dependent on congress to maintain their time in office, that because you were going to have this language about impeachment in the constitution, congressional selection would ultimately mean that congress could lord over the presidency, threaten to impeach the president every time the president didnt do what congress wanted because congress had the po your to both put the president in office and remove them from office, which was seen as too dependent. Convention delegates also wanted a system in which the president had some separation and independence from the legislature, which were two things that worked against direct election by the congress. Another concern was voter parochialism. They were concerned the country too large and too uninformed from leaders from any other states other than their own. Essentially if you did direct election by state, what you would get would be talking about the first election, 13 states that would choose 13 different president s and youd essentially be deadlocked with 13 candidates come in sort of a quasitie. These people wanted people concerned about voter parochialism wanted the public to have some voice but wanted a system of selection that would force selection of candidates with a broader National Character and reputation. So they were concerned you had to do something beyond just direct election in order to get to sort of a place where people would be looking beyond their own state borders. Founders concerned about there being a need for intermediaries between the public and the president , selection of the presidency. While a lot of the delegates wanted direct selection and were advocates of direct democracy over selection of the president , other founders were less excited about that and were concerned that if the people selected the president directly, they would make unwise choices, you would need to protect against tumultuous and disorder, sass they put it, you needed a system with intermediaries between the public and the election and the president. You can see these last two concerns next two concerns, voter parochialism and the need for intermediary pushed back against direct selection. Of course, there was also fears of president ial power, different beliefs about what would allow for a more empowered or less empowered president. Some delegates thought direct election of the president would make the president too powerful because then the president would be the only person who could claim to have the full mantel of the public. Others thought a president too powerful if indirectly selected as well. State population size was a key concern in that small states wanted to be sure their voices were heard in the new government. Under the articles of confederation as you may know, small states essentially were able to dominate the process because every state, regardless of population size, had exactly one vote in the articles of confederate indication congress and most decisions in the articles of Confederation Congress required twothirds to threequarters of the Articles Congress to be in agreement for anything to happen, which meant small states largely had veto power over anything larger states wanted to do and fairly outsized power given most of the population lived in four states at the time of the articles of confederation. The Electoral College structure gave small states a bigger voice than they would have had under direct election, though gave them a smaller voice than you might have had under some forms of Congressional Election and legislative election. Small states werent happy with electoral compromise, as well talk about in a bit. When the Electoral College fails the house of representatives selects the president with one vote per state. That was a key carrot given to states to get them to sign onto the electoral agreement in the first place. Many founders thought Electoral College would never produce a majority winner after George Washington and house of representatives would be selecting the president every time. There were also the concerns of slave states. Slave states worked really hard to ensure they were overrepresented in the new government and other parts of the constitution as you likely know. Theres threefifths compromise that went into the u. S. Constitution that counted each slave within a slave state at threefifths of a person for the purpose of allocating congressional seats in the house of representatives. Slave states were set to lose that boost that they had in house representation if there was direct popular vote for selection of the president , so they were really concerned with seeing some sort of system that reflected congressional apportionment back into the selection of the president so they would have a larger voice in president ial selection relative to their voting population as well. Finally, again, the shortterm concerns. There was fatigue, Convention Delegates wanted to get out of there with a new system. They were concerned failure was the worst possible option. That led to a lot of people who wanted a different outcome to acquiesce to the concerns of slave states, small states, or other people who had really strong opinions and were willing to walk away from the convention if they didnt get what they wanted. So those it did reflect key concerns on the previous slide. It gave each faction something they wanted. A popular vote funneled through the states, allocated the states power giving Congress Final say. No one was fully happy with it, but it was something nobody was upset enough about to walk away from the convention. Plenty of delegates walked away from the convention, you had a good number that refused to sign the final document and went home but none walked away over the Electoral College. They walked away over other broader issues, usually congressional apportionment, Something Like that. Before we move on to running through how the Electoral College works start to finish, does anybody have questions they want answers to in terms of clarification or otherwise . I had a quick question. Yeah. So which founding fathers, like which group, i guess youd say were in favor of a direct popular vote . Its hard to categorize them in any way other than to say the ones more committed to like more of a direct democracy. And they didnt come from any like specific like parts of the country. They kind of sort of randomly were distributed. But someone the leader of that sort of faction. These are the people least satisfied with the constitution in many respects. The leader of that faction was really george mason who was upset sort of from day one at the convention because he was hoping to go there and push for a system of government that was legislatively driven, driven to have like pure apportionment by population and had a lot more direct public voice and he was sort of throughout the convention appalled over and over again those ideals were compromised away towards delegates who were concerned about more immediate power concerns for specific constituencies or states. Does that make sense . Yeah, totally, yeah, thanks. But youd have to sort of go and read James Madisons notes to pull out who these people were individually. Yeah, yeah. But even then, you know, the mason worked really hard and ended up shaping the system to be more democratic than it might have otherwise been without him because he was very influential. And pushed really hard and refused to sign it in the end. But it would have looked he made it look a lot better relative to his preferences than it could have because he was dogged in his determination. Other questions . I had a question, if thats okay. Yeah. So im pretty familiar with the three fist compromise and i understand what it is but i was just curious, like how did it come to three fists . Because thats like super specific. Super specific. I know why it is. I dont really know why specifically three fists. I am not sure anyone knows why specifically three fifths. So many things at the convention we have very limited note taking on the nature of the debates. And it varied from moment to moment because there were a handful of people who were delegates who like kept a journal or a diary during it and most of those are very spotty, or like you might have days go on and their diary just says attended Convention Today but they didnt talk about what happened. James madison took about as complete notes as we could but it was him scribbling 18 hours a day while things were going on. He didnt always capture what everyone said in every moment. So you have like him talking about like them debating, things like a three fifths compromise but not going into what were the different specific fractions thrown out. Three fifths must have sounded good enough to everyone is probably because thats often when things how things worked at the convention is that they would decide that that number sounded satisfactory to everyone so Something Like also like why twoyear terms for the house. It was like, well, someone proposed four and people were like oh, thats too much, thats too long and someone else proposed one and its like thats not long enough and someone said two and yeah, thats good. It was probably a matter of the Southern States saying, okay, getting the south came with a proposal that slaves counted as full individuals for apportionment which would have really increased their power in congress and some members wanted slaves not to count at all. So three fifths, i guess, was good enough for everyone to say fine, or enough people. Why three fifths remains a mystery unless someone has done some really good historical work that i dont know about. Other questions . All right, so lets run through how the Electoral College works sort of step by step, in from 30,000 feet and what the outcomes of that have been like. How does it work today, less so how it worked in 1789 but how does it work right now . You have 538 electoral votes as part of a college in a given Election Year. Each state gets two, the number of senators they have plus the number of house seats they have. Utah has four members of the house of representatives, plus the two senators that every state has so it has six electoral votes in the Electoral College. Another state that has ten house members would have 12 electoral votes in the Electoral College and this way it sort of almost roughly proportional to the size of the state by population, but with smaller states weighted a bit heavier because they get that twoseat boost no matter or twovote boost no matter how small they are and then consequently larger start states ratcheted down a bit because its not purely proportional. The district of columbia gets three votes, no matter what, under the constitutional amendment. Prior to the somewhere between i dont remember now. I think maybe the 1970s the district of colum