The Electoral College was Designed to Disenfranchise
Monday May 26, 2025
Every four years, Americans are reminded that they do not elect the president directly. They vote for electors, members of something called the Electoral College, who cast the real ballots for president a few weeks later, typically with no fanfare. Most people cannot name an elector, have never met one, and likely never will. Yet these obscure intermediaries have delivered the presidency to five candidates who lost the popular vote, most recently in 2016.
The Electoral College is undemocratic by design. It distorts political power across states, inflates the influence of smaller and whiter populations, and has deep structural ties to slavery. We are here to explore how and why the Electoral College came into being. To understand the Electoral College, you have to understand what the framers feared: mob rule, legislative dominance, and the possibility of states, especially the slaveholding ones, losing control of their internal systems. What they created was a constitutional patchwork intended to balance federalism, elite control, and sectional interest. The Electoral College was not a mistake. It was a solution. A terrible one, but a solution nonetheless.
The Electoral College did not appear fully formed in the Constitution. It was the outcome of months of argument, multiple committee rewrites, and several failed proposals. When the Constitutional Convention convened in the summer of 1787, the framers agreed that the country needed a single executive. How to select that executive, however, was another matter entirely.
James Wilson of Pennsylvania, one of the more democratic-minded framers, proposed direct election by the people. Gouverneur Morris, never shy about speaking his mind, agreed. He argued that the people were the most legitimate source of authority and that only a national popular vote would give the president real democratic legitimacy:
He ought to be elected by the people at large, by the freeholders of the Country. That difficulties attend this mode, he admits. But they have been found superable in N. Y. & in Cont. and would he believed be found so, in the case of an Executive for the U. States. — Gouverneur Morris, July 19, 1787 (Madison’s Notes)
Morris’s point was clear. Even if a national popular vote was desirable in theory, it posed logistical challenges in a republic that stretched from the Atlantic coast to the Appalachians and had no national media, no formal political parties, and little capacity for shared political communication.
Other delegates strongly disagreed with any plan that relied on popular election. Roger Sherman of Connecticut, for example, believed that ordinary voters would lack the information necessary to make a responsible choice. George Mason of Virginia went further, warning that the public would be misled by “designing men” and that a national popular vote would open the presidency to demagoguery.
The alternative was to have Congress choose the president. This idea had strong initial support. It was efficient and kept power close to those already elected to represent the people. James Madison himself initially favored this model. But others, including Morris again, worried that this would tie the president too closely to the legislature and violate the principle of separation of powers. As Morris put it, if Congress chose the president, “he will be the mere creature of the Legislature.”
That left a third path: having the states choose.
By late July, the Convention began moving toward a compromise model. A small committee recommended a system in which each state would appoint a number of electors, equal to its total representation in Congress. These electors would meet in their respective states and cast ballots for president. If no one received a majority, the House of Representatives would decide the election, voting by state delegations.
This solution had three key features:
Madison summarized the tradeoffs succinctly:
The election of the president is pretty well guarded. I venture somewhat further; and hesitate not to affirm that if the manner of it be not perfect, it is at least excellent. — Federalist No. 68
In short, the Electoral College was not anyone’s first choice. It was an architectural solution to a structural problem. The delegates could not agree on what a national election should look like, did not trust Congress to handle it, and were deeply suspicious of too much democracy. What emerged was a compromise that gave states significant power over the process, while layering in enough complexity to keep any one faction from dominating.
It was also, crucially, a system that made room for slavery.
When it came time to explain the Constitution to the public, Alexander Hamilton took up the task of defending the Electoral College. In Federalist No. 68, published under the pseudonym “Publius” in March 1788, Hamilton laid out the theory behind the system. His account was part political sales pitch and part moral philosophy, an attempt to justify the compromise that had emerged from Philadelphia.
He begins by noting the stakes:
The mode of appointment of the Chief Magistrate of the United States is almost the only part of the system, of any consequence, which has escaped without severe censure
— Federalist No. 68
Hamilton’s goal is to frame the Electoral College as a stroke of constitutional brilliance, designed to thread the needle between public accountability and institutional restraint. At the core of his argument is the idea that the president should not be chosen directly by the people, nor by a standing body like Congress, but by a temporary group of carefully selected individuals.
The immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation…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 such complicated investigations. — Federalist No. 68
These electors, Hamilton argues, would be chosen “for the temporary and sole purpose of making the appointment,” and thus would not be beholden to any particular political interest. Their transience was supposed to be a feature, not a bug. It would prevent corruption and reduce the chances of “cabal, intrigue, and corruption” infecting the process.
Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union. — Federalist No. 68
The Electoral College, in other words, was meant to be a filter. It was intended to prevent a regional demagogue from riding popular fervor into the highest office. By inserting a layer of deliberation, Hamilton believed the system would help identify candidates of national stature and real virtue.
He was also concerned with foreign interference. Hamilton imagined a scenario in which a foreign power might attempt to install a puppet in the presidency. The electors, meeting in separate states, would be less susceptible to centralized manipulation.
Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. — Federalist No. 68
It is worth noting that Hamilton never addressed the implications of the Three-Fifths Clause or the inflated power it gave slaveholding states within the Electoral College. His concern was focused squarely on elite judgment, institutional independence, and national integrity. Whether he failed to see the racial mechanics of the system or simply declined to mention them is unclear. Either way, the omission is striking.
There is also a profound irony in Hamilton’s vision. The system he described, electors as dispassionate experts, voting on merit, independent of party or pressure, had already begun to fall apart by the early 1800s. Political parties quickly took over the process. Electors became loyal partisans, pledged to vote for specific candidates. States adopted winner-take-all rules. By 1828, the Electoral College bore little resemblance to what Hamilton imagined.
But in 1788, the vision was intact. The Electoral College was to be a safeguard, a stabilizer, a mechanism to protect the republic from its own worst impulses. Hamilton had faith that a small group of qualified men would choose wisely, so long as the public had the wisdom to choose them in turn.
From the beginning, slavery was embedded in the machinery of American governance, and the Electoral College was no exception. While Federalist No. 68 avoids the subject, the debates at the Constitutional Convention make the connection explicit. The system was not just a hedge against popular passion or legislative meddling. It was also a way to preserve political power for the slaveholding South.
The mechanism came through the apportionment of representatives. Each state’s number of electoral votes is equal to the sum of its House delegation and its two Senators. But the number of seats in the House of Representatives was determined by population, and here the Three-Fifths Compromise did its work. For purposes of representation and taxation, enslaved persons would be counted as three-fifths of a person.
This rule had nothing to do with the humanity of the enslaved. It was pure political arithmetic. Southern states demanded credit for their enslaved populations while refusing to grant them rights or recognition. The result was an artificial boost in House seats—and thus electoral votes—for slaveholding states.
James Madison laid it out plainly during the Convention:
The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections. — Madison’s Notes, July 19, 1787
In other words, if the president were chosen by direct popular vote, enslaved people would not count. But if representation was based on the Three-Fifths formula, then the South would benefit from their presence, even as those same people had no political rights. The move to an Electoral College, tethered to House apportionment, guaranteed that benefit.
The Electoral College was not presented as a pro-slavery measure, but it didn’t have to be; it was obvious. It allowed Virginia to emerge as the dominant force in early presidential politics, with its massive enslaved population pushing its electoral strength far beyond its number of eligible voters. The first president, after the Twelth Amendment, from a non-slave state would not take office until 1861.
It is telling that this issue rarely appeared in public discourse during the ratification debates. The Federalist Papers did not mention slavery in connection with the Electoral College. Nor did most pamphlets or broadsides. But the math was clear to anyone who cared to do it.
If the Electoral College was designed to preserve political balance among the states, it failed, at least from the perspective of equal democratic representation. But if it was designed to entrench Southern political power, particularly for states with large enslaved populations, it succeeded immediately and for decades.
The early presidency reads like a roll call of Virginia slaveholders. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe—all Virginians, all enslavers—held the office for 32 of the Constitution’s first 36 years. Virginia’s outsized influence was not accidental. Thanks to the Three-Fifths Compromise, its electoral vote count reflected not only its free population but also a massive enslaved population that had no say in the political process.
For example, in the election of 1800, Virginia had a free population of approximately 530,000 and an enslaved population of over 345,000. The three-fifths formula added the equivalent of more than 200,000 people to its apportionment base. That translated directly into additional House seats and, by extension, electoral votes. Pennsylvania, which had a larger free population, ended up with fewer electors.
