If I were teaching a high school AP U.S. Government class, I would have my students read much of The Federalist over the summer, certainly more than the mere four essays required by the College Board. From those four are great defenses of increased executive agency, judicial independence, and the separation of powers, among other things. But in stopping at those four, students miss out on so much of what the Founders had to say about other institutions. One such institution is the Electoral College, which has become a sort of constitutional pariah as of late. It is hard not to balk at the theoretical minimum of the popular vote by which a presidential candidate could secure the presidency under the current system: twenty-two percent. The current Electoral College also leaves voters who live in states securely controlled by their relative opposition resigned in the face of the discouraging at-large apportionment of electors. Forty-eight of the fifty states apportion their electors based on an at-large, winner-take-all system. The core of the problem is that the system is too federal, meaning that the system treats the United States too much like a confederation of sovereign states and too little like a nation made up of individual Americans. In other words, the system is not national enough. I am using “federal” and “national” here in the way that Madison employs them in The Federalist. Even worse, the system is federal in a populist way, subjecting the winner-take-all result to an electorate that a candidate with a commanding personality could blow in one direction or another. Originally, many state legislatures chose electors themselves, but by 1832, “the popular selection of electors was established and real discretion on the part of electors in choosing a President and Vice President [had become] a legal fiction.”¹ Once we see this problem, it is easy to blame the Founders; after all, they’re the ones who put the Electoral College in the Constitution. But when you expand your reading of The Federalist to include the Founders’ discussion of the Electoral College, you see that they would not be satisfied with this system either. Looking at “Federalist no. 39” and “Federalist no. 68” in particular reveals that they wanted the College to incorporate both the federal and national character of the United States by creating a body similar to Congress but different in a couple of important ways.

First of all, let’s look at “Federalist no. 39.” In this essay, Madison argues against the claim that the Constitution abandons the federal character of the United States in throwing out the Articles of Confederation. Part of Madison’s response gives us a nice characterization of the College in terms of “federal” and “national”:

The house of representatives will derive its powers from the people of America … So far the government is national not federal. The Senate on the other hand will derive its powers from the States, as political and coequal societies … So far the government is federal, not national. The executive power will be derived from a very compound source. The immediate election of the President is to be made by the States in their political characters. The votes allotted to them, are in a compound ratio, which considers them partly as distinct and coequal societies; partly as unequal members of the same society. … From this aspect of the Government, it appears to be of a mixed character presenting at least as many federal as national features.²

The “compound source” of electoral votes that Madison refers to is the number of electors granted to each state based on their two senators and number of representatives. And because the House, a directly elected body, is national in character, and the Senate, an indirectly elected body (being originally elected by the state governments), is federal in character, the Electoral College mixes national and federal characteristics. So, if the College today were reflecting the Founders’ vision for it, we would see such a mix. But as I have already said, what we see today is almost completely federal because of the at-large votes that occur in forty-eight of the states. One way the current College falls short is by not achieving this balance the Founders were aiming for, one that would have given the College some national character by selecting some electors in a way that indicates their correspondence to House representatives.

Turning to “Federalist no. 68,” which focuses on the merits of the College, we see that the current College lacks three measures that would ensure the prudential election of the president. Hamilton first describes what kind of people should be directly electing the president, who should be

men most capable of analizing the qualities adapted to the station … A small number of persons, selected by their fellow citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to so complicated an investigation.³

We can see that the current College fails on this front because, just looking around, we don’t have any idea who the electors are. They are not distinguished men whose merits and wisdom have been recognized by their communities. In almost every state, their identities are practically irrelevant because they have pledged to vote a certain way and are only chosen as electors upon the victory of their preferred candidate in the at-large popular vote. There is no evidence that our electors today have the “discernment” necessary for the complex and important task of choosing the next chief magistrate. Hamilton continues his discussion of the College’s strengths, illuminating two more bulwarks that the College was intended to have against imprudence:

The choice of several to form an intermediate body of electors, will be much less apt to convulse the community, with any extraordinary or violent movements, than the choice of one [president]. And as the electors, chosen in each state, are to assemble and vote in the state, in which they are chosen, this detached and divided situation will expose them much less to heats and ferments … than if they were all to be convened at one time, in one place.⁴

The first guard against irresponsibility in electing the president is ensuring that voters elect “several” electors rather than one president, which makes the electorate less prone to manipulation by a singularly charismatic candidate. One must only recall the Trumpian upheaval of political propriety in 2016 to see how popular reaction can work symbiotically with a singular personality. The current College feeds into this dangerous symbiosis, in practice giving the electorate a choice between the actual presidential candidates rather than candidates for electors. Second, the Founders imagined a gathering in each state where the electors were free to deliberate and have their minds changed but were also free from the random and snowballing bandwagons that could easily occur at a national assembly. There certainly are not any “heats” or “ferments” in the current deliberations of the electors, for there is no deliberation at all. Thus we see two more failures of the current College: the popular electorate is electing one, not many, and the electors are not given an environment in which they can prudently deliberate.

