The Training Wheels of Democracy

Once again, the seemingly disastrous atmosphere of the election has come back to cause strife. Blazing through homes and causing yet another uproar of political turmoil, those who once thought themselves free of the pressures of national transition find instead a plot twist that has both hope and anger brimming in equal measure. What's happened now? What could possibly be more frustrating than the events of the past month? In answer, all eyes turn to an outdated institution and the millions of dollars donated to a sudden reanalysis.

The Electoral College. One asks another on the street what it is and it is likely that they will not fully know. It is something that has simply always been there. High school students, history majors and appreciators, and most politicians will know of its origins, but a common fellow will likely know merely of its function. A function that stretches the definition of democracy, pushing the United States into a Presidential Republic that thrives under the guise of democratic process. Why, if democracy was such a significant portion of the foundations of the country, is such an institution in place? What makes it necessary? The answer is a logical one. Logical for 18th Century America, that is.

The first decades of the nation were rocky to put it lightly. The first colony to overthrow the glorious British Empire, the first to form away from the dictatorial pulls of demanding  European institution. Democracy, the Founding Fathers cried, the power of Enlightenment thinkers boosting them forward, is the answer to the troubles the nation has suffered under the monarchical rule of the house of Hanover. Everything will be well and good now that the public can vote for leaders, it would be simple.

But wait! What about the uneducated? The lack of communication? How will an effective leader be chosen if only a few will have the capabilities of choosing one?

What about slave owners and the dramatic population imbalance between northern and southern states?

There forms the basis of what now is such a standard that no one feels the need to question it. It is an appeasement to a population that existed more than a century ago. Pleasing southern populations and ensuring that the public would not select a leader without proper knowledge, the wise, all-knowing Founders established the Electoral College. Surely, with representatives proportionate to state populations, with the benefits of the three-fifths compromise thrown in to satisfy the demands of slave owners, the public will not have the capability to elect someone without proper credentials nor will there be uproar over supposed demographic bias.

The College did, in fact, satisfy the needs of the South and put at ease the mind of paranoid intellectuals. Until the end of slavery, the three-fifths compromise allowed a more equal balance between northern and southern interests, and while the public obviously got a say, voting itself was not a very popular action throughout the newborn states, as its importance was not quite as stressed. Not to mention the fact that many did not have the right to vote, as they did not own land, were enslaved, or were of the female gender. The times of universal manhood suffrage were not yet in existence and there were less citizens able to vote than there were those who could not. Based on this, a system that allows equality in voting seems logical, almost necessary. The late 1700s and 1800s were in need of such an assurance of democratic process.

However, jumping ahead to the 21st Century, with widespread communication, education, and the atrocious institution of American slavery existing only in textbooks, is the Electoral College really still necessary? No longer is there a grievance due to the existence of slaves making up the majority of the southern population, and compulsory school attendance has been implemented for decades. Suffrage has been extended to all persons over the age of eighteen and voting turnout is drastically higher than in the election of 1804. Why then, is there still this process that seems almost redundant and unnecessary. Are the citizens of the United States really so inept as to need an entire official voting body to make the official presidential decision? Mind, there is no specific strict law inflicting punishment for those electors who simply do not follow the desires of the public and vote as they please.

Without the Electoral College, the population issue would not be as significant. More people live in the cities, more votes will come from there. Less people live in the rural areas, their interests will be represented as such. The Electoral College is merely a proportion of the same numbers. Its existence now seems tedious. Education and communication are available, there is now an endlessly growing number of intellectually inclined who belief, just as the Founding Fathers, that they have a good grip on what society may need. They would most certainly be miffed at the idea of someone else taking and forming their decision after they took the effort to become so informed.

Simply put, the Electoral College was a beneficial institution of the past, providing a balance to a seemingly chaotic newborn nation. However, that newborn nation has grown and evolved, becoming more self aware (perhaps not entirely so, it would seem) and allowing general equal opportunity. It seems to be high time to take these training wheels off and let Americans practice the true principles of electoral democracy that had once been so desperately fought for. Perhaps then, will the chaos and ulcer-inducing pressures of election season be slightly easier to bear.