Thread by @RogueShoeButler

1/ The idea that the Electoral College doesn't work because it doesn't always match the popular vote is a misunderstanding of the Electoral College.

https://twitter.com/dandrezner/status/1152726077304913920

2/ An electoral college is a group of *delegates* chosen by a larger group of people to make a decision on their behalf. The electors deliberate and vote amongst themselves.

3/ The House of Representatives operates on the same principle. Rather than deciding on legislation by popular vote, we vote for delegates, electors, representatives—all the same idea—to deliberate and vote on our behalf.

4/ The Framers of the US Constitution were keenly aware of the dangers of direct democracy. Many (most? all?) all democracies since Ancient Greece had been turned to dictatorships by demagogues skilled at appealing to mass assemblies.

5/ The US Constitution is largely a copy of the British Constitution, with various clean-ups and one big change: no more titles of nobility. And so the Framers had to invent a replacement for the hereditary monarch. That was the President.

6/ The Constitution is filled with *indirect* mechanisms for the people to determine policy: mechanisms to keep crowds at bay, to keep demagogues out, to give time for passions to cool before important decisions are made.

7/ The Electoral College is one such mechanism. For example, each state's Electors are required to meet separately, all on the same day. This was to prevent the terrible things that mass assemblies are prone to, especially when a demagogue shows up—as inevitably will happen.

8/ The Electoral College was designed especially to block "factions": groups, like political parties, who would choose policy to benefit themselves at the expense of the general welfare. Hence the rules limiting who may be an Elector.

9/ Unlike the other indirect mechanisms for popular control of policy, the Electoral College failed immediately, and the Framers knew it. Electors were sworn beforehand to vote for political party's nominee, so there was no deliberation—ruining the whole thing by 1796.

10/ There were other problems with the Presidential selection process, which were addressed by early Amendments. They never fixed the known failure of the Electoral College, which had devolved into a factionalized popular vote, because an informal, de factor solution arose:

11/ By the 1830s, the political parties themselves had started choosing their Presidential candidates by *their own electoral colleges*—that is, by delegates at their national conventions.

12/ This wasn't ideal, but it tended to filter out demagogues, tended to choose qualified people, and to some extent solved another problem: the mess that arises when there are three or more viable Presidential candidates.

13/ So we stuck with the Electoral College, not out of ignorance but knowing full well that it had failed, unable to find a better written solution, and finding that the informal substitute worked passably well.

14/ What we have today is real ignorance about the Electoral College: thinking that it's a failed form of popular vote, designed to make candidates campaign in all states, or protect slavery, or various other made-up explanations for it.

15/ This ignorance is dangerous because it's ignorance of the dangers of mass popular votes with no intervening deliberative body. The lesson of history is that such systems are easy prey for demagogues. You get *more* Trumps that way, not fewer.

16/ Parliamentary democracies follow a different solution to this problem: the "president" is chosen by popular vote (or even heredity) but plays mostly a ceremonial role with only "soft" power; the "prime minister" holds real power and is chosen by parliament (i.e. indirectly).

17/ Unlike parliamentary democracies, the US system calls for tension between Congress and the President. So, it's not clear whether "head of state ≠ head of government" could work for us. But it addresses *the main problem* that the Electoral College was designed to solve.

18/ The folks who are saying "Give vast power to one person chosen by popular vote" are ignoring the danger, the big problem, the Achilles' Heel of democracy, as if we've learned nothing since Ancient Greece—usually while calling the Framers ignorant.

19/19 I don't know the best solution, but I think if you're going to say the Electoral College "failed" (which is true!), you should know what problem it's there to solve and propose another solution *to that problem*.