Is the US Electoral College a Polite Fiction That Should Be Abolished?

Abstract

The US electoral college started to cast doubt in American voters only 20 years after the 12th amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1804, which provides for election of the president and vice president by the electoral college. Should there be no majority vote for one person, the House of Representatives (one vote per state) chooses the president and the Senate the vice president. Today, 213 years after the first harbinger sign surfaced in 1824 with the election of John Quincy Adams, the efficiency of the electoral college is still a hot and a highly moot topic… At the time the US constitution was written and ratified, it was, thanks to its vision, an endeavor that was entirely ahead of its time. It epitomizes American exceptionalism, which is characterized by a unique history, a unique mission, and unique values. Alexis de Tocqueville was the first to pinpoint that exceptionalism and to give it his approval or benediction in his book Democracy in America. He was a French observer of American democracy who traveled throughout the new American country and let his French colleagues and philosophers back home know, afterwards, that the ideas that were dear to them were working in America. However, as it is the case for everything that is man-made, the electoral college, the US constitution’s brainchild, is not failproof, and turns out to be the constitution’s white elephant, its bete noire.