“Whether one views our form of government as a ‘republican’ democracy or not, I doubt anyone would seriously suggest we return to that method of selecting the Executive.”, where that method refers to the election of presidential electors by legislators.

It was a reasonable presumption for Hamilton to make, that the people would choose the electors. The people chose the delegates to the ratifying convention. Why wouldn’t they also choose the presidential electors? As it turned out, New York did not appoint any electors in 1789, so his presumption with respect to New York was wrong. But he was correct with respect to other States, including the key States of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, along with New Hampshire, Delaware, and Maryland. So only 4 small States were holdouts, Connecticut, New Jersey, South Carolina, and Georgia.

Given what actually happened in 1789 it is simply erroneous to suggest that the Founding Fathers “contemplated” something else, or that Founding Fathers had “wishes” that were not now strictly followed.

You are absolutely correct that the State legislature are under no obligation whatsoever to continue to use the current system of choosing electors, or any scheme they might adopt in the future. Massachusetts used a different scheme in every presidential election from 1789 to 1820. They could adopt the NPV scheme one election, and skip out the next. A State could unilaterally adopt the “national popular vote” for appointment of its electors or use a lottery.

Perhaps a poll could be taken, “What manner should the legislature of [state name] direct be used for the appointment of presidential electors in 2012?”

The only way to effectively ensure that the president and vice president are chosen by the people directly is to adopt a Constitutional Amendment that would provide:

(1) Uniform suffrage;
(2) Uniform electoral procedures;
(3) Majority election;
(4) Common set of candidates;
(5) Direct popular nomination of candidates;
(6) Integrated recount procedures;
(7) Separate election of president and vice president;
(8) Participation by all US citizens;
(9) Provide a recall procedure;

You simply can’t do with this with the clever hack that your NPV scheme is. Can you?

ps Why did the Constitutional Convention provide that a States electors could not vote for two persons from their State. Surely this was intended to keep a large State like Virginia from dominating the execute. It hardly had an impact on Delaware.

“Whether one views our form of government as a ‘republican’ democracy or not, I doubt anyone would seriously suggest we return to that method of selecting the Executive.”, where that method refers to the election of presidential electors by legislators.

It was a reasonable presumption for Hamilton to make, that the people would choose the electors. The people chose the delegates to the ratifying convention. Why wouldn’t they also choose the presidential electors? As it turned out, New York did not appoint any electors in 1789, so his presumption with respect to New York was wrong. But he was correct with respect to other States, including the key States of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, along with New Hampshire, Delaware, and Maryland. So only 4 small States were holdouts, Connecticut, New Jersey, South Carolina, and Georgia.

Given what actually happened in 1789 it is simply erroneous to suggest that the Founding Fathers “contemplated” something else, or that Founding Fathers had “wishes” that were not now strictly followed.

You are absolutely correct that the State legislature are under no obligation whatsoever to continue to use the current system of choosing electors, or any scheme they might adopt in the future. Massachusetts used a different scheme in every presidential election from 1789 to 1820. They could adopt the NPV scheme one election, and skip out the next. A State could unilaterally adopt the “national popular vote” for appointment of its electors or use a lottery.

Perhaps a poll could be taken, “What manner should the legislature of [state name] direct be used for the appointment of presidential electors in 2012?”

The only way to effectively ensure that the president and vice president are chosen by the people directly is to adopt a Constitutional Amendment that would provide:

(1) Uniform suffrage;
(2) Uniform electoral procedures;
(3) Majority election;
(4) Common set of candidates;
(5) Direct popular nomination of candidates;
(6) Integrated recount procedures;
(7) Separate election of president and vice president;
(8) Participation by all US citizens;
(9) Provide a recall procedure;

You simply can’t do with this with the clever hack that the NPV scheme is. Can you?

ps Why did the Constitutional Convention provide that a States electors could not vote for two persons from their State. Surely this was intended to keep a large State like Virginia from dominating the execute. It hardly had an impact on Delaware.

