Why We Have the Electoral College

From CNS News:

On his nationally syndicated radio talk show “The Mark Levin Show” Tuesday, host Mark Levin explained why we have the Electoral College in the United States, suggesting that the Founders, and Alexander Hamilton specifically, “feared the mob,” as Hamilton explained in Federalist No. 68. “They [the Founders] feared the mob,” explained Mark Levin. “They feared the mob. They feared that a faction, a mob could take over the government as they had in France, and that’s why, among other reasons, we have the Electoral College. And now look at the mob – the same mob, if you will, 200 and some years later.” (Read more.)

From The Daily Wire:

In many states that have adopted the NPV, support is dominated by Democrats. John Koza, a California-based computer scientist who is one of the leaders of NPV, is a longtime Democratic activist. More generally, Democratic disdain for the Electoral College is hardly an unexpected phenomenon. Republicans have only won one national presidential popular vote — George W. Bush's reelection in 2004 — since George H.W. Bush's landslide victory over Michael Dukakis in 1988. In that time, Republicans have won two presidential elections — in 2000 and 2016 — while nonetheless losing the national presidential popular vote. In January, I explained the purpose of the Electoral College (which Alexander Hamilton most expressly defended himself in The Federalist No. 68):

The Electoral College, in attempting to ensure that smaller, more rural states would not be politically overrun by parochial urban interests, was one means by which the Framers sought to "control[ the] effects" of faction [quoting The Federalist No. 10]. Other examples abound, and are woven into our constitutional structure: a bicameral legislature at the national level, a tripartite separation of powers framework borrowed from the French political theorist Montesquieu, and the uniquely American political innovation of a federalist system of genuine dual sovereignty.

The NPV is currently wending its way through both the Colorado and New Mexico state legislatures. Furthermore, calling for the abolition of the Electoral College is an increasingly ubiquitous stance among 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls. (Read more.)

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