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McConnell Center Director
Last week I was asked by the editors at the Library of Law and Liberty to reflect on how the Electoral College serves the interests of liberty in America. Defending the Electoral College has been something I have been doing since 2000 when I started editing the first edition of Securing Democracy: Why We have an Electoral College. I continue to write in hopes of furthering the national discussion on the future of the American electoral process. Please understand that these views are mine and mine alone and should not be considered the opinion of the McConnell Center, McConnell Scholars or the University of Louisville.
Here is a little of what I had to say:
There are many reasons why the Electoral College has been successful in producing relatively good presidents within a fairly balanced and stable political system. I have written elsewhere in more depth about how the system serves federalism, the rule of law, and has saved us from long national nightmares of recounts and ballot challenges. Just imagine, for example, what the days after the 2000 election would have been like without the Electoral College centralizing the fight into one state (Florida). If Al Gore and George W. Bush were separated again by only a few hundred thousand votes and the winner of the presidency would be the one who got just one more vote than the other, we would have been conducting recounts and hearing legal challenges in every precinct in every county in every state of the nation. If lawyers could disqualify a few voters here and poll workers could “find” just a ballot box or two there, an election could be overturned.
Today, however, I want to focus on another aspect of the Electoral College and how it serves liberty interests in America. To wit, I want to explore how the Electoral College serves to balance the extremes in our politics, produces relative stability in our system, and protects the liberty of minority interests that otherwise would be crushed under the weight of “king numbers.”
Read my argument in full: http://libertylawsite.org/2012/08/20/the-electoral-college-and-american-liberty/