Recently I have seen the map displaying the concentration of the U.S.’ population versus the area of the states utilized as an argument in favor of the Electoral College, affirming the position that the College protects the rights of smaller states, preventing a tyranny of the majority. That is certainly the intent of our entire Federal system, including the Electoral College, but we have drifted far from intent and it is best to deal with our current reality. How we drifted from intent is really a product of two factors, one which was evident but ignored by the framers of US Constitution and the other unknown to them but clear now.

The Constitution’s architects had hoped to avoid the rise of political parties but immediately upon the Constitution’s adoption they split into two factions, the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists and our two party system was off and running. It would have been a blessing if right then and there they had recognized their error and made adjustments to account for parties but locked in their own bitter battles they passed onto the future generations a system designed against factions powered by the two parties.

The second factor was the changing nature of our identities. I believe that a strong argument can be made that the identity of ‘an American’ was truly born not in 1776 with our independence but in 1865 with the crushing of the states’ rebellion. Before the Civil War a person’s principal sovereign identity lay with their state and post Civil War that identity transferred to the United States of America. Today, while states have their own unique cultures and temperaments, it is the exception that a person identifies as by their state identity over their national one. Combined with the direct election of Senators the Federal system of advocating states interests has been weakened significantly since the adoption of the Constitution.

Today we live in the confluence of these two factors; a political system ill suited to parties with a winner-take-all system of elections and dissolution of state identity that has left the states mapped directly to one party or the others. This has yielded not only plurality presidents but also president who won a minority of the popular vote. It is interesting how those who most loudly reminded everyone during the 90s that Bill Clinton failed to win a majority of the votes have fallen silent as a president assumed office with 3 million votes fewer than his opponent.

For these reason and the ones I put forth in my other post I believe we must move to a popular vote presidency.