To review – I responded to Savannah’s Shanghaiing the FF’s to support his/her conclusion that the EC was invented to protect small states against large.

That was the issue.

In response I provided ample evidence that many of the Founding Father’s had other reasons for inventing the EC.

Hamilton did indeed argue that the EC was “excellent.” And he does presume that the people would elect NY’s electors, not the state legislatures. In his state. But if he assumed that that would be the case in all thirteen states, then he would have been wrong, wouldn’t he?

Well…wouldn’t he? Did all thirteen states give their authority to appoint their electors to the people?

In 1789?

No.

Even if all of the original 13 states had immediately ceded their authority to the people, 37 subsequent additions to the Union were also under no Constitutional obligation to do so.

Is that untrue?

No.

And in any event did Hamilton make the case that the EC would be excellent because it would protect small states from large, farmers from city elitists, etc.?

Nope.

Finally, as to my statement that if we followed the “FF’s wishes” regarding the EC we might still be watching state legislators voting for president, I again invite you to go back to the source – the Constitutional Convention. Alexander Hamilton was only one of many delegates, and his position with respect to popular election of the “Executive” was decidedly in the minority at the Con Con (as he was, by the way, in his position that the Executive should be appointed for life). As I have previously stated, for most of the Convention most of the delegates were supportive of the idea of the Congress appointing the Executive.

That is FACT.

The words they left in the Constitution granted to state legislatures that authority, and the reasons they ultimately shifted from a scheme that would have given the Congress that authority was fear of corruption.

That, too, is FACT. Don’t believe me? Then believe James Madison:

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/debcont.asp

Or read any respected historian on the subject of the Con Con, two of whom I alluded to above.

We would not be discussing that FACT if opponents of the NPV did not persist in raising the utter FICTION (Savannah’s words) that:

“Our Founding Fathers knew that states had different interests and did not want to see the desires of more populated states forced upon smaller ones. Thus, they created the Electoral College.”

That is pure fiction. Not supported by facts. Self-serving fantasy.

I’m willing to debate opposition to the NPV, which I wholeheartedly support. On any grounds. I do expect, though, that when anyone comes to the party claiming that their arguments have the support of the Founding Fathers, that they also come with some actual facts to back up the claim.

Neither you nor Savannah have done so.

Next topic.

If the EC is an elitist institution, it also fails. It’s effects don’t uniformly favor any one group, rather, they are almost completely arbitrary. Was Al Gore some populist demagogue? Of course not. Well some of the readers of this site probably think he was but the point still stands, if the EC was created to deny “dangerous” men like him the presidency, why didn’t it stop then even more left-wing Obama?

Furthermore, we could get rid of the EC and still be far far from a direct democracy, still be very much a republic.

You wrote:

“Thankfully, as the nation matured, one state legislature after another ceded to the people the authority given them by the Constitution. So now our President is elected by the votes of registered voters in all 50 states, rather than by legislators, as the EC was originally contemplated by the FF’s.”

“You know, if we now strictly followed the Founding Fathers’ wishes on the matter of electing the Executive, most of us would not presently have a vote at all, regardless of whether we lived in a small or large state…unless of course we happened to be state legislators.”

But we have the words of Alexander Hamilton where he was explaining the process that the Constitution Convention had finally agreed upon. There is no evidence whatsoever that he contemplated appointment of the electors by the legislature.

And we have the actions of the founding fathers from Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia that also had popular election of presidential electors. If we are naming founding fathers, don’t we thing of John Adams, Sam Adams, Elbridge Gerry, John Hancock, Ben Franklin, James Wilson, Robert Morris, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, James Mason, Richard Henry Lee, and Patrick Henry? And of course electors were also popularly elected in New Hampshire, Delaware, and Maryland.

When we think of States like Connecticut and New Jersey where the legislature picked the electors, who can we come up with? Betsy Ross and Benedict Arnold?