You might object that I contradict myself in criticizing the current College for being too federal on one hand and too national on the other. But what the Founders were aiming for was a particular blend of federal and national characteristics that was most conducive to electing reliable presidents. They wanted to recognize the nation’s national character while resisting populism, which is why they apportioned most electors based on House representatives but worked to protect against an excited, short-sighted, popular election of the chief magistrate. They wanted to recognize the nation’s federal character but not to a degree where the individual voter felt irrelevant as he may today. What the current College needs is an adjustment of both how it speaks toward our national nature and how it speaks to our federal nature, the former being a restoration of electors’ autonomy within an indirect election, the latter being the replacement of winner-take-all with more localized apportionment of electoral votes.

I earlier described the College the Founders intended as like Congress but importantly different in some ways. The College was supposed to bear more similarity to Congress than the mere number of electors matching that of elected congressional officials. As we have seen, the electors were conceived with the same autonomy that congressmen and senators enjoy today. In fact, the relationship between a constituency and both the former and latter was to be founded upon the same republican ideal by which the people entrust decision-making to distinguished individuals who know and have earned the trust of their constituents. And while there are more granular differences between the institutions as conceived by the Founders, such as the electors meeting in each state rather than at a national assembly, the crucial difference is that the Electoral College is not itself Congress. Hamilton explains later in “Federalist no. 68” that having Congress elect the president would tempt the president to “sacrifice his duty to his complaisance for those whose favor was necessary to the duration of his official consequence.”⁵ The Founders favored the republican structure of Congress for electing the chief magistrate, but they were wary of making Congress itself elect the president on separation-of-powers grounds, so they made a body similar to but not itself Congress.

With the Founding vision of the College in mind, I will now sketch some changes we could make to the College today. Such reform should aim to give the College a mixture of federal and national character while ensuring the selection of electors capable of prudent deliberation and voting. To make the College both federal and national, I propose that instead of holding popular elections for the president in each state, individual voters instead vote for one elector each: the elector corresponding to their congressional district. These “representative electors” would be elected in the same way their respective representatives are elected. There will also be two electors elected by each state corresponding to their senators. However, these “senatorial electors” are to be elected according to the procedure from before the Seventeenth Amendment: the state governments will elect them. They will meet in their respective states as they currently do, but they shall be given due time to deliberate (I would stipulate at least a few days to a week). The presidential candidate remains victorious upon receiving a majority of the electoral votes. This kind of reform is achievable at the state level, as the Constitution provides that “[e]ach State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct,” their electors.⁶ So, students at UVA can start working toward this kind of reform in Virginia. Meanwhile, I encourage readers in other states to advocate for similar reform. Whatever state first makes their electoral system more true to the Founding vision will be a shining example for other states to follow.

This proposal takes a long-term view of the issue. The reformed system in practice may initially see electoral candidates who promise votes for particular presidential candidates and an electorate that largely votes only with presidential candidates in mind. But my hope is that changing the system of the College may open the doors to reintroducing a truly republican view of government into mainstream political thought that recognizes the merits of indirect elections. Eventually, as some electors use their autonomy to subvert their constituents’ expectations, voters may consider their electoral candidates more than presidential candidates, trusting their local elector with the decision of whom to trust next with the highest magistracy. You may call this wishful thinking, but systemic change toward republicanism makes a parallel change in voting attitudes more likely.

Notes

1. Ruth C. Silva, “State Law on the Nomination, Election, and Instruction of Presidential Electors,” The American Political Science Review 42, no. 3 (June 1948): 523, https://doi-org.proxy1.library.virginia.edu/10.2307/1949915

2. James Madison, “Federalist No. 39,” in The Federalist, ed. Jacob E. Cooke (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1989), 254-255.

3. Alexander Hamilton, “Federalist No. 68,” in The Federalist, ed. Jacob E. Cooke (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1989), 458.

4. Hamilton, 458-459.

5. Hamilton, 460.

6. US Constitution, art. II, sec. 1. Constitution Annotated, constitution.congress.gov.