Electoral college
The Electoral College system
An electoral college system was not an invention of the 1787 Constitutional Convention noir the people called the Founding Fathers.
The people are not voting directly for a candidate but for electors who are aligned with a given candidate’s party. These electors from each state number the same as the representatives in the two Houses of Congress. Mot of the States count their electoral votes on a “winner takes all” basis. Eventually these electors cast their votes for the candidate that has a majority of the electors’ votes. If a candidate does not receive a majority of votes the election will be determined by the House of Representatives, where each state delegation casts one vote as was done in 1801 in the election of Jefferson and Aaron Burr.
Many have decried this process as anti-democratic but the authors of the constitution understood that all "tyranny arises" out of democracy.[1] Democracy was considered to be "most vile form of government" by Madison.[2] which always fails and "in fact, it will become that worst of all governments, mob-rule."[3] then why do people think democracies are a good thing?
Why and how a leader is chosen is ultimately a thing of nature and not democracy.[4]
- ↑ "Say then, my friend, in what manner does tyranny arise? — that it has a democratic origin is evident." Socrates
- ↑ James Madison, 1787, stated in the Federalist Paper #10 that “Democracy is the most vile form of government ... democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention: have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property: and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”
- ↑ Book VI Polybius
- ↑ 4 What then are the beginnings I speak of and what is the first origin of political societies? 5 When owing to floods, famines, failure of crops or other such causes there occurs such a destruction of the human race as tradition tells us has more than once happened, and as we must believe will often happen again, 6 all arts and crafts perishing at the same time, then in the course of time, when springing from the survivors as from seeds men have again increased in numbers 7 and just like other animals form herds — it being a matter of course that they too should herd together with those of their kind owing to their natural weakness — it is a necessary consequence that the man who excels in bodily strength and in courage will lead and rule over the rest. 8 We observe and should regard as a most genuine work of nature this very phenomenon in the case of the other animals which act purely by instinct and among whom the strongest are always indisputably the masters — 9 I speak of bulls, boars, cocks, and the like. 9 It is probable then that at the beginning men lived thus, herding together like animals and following the lead of the strongest and bravest, the ruler's strength being here the sole limit to his power and the name we should give his rule being monarchy. 10 But when in time feelings of sociability and companionship begin to grow in such gatherings of men, than kingship has struck root; and the notions of goodness, justice, and their opposites begin to arise in men.</span" The Histories of Polybius published in Vol. III, Loeb's translation