It is simply irrelevant to go back to the discussions early in the process of the Constitutional Convention. I have never claimed that the electoral college was not a brilliant invention devised late in the process. Maybe Hamilton would have preferred something else. But he recognized it as at least excellent. I think you need to read #68 from the top and presume that Hamilton placed all the important items at the front and not buried down in the lower paragraphs that you chose to quote.

Under the Constitution, the House of Representatives is “composed of members chosen … by the People of the several States”. Now while you may choose to whine that the electors did not include women, nonproperty owners, slaves, and Indians; it was the electorate that chose the delegates to the ratification conventions, it is the electorate that chose the first Congress in 1788 and 1789 (the one that proposed the so-called Bill of Rights), and the electorate that chose most of the presidential electors that in turn chose George Washington and John Adams.

I have never claimed that the State legislatures did not have the authority to approve participation in your nefarious NPV scheme; just that it would be ill-advised for them to do so.

First…this started with Savannah making the common claim but erroneous claim that the EC was created by the FF’s to reinforce the “rights” of small states versus large states. Uh…no. That is not correct. It is a comfortable inference for some to make, as I have stated, but it is not a fact. As George Will once said, you’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own set of facts.

So then…how better to test the facts supporting or refuting that particular claim than to go to a source? The source I quoted was a delegate to the Con Con who wrote FP #68 to defend the Electoral College. Hamilton stated why he was writing the paper, and I gave a link to the full source. His purpose for writing the paper was therefore self-evident. Perhaps you, like Savannah, would like to ruminate on your own as to why he wrote it. I prefer to rely on his own words. And I did provide a link to the full source, so I hid nothing of what Hamilton wrote. For instance, does it really matter that the paper was addressed to the “People of the State of New York?” I think not. If I’m not mistaken all of Hamilton’s FP’s were addressed thusly, but they were widely printed and distributed throughout the states. The salutation is therefore irrelevant to the matter at hand (unless, of course, you again want to speculate).

There is not a word in that paper that suggests the EC was created to protect “states rights,” or to protect small states from large, or urban centers from rural voters. That was Savannah’s contention. It is not Hamilton’s however. None of your additional quotes (thank you again) indicate Hamilton – a Founding Father from New York – had any concern whatsoever about those matters.

Would you like other quotes from other FF’s who participated in the Con Con? Here (taken from James Madison’s notes to the convention):

“Mr. SHERMAN was for the appointment by the Legislature, and for making him absolutely dependent on that body, as it was the will of that which was to be executed. An independence of the Executive on the supreme Legislature, was in his opinion the very essence of tyranny if there was any such thing.”

“Mr. WILSON renewed his declarations in favor of an appointment by the people. He wished to derive not only both branches of the Legislature from the people, without the intervention of the State Legislatures but the Executive also; in order to make them as independent as possible of each other, as well as of the States”

“Col. MASON favors the idea, but thinks it impracticable. He wishes however that Mr. Wilson might have time to digest it into his own form.-the clause “to be chosen by the National Legislature”-was accordingly postponed.”

“Mr. RUTLIDGE suggests an election of the Executive by the second branch only of the national Legislature.”
Mr. GERRY, opposed the election by the national legislature. There would be a constant intrigue kept up for the appointment. The Legislature & the candidates wd. bargain & play into one another’s hands, votes would be given by the former under promises or expectations from the latter, of recompensing them by services to members of the Legislature or to their friends.”

These quotes are taken from early in the Con Con, and support my contention that there was in fact no unanimity of opinion about how the Executive should be chosen. However the delegates were as a body generally content early on with the idea that the Congress should appoint the Executive. This is hardly a surprise – most of them were or had been members of their own state legislatures and/or the Continental Congress.