This imbalance had concrete political effects. Jefferson’s victory in 1800 hinged on the extra electoral votes that the South received because of slavery. Had the electoral college been based on the number of voters, rather than the number of inhabitants (free and enslaved), John Adams would have been reelected in 1800.
This was not an anomaly. Madison and Monroe likewise benefited from the South’s built-in bonus. Even after the so-called Era of Good Feelings began to wane, the political structure of the Electoral College continued to favor the South. By 1836, seven of the first eight presidents had come from Virginia or had strong political roots in the South. The presidency of John Adams stands out not as the norm, but as the exception. The system worked exactly as intended. The problem, of course, was the intent.
Whatever the framers imagined the Electoral College would be, it did not stay that way for long. The system was barely in operation before it began transforming into something entirely different, driven not by thoughtful electors exercising independent judgment, but by political parties enforcing partisan loyalty.
From the outset, Federalist No. 68 had promised a firewall. Electors, chosen for their wisdom and detachment, would stand between the passions of the populace and the office of the presidency. But this idea collapsed almost immediately. By the election of 1800, the rise of political parties had already turned electors into functionaries. They were expected to vote in lockstep for their party’s candidate, and any deviation was treated as a betrayal.
The original Constitution did not even anticipate political parties. The framers were wary of what they called “factions,” and the idea that entire elector slates would be pledged to specific candidates simply did not enter into the design. But once Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans and Adams’s Federalists squared off in 1796 and 1800, party identity became the driving force behind presidential politics.
That shift had immediate consequences. The tied vote between Jefferson and Aaron Burr in 1800, both of whom received 73 electoral votes, threw the election into the House of Representatives and nearly broke the system. The result was the Twelfth Amendment, ratified in 1804, which required electors to vote separately for president and vice president.
The other major development was the rise of winner-take-all allocation. The Constitution allows each state legislature to decide how its electors are chosen. In the early years, many states used legislative appointment or district-based voting. But by the 1830s, most states had shifted to awarding all of their electoral votes to the candidate who won a plurality of the statewide vote. This practice was not required, but it spread quickly because it maximized partisan power. If your side won a state by even a narrow margin, you got all of its electors. The loser got nothing.
This created the familiar battleground map we know today, where presidential candidates focus almost entirely on a handful of swing states while ignoring the rest. It also ensured that electors would never be independent actors. They would be party loyalists, chosen for their reliability and obedience. In some states, they were, and still are, required by law to vote as pledged.
The myth of the “deliberative elector” died before it was ever fully born. There are scattered exceptions, so-called “faithless electors,” but they have been vanishingly rare, and never decisive. What the framers designed was an elite safeguard against populist chaos. What emerged was a partisan counting mechanism, dependent on state legislatures and shaped by political calculus. The original theory had been buried under practice by the time Andrew Jackson reached the White House. The Electoral College survived, but not in the form anyone in 1787 would have recognized.
The Electoral College was not a blunder. It was a compromise. And like most compromises at the Constitutional Convention, it was built to hold together a fragile political coalition. It tried to satisfy large and small states, slave and free states, federalists and anti-federalists, and a roomful of men who deeply distrusted direct democracy.
The result was not just complex. It was strategic. The Electoral College was structured to limit the power of the general population, preserve the influence of state governments, and, in no small part, secure the political advantage of slaveholding states. These were not bugs in the system. They were features.
Over time, the Electoral College mutated. Political parties seized control. States adopted winner-take-all rules. Electors became ceremonial. But the core structural distortions remain. Smaller states still have disproportionate influence. A handful of swing states still decide national outcomes. And candidates can, and do, win the presidency without winning the most votes.
We were told it was a filter. It became a funnel. We were told it would check the worst impulses of the public. It delivered presidents who lost the popular vote. We were told it was neutral. It was never neutral.
The framers designed the Electoral College for a country that no longer exists, if it ever really did. What remains is a system that frustrates democratic participation, rewards geographic accident, and reflects the political priorities of 1787 far more than those of the present.
So the question is not whether the Electoral College works. It is whether it still belongs. And if the reasons for its creation cannot survive scrutiny, perhaps the institution itself should not survive either.