![]() ![]() ![]() Several presidential candidates won with a plurality of votes rather than a majority, including John F. They want presidential elections based on the popular vote, but that sometimes isn’t the majority. ![]() Since 1900 there have only been two presidential elections, 20, in which the loser had slightly more votes than the winner.ĭemocrats lost in both instances, which is why they want to change the system. The Electoral College vote has generally reflected the popular vote. Under a majority-wins election, candidates would spend most of their time in and catering to the most-populated states and largest cities, rather than traveling to thinly populated rural areas.īut doesn’t the Electoral College distort the popular will? No, not really. Yet those 21 states have a combined total of 92 electoral votes - more than a third of the total votes needed to win. The Electoral College is a feature, not a bug, because it helps ensure that every state matters.įor example, California, with 55 electoral votes, has more people than the 21 smallest states combined. Thus the states decide how their electors are chosen and function. They largely achieved their goal, though progressives have been successfully chipping away at those protections for decades.īecause the states created the federal government, the Constitution gives the states, not individuals, the right to choose the president. The framers did their best to create a representative political system that minimized the potential for a tyranny of the majority. The Electoral College was another.īoth concessions were intended to protect the minority against what is sometimes referred to as the “tyranny of the majority,” the concern that in a pure democracy the majority can do whatever it wants, regardless of how badly it might harm the minority. Giving every state, regardless of size, two senators was one of those protections. Less-populated states were understandably concerned they would be overshadowed by the larger ones, so they demanded protections within the Constitution. The states - 13 of them, anyway - created the federal government. States, not individuals, are the original source of power. Let’s start with the basics of our American system, which is, by design, unlike any other. The effects, especially a "soft tyranny" over the mind, are not a defect of democracy but its direct implication, if what is taken to be authoritative in the governing sense, majority rule, is not constrained by both constitutional measures and by a critique showing how majority power can be "absolute" in its sphere but prevented from claiming "omnipotence." Tocqueville's argument is a brilliant warning rather than a proven case, but it paved the way for a new understanding of the potential for harm latent in an unqualified commitment to democracy.The Electoral College is one of the most critical institutions created by the framers of the Constitution to ensure a stable representative government, yet it’s under attack.Įliminating or effectively neutering the Electoral College - the two options being proposed by many Democrats - would fundamentally alter the country, which, of course, is exactly what progressives are hoping to do. The more interesting and influential argument concerns the effects of modern majoritarianism on thought. The argument for the first and rather traditional view, direct majoritarian dominance of government, is weak though not entirely implausible. But these beliefs tend to deepen a commitment to majority power as sovereign and even "absolute." With this tendency in mind, Tocqueville presents two somewhat differing views of majority tyranny. The advantages include the effective use of certain authoritative beliefs to reconnect the individual to society in an era when these ties are weakening. Tocqueville's famous argument about "majority tyranny" in Democracy in America begins with an analysis of the "real advantages" of democratic government.
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