Thus far I’ve seen no one else in this space go to the trouble of QUOTING Founding Fathers. They just make their own inferences and conscript the FFs as their unwitting allies, as Savannah does above. So here…I’ll do some of your work for you. Here is a quote that supports her premise:

“Mr. RANDOLPH, urged strongly the inexpediency of Mr. Gerry’s mode of appointing the Natl. Executive. The confidence of the people would not be secured by it to the Natl. magistrate. The small States would lose all chance of an appointmt. from within themselves. Bad appointments would be made; the Executives of the States being little conversant with characters not within their own small spheres.”

Even here however, note that Randolph (who, I take pains to note, introduced the Virginia Plan which if adopted would have given large states greater power in Congress than they ended up getting) is arguing against a proposal by Gerry of Massachusetts that the GOVERNORS of the 13 states appoint the Executive. So there was yet another scheme that was discussed.

It is the greatest of fictions that the FFs agreed the Connecticut Compromise and then promptly turned to the matter of electing the Executive and said “Oh yes…OF COURSE…we’ll also set up the EC to elect the Executive to protect the interests of small states!”

Again…go to a source. Read Madison’s notes. The EC was settled upon very late in the Convention and some time after the form of the Congress was resolved. In fact, the general body of the Con Con was surprised and somewhat disturbed by the proposal which came out of committee. Or read “Miracle At Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention” by Catherine Drinker or “A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution” by Carol Berkin. These historians emphasize that what the FFs feared most was an unfettered Executive, particularly one beholden to a small cadre of powerful people. The main issue which concerned the delegates as to the appointment or election of the Executive was…corruption. It was fear of corruption which gave rise to the EC. Preserving a balance of power among the states was simply not the sole or even primary reason the EC was created.

Finally, as to your point that three state legislatures conveyed their power to the voting public as early as 1789 (women, nonproperty owners, slaves and Indians excluded, I suspect)…would you agree that they had a right to do so? A constitutional right? A right to “appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress…”

Careful, now!

Cheers…

“Thankfully, as the nation matured, one state legislature after another ceded to the people the authority given them by the Constitution. So now our President is elected by the votes of registered voters in all 50 states, rather than by legislators, as the EC was originally contemplated by the FF’s.

You know, if we now strictly followed the Founding Fathers’ wishes on the matter of electing the Executive, most of us would not presently have a vote at all, regardless of whether we lived in a small or large state…unless of course we happened to be state legislators.”

You quote from the Federalist, and yet fail to note who it was addressed to, and why it was addressed to them. And then you ignore the specific words of Hamilton where he suggests that the electors would be chosen by the people. And then you ignore the reality of the first election in 1789, when the voters of Virginia, the voters of Pennsylvania, and the voters of Massachusetts all participated in the election of the electors from their respective States.

Everyone knows, however, that every issue is not voted on in a referendum by every citizen. Of course we aren’t a DIRECT democracy. Pointing that fact out makes you Captain Obvious, not clever.

Democracy – Majority Rule

Oligarchy – Minority Rule by 2 or more

Monarchy – Minority Rule by 1.

Direct or indirect for each type.

Constitution limits for each type IF there is a constitution.

The U.S.A. regime is an EVIL VICIOUS indirect minority rule regime — a blatant oligarchy of the EVIL gerrymander MONSTERS in the gerrymander Congress and in the gerrymander Electoral College.

Each State legislature regime is also an EVIL minority rule gerrymander regime.

RESULT – the circa $$$ 13 plus TRILLION debts in all governments, undeclared wars, genocide of the old American Indian tribes to about 1890, slavery until 1865, inflations, depressions, etc. etc. etc. — standard stuff that ALL EVIL ROTTED minority rule regimes produce.

REAL Democracy NOW — regardless of ALL EVIL MORONS who love the minority rule stuff from the EVIL past to continue.

P.R. – legislative bodies
A.V. – executive and judicial offices

What we are left with are the FF’s ACTUAL WORDS in the Constitution. Those words give the state legislatures the authority to allocate their EC votes in whatever manner they choose. That is what the NPV compact would do. States would be exercising the specific “right” given them by the Constitution in a manner of their own choosing.