Electoral College

[Keith Broaders]

The founding fathers created the electoral college to prevent the ignorant and uninformed masses from choosing the President.  They understood that the rights of the people could be trampled by a tyranny of a single monarch or by the tyranny of a majority. That is why they decided to have the people elect wise men of integrity to choose our Presidents.

George Washington was not elected by the people directly, he was elected unanimously by 69 electors who had been chosen by the legislators of the states.  

The method of choosing the electors was determined by the state legislatures and the electors were responsible to vote  for the candidate they believed would best honor their oath to preserve, protect and defend the rights of the people.

Some of the electors were chosen by the legislators in their state and others were elected by the people in their Congressional District, In either case the electors had the authority to vote their conscience.

With the election of Andrew Jackson the states allowed the people to vote for their choice of candidates and electors began to be appointed by political parties.

No longer did the electors represented their people in their district, they represented the collective interests of the entire state. The electors were then expected to cast their ballot for the candidate winning the majority of votes in their particular state.

All of the state's electoral votes were to be cast for the candidate winning the state's popular vote. This created a system known as. "Winner Take All"

This created a potential tyranny of the majority which was exactly what our founding fathers were trying to prevent. Instead of having wise men to choose our President, our electors became a rubber stamp and the electors became powerless to prevent a tyranny of the majority.

The method of choosing electors in the responsibility of the state legislatures and has not authority to dictate to the electors which candidate they must vote for,

Statewide popular elections for President give the large metropolitan counties a tremendous advantage over the smaller rural counties.