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The undemocratic way the electoral college works now is not even what the founders intended. And the electoral college itself was a compromise that nobody was fully satisfied with /1 https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1324824219180584967
The electoral college was a last minute compromise bc the delegates at the Constitutional Convention couldn't agree on how to elect a president; as Madison later admitted, "it was not exempt from a degree of the hurrying influence produced by fatigue and impatience" /2
Delegate James Wilson argued that the president should be popularly elected, but knew it was unlikely others would agree--especially southerners /3 https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1220&context=jcl
The electoral college, in concert with the 3/5 clause, maximized the power of southern enslavers. Election by popular vote would have overwhelming favored the north; instead, 4 of the first 5 presidents ended up coming from Virginia https://time.com/4558510/electoral-college-history-slavery/ /4
There was opposition before the Constitution was ratified; as the author of Antifederalist no 72 asked, did it really make sense that "a free people should first resign their right of suffrage" to electors? http://resources.utulsa.edu/law/classes/rice/Constitutional/AntiFederalist/72.htm /5
The electoral college turned out to be even less democratic than the founders expected. They didn't forsee a 2-party system or that states would use a winner-take-all system for the electoral college. Here's what Madison said in 1823 https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/04-03-02-0109 /6
Despite the electoral college's obvious failings, whenever reformers tried to shift to a popular vote, white supremacists in the south fought those efforts in order to protect their own power https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/opinion/electoral-college-racism-white-supremacy.html /7
There's a lot of work still to do to improve democracy in America--but until we deal with the electoral college, the work will be incomplete. /fin
