A Short History of a Peculiar System

by Jack R. Johnson 10.2024

Interesting fact: The last Republican president to win the popular vote was George W. Bush back in 2004. Of course, if you go a little further back there’s a pattern of Republican presidents who lose the popular vote but win the electoral college count. This occurred in both the 2000 and 2016 elections. George W. Bush and Donald Trump, respectively won these elections with clear Electoral College victories, but they did not win the popular vote nationwide. In 2000, that honor went to Al Gore by over half a million votes. In 2016, it was Hillary Clinton by more than 2.9 million votes. In fact, more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than any other losing presidential candidate in U.S. history. In 2020, the disparity was even more glaring. While President Joe Biden won the popular vote by more than 7 million votes, his Electoral College victory was decided by less than 50,000 votes in a few close states. As a result of the Electoral College system, votes in a handful of battleground states are courted by both parties with a lover’s passion.

Why did our founding fathers create this system where a handful of states could control the fate of the nation? If you look back to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, direct popular vote for President was not really on the table. When the idea of a popular vote was raised, our founding fathers griped openly that it could result in too much Democracy. The assumption was direct voting of a president might lead to so called mob rule.  Even though James Madison argued that “the people at large [were] the fittest ” to choose an executive, he compromised with the other conventioneers on the Electoral College. There was, after all, another, more practical consideration—the Southern states had a lower ‘voting’ population then the bustling Northern states. Roughly, one-third of those living in the South were enslaved-- and slaves were not allowed to vote. So, under a direct election system, the Southern states would be at a significant disadvantage.

 Through the Electoral College and the so called Three-Fifths Compromise (a bargain they’d already made to determine how congressional seats would be apportioned) partially counting the slaves when determining the number of presidential electors allowed Southern states to rival the electoral power of their Northern brethren. In other words, our peculiar system of selecting a President, the Electoral College, is informed by another peculiar institution—slavery.  

The original structure of the Electoral College system also had a serious fault line. Initially, each state elector was given two votes to cast. The candidate with a majority of electoral votes would become president and the candidate with the second most votes would become vice-president. Political parties quickly formed, however, and in the 1796 election, this two-vote rule led to winner John Adams having the awkward situation of serving with his leading opponent Thomas Jefferson as vice-president. The 1800 election was even more problematic, with Jefferson receiving the same number of votes as his de facto running mate Aaron Burr, as each of Jefferson’s electors also voted for Burr to avoid an outcome like that of 1796. The result was a highly controversial vote for president in the House, with Burr deciding to seek the presidency and aligning himself with Jefferson’s political opponents. Jefferson was eventually elected, but not before many days of stalemate and not a little backroom skullduggery.

The founding fathers recalibrated, went back to the drawing board and moved to change the Constitution before the 1804 election. The result was the Twelfth Amendment which established that each elector would cast only one electoral vote for a ticket of a president running with a vice-president.

After the Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery, thus ridding the South of its windfall electors. But the Electoral College system continued to cause problems. In the 1876 presidential election, the Democrat Samuel Tilden won the popular vote, but some electoral votes were in dispute, including those in (surprise!) Florida. An ad hoc commission of lawmakers and Supreme Court justices was empaneled to resolve the matter. Ultimately, they awarded the contested electoral votes to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, who had lost the popular vote. As a part of the agreement, known as the Compromise of 1877, the federal government removed the troops that were stationed in the South after the Civil War to maintain order and protect black voters. Thus, a system designed to benefit slave holders originally, enabled the beginning of Jim Crow shortly after the Civil War, and continues to benefit minority rule to this day.

A recent Pew Research Center Poll showed that up to 63% of Americans prefer a direct popular vote for President. For 2024, of course, we’ll be stuck with the Electoral College, courting a handful of swing states, ignoring the vast majority of our population, crossing our fingers once again.