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Contrary to modern perceptions, the founding generation did not intend to create a direct democracy. To the contrary, the Founders deliberately created a republic -- or, arguably, a republican democracy -- that would incorporate a spirit of compromise and deliberation into decision-making. Such a form of government, the Founders believed, would allow them to achieve two potentially conflicting objectives: avoiding the "tyranny of the majority" inherent in pure democratic systems, while allowing the "sense of the people" to be reflected in the new American government. A republican government, organized on federalist principles, would allow the delegates to achieve the most difficult of their tasks by enabling large and small sovereign states to live peacefully alongside each other.
The author(s) of the Constitution (Madison often called the father of the Constitution) had studied the history of many failed democratic systems, and they wanted to create a different form of government. Indeed, James Madison, delegate from Virginia, argued that unrestrained majorities such as those found in pure democracies tend toward tyranny. Madison stated it this way:
[In a pure democracy], [a] common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert results from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.
Know the failures of democracies from history, the Founders were still strong advocates for self-government, and they often spoke of the need to allow the will of the people to operate in the new government that they were crafting. "Not withstanding the oppressions & injustice experienced among us from democracy," Virginia delegate George Mason declared ( after experiencing the tyrannical democracy from Mother England), "the genius of the people must be consulted." James Madison agreed. The Electoral College was considered to fit perfectly within this republican, federalist government that had been created. The system would allow majorities to rule, but only while they were reasonable, broad-based, and not tyrannical while allowing all states no matter how small a voice.
National Popular Vote is NOT direct or pure democracy.
Direct or pure democracy is a form of government in which people vote on policy initiatives directly. With National Popular Vote, the United States would still be a republic, in which citizens continue to elect the President by a majority of Electoral College votes by states, to represent us and conduct the business of government in the periods between elections.
National Popular Vote does not abolish the Electoral College. The Electoral College is now the set of 538 dedicated party activists who vote as rubberstamps for presidential candidates. In the current presidential election system, 48 states award all of their electors to the winners of their state.
The National Popular Vote bill would change current state winner-take-all laws that award all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who get the most popular votes in each separate state (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but since enacted by 48 states), to a system guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes for, and the Presidency to, the candidate getting the most popular votes in the entire United States.
The bill preserves the constitutionally mandated Electoral College and state control of elections.
Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in section 1 of Article II of the U.S. Constitution-- "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors . . ." The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as "plenary" and "exclusive."
The Constitution does not prohibit any of the methods that were debated and rejected.
States have the responsibility and power to make all of their voters relevant in every presidential election and beyond.
Anyone who supports the current presidential election system, believing it is what the Founders intended and that it is in the Constitution, is mistaken. The current presidential election system does not function, at all, the way that the Founders thought that it would.
Neither of the two most important features of the current system of electing the President (namely, universal suffrage, and the 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method) are in the U.S. Constitution. Neither was the choice of the Founders when they went back to their states to organize the nation's first presidential election.
The current 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method (i.e., awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in a particular state) is not entitled to any special deference based on history or the historical meaning of the words in the U.S. Constitution. It is not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, the debates of the Constitutional Convention, or the Federalist Papers. The actions taken by the Founding Fathers make it clear that they never gave their imprimatur to the winner-take-all method.
In 1789, in the nation's first election, the people had no vote for President in most states, only men who owned a substantial amount of property could vote, and only three states used the state-by-state winner-take-all method to award electoral votes.
In the nation's first presidential election in 1789, a majority of the states appointed their presidential electors using two of the methods of awarding electors rejected by the Founders (i.e., appointment by the legislature and by the governor and his cabinet). Presidential electors were appointed by state legislatures for almost a century.