Barbara Perry is a political scientist at UVA’s Miller Center of Public Affairs. Early in her career she joked about something the founders of this country created – the electoral college.
“I still have, to this day, a T-shirt that says ‘Property of the Electoral College Athletic Department,” she says with a chuckle.
But for the founders this was no joke.
“They had just enough pessimism about human nature to worry about the kinds of people to be chosen by the people,” Perry explains.
They feared the voters might fall for a demagogue.
“Someone who tells lies, half-truths, appeals to the base instincts of people, often picks a group of people to be defined as “the other,” or to be prejudiced against, and then – as Alexander Hamilton said – goes from being a demagogue to courting the people to being a tyrant.”
So they established plan B – a group of landed white men who would gather after the vote and make the final decision about who should be the Commander in Chief.
“Smart, educated men + would come together after the people had voted, and they would make their choice, and if it was different so be it, because that was the check on the popular will should it get out of whack. It was meant to be the judgment of these + wise and educated statesmen – to pick the right person, just in case the people did not. + But in more modern times we know that the electors typically vote the way their state voted, so we’re not even getting what the founders had hoped for.
Political parties here in Virginia pick 13 electors like 43-year-old Matt Rowe from Fredericksburg.
“We choose electors at congressional district conventions — one from each congressional district — and then at our state convention we choose two more to round out the 13.”
He and retired diplomat Gary Schatz think we should ditch the electoral college, but still they thought it was an experience worth having.
“They hold the ceremony in the House of Delegates chambers. It's the exact same process that we have gone about for the past couple of hundred years in Virginia – as they do in all the other state capitals. Being able to be a part of that was special.”
“The elector is kind of a last hurrah. This is my last hurrah as well. I’m 80 years old.”
Schatz says there’s no money to be made.
“We might get a lunch, but other than that no.”
And electors can’t change their mind about what candidate will get their vote.
“We have a faithless elector law," Rowe explains, "so if someone has the idea that maybe they won’t support the person that they were elected to support, then they’ll be replaced.”
Because every state – big and small – gets a number of electors equivalent to the number of congressional districts plus two, less populous states have an advantage. And there’s a bigger problem. All but two states – Maine and Nebraska – go with a winner-take-all model. In most states if 50.1% of voters favor one candidate, all of the electoral votes go to that person.
Which is why, four times, the electoral college has given us the candidate who lost the popular vote – Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harrison in 1888, George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016.
After those elections there were calls to get rid of the electoral college, but Professor Perry points out that it’s in our constitution, so we’d have to amend it.
“That would have to either come from a constitutional convention, which I don’t think we’d want to take the chance of having right now, but it also could come through the Congress."
But Republicans dominate in the House and their party has benefitted most from the electoral college, so they don’t want to change it.
Democrats came up with another path -- launching an organization of states pledged to give their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote nationwide, but that agreement won’t take effect until it has at least 270 electoral votes – enough to win the presidency. Right now, 17 states and the District of Columbia have joined. Virginia is not among them, and they account for just 207 electoral votes.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
