Alexander hamilton on electoral college. A Primer on Why the Founders Created the Electoral College 2023-01-02

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Alexander Hamilton was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and a key figure in the development of the country's political system. He was a strong advocate for the creation of the Electoral College, which he saw as a necessary safeguard against the dangers of democracy.

In Federalist Paper No. 68, Hamilton argued that the Electoral College was necessary to ensure that the president would be chosen by a broad coalition of people, rather than just a narrow group of factions. He believed that this would help to ensure that the president would be someone who was truly representative of the people and capable of leading the nation.

Hamilton also believed that the Electoral College would provide a check against the potential for corruption in the election process. He argued that the system would help to prevent candidates from buying votes or using other forms of coercion to win the presidency.

Despite its benefits, the Electoral College has also been the subject of criticism and controversy throughout its history. Some argue that it is undemocratic because it allows a candidate to win the presidency without winning the popular vote. Others have pointed out that it disproportionately favors smaller states and can result in candidates who are not representative of the national electorate winning the presidency.

Despite these criticisms, the Electoral College remains an important part of the United States' political system and has played a significant role in shaping the country's history. While it may not be perfect, it continues to serve as a valuable means of selecting the president and ensuring that the leader of the nation is truly representative of the people.

How Hamilton saw the Electoral College

alexander hamilton on electoral college

Associated Press articles: Copyright © 2016 The Associated Press. The delegates should meet in their state and tell the national government what their decision is. He also notes that the framers intentionally designed a process for selecting presidents that would minimize their political power — the Electoral College. By 1860, every state but South Carolina chose its electors by popular vote for partisan candidates; the current winner-take-all system was a settled practice because it suited party interests. He is also the founder and executive director of Save Our States, which educates Americans about the importance of the Electoral College. However, his involvement behind the scenes was important to Burr's defeat, as Kagan suggests.

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Hamilton, In Fiction And History, Is Key To Understanding The Electoral College : NPR

alexander hamilton on electoral college

In modern times, however, electors are designated by their political parties, usually legally bound to vote for a particular candidate, and not even named on the ballot. Nevertheless, they knew that things would change, and they set up ways to fix the government when needed. The quote originally came from a letter Hamilton sent to his friend and fellow Federalist party member Theodore Sedgwick, per Independent Journal Review. Slaves got an even worse deal, as a slave officially was counted as just three-fifths of a person. This gave the votes to the electors who chose how their state would use their electoral votes.

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Alexander Hamilton's The Electoral College, By Alexander...

alexander hamilton on electoral college

In referring to the election of 1800 Larson concludes by making the claim… Alexander Hamilton's Two-Party System Throughout the United States protests are breaking out everywhere over a multitude of problems. His behavior and cabinet choices reek with the stench of authoritarianism and oligarchy. He never chooses or thinks of choosing. This just points out again how dangerous it is that the constitution and other writings of the founders are seen as sacred documents — not unlike the Bible. This type of situation has brought the Electoral College into question over the past few decades. But, more importantly for my point, it does not describe the electoral college ever. The original idea was that the most intelligent and high off people should be the ones to elect the president because the framers feared that the public majority was too uneducated to make decisions regarding the president and their opinion would shadow out the opinion of the minority opinion.

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Irony: It was Alexander Hamilton who created the Electoral College

alexander hamilton on electoral college

Unfortunately, these ideas are still used in the presidential election process. With 538 delegates representing the Electoral College, it is unfair and inequitable to the millions of people who devote their time and energy to stand in long Election Of 1876 Dbq 1264 Words 6 Pages Hayes who was in the Republican party and Samuel J. In other words, the electors are not supposed to rubber-stamp the popular vote. Rather than often deadlocking and throwing the election to the House of Representatives, there is almost always an electoral vote majority the magic 270+. Despite the counterintuitive relationship that the Electoral College has with the popular vote, there are some key benefits to keeping the system. Strong political pressures quickly turned the new institution to partisan purpose. The Electoral College is in fact an apt example of how ill-designed arrangements survive by adapting to the pressures, force and power of stronger, more dynamic institutions.

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Alexander Hamilton on the Electoral College

alexander hamilton on electoral college

Those opposing a President Trump will have to find other ways to press dissent and resistance. The Constitution authorizes electors to make independent judgments. Bennett 9 Detractors of the College claim that this is inherently undemocratic, as all votes should be considered equal in a true democracy. The most plausible of these, who has appeared in print, has even deigned to admit that the election of the President is pretty well guarded. Statesmen truly have our greater good truly at heart, pursuing the broader purpose of America and calming the passions. Hamilton's construct of a new state reflected his deep distrust of popular voting.

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Hamilton on the Electoral College

alexander hamilton on electoral college

By the time we get to the third presidential election, proto-parties were already forming around candidates and the electors were being treated not as independent deliberators, but as partisan messengers. A politician who ignores a wide swath of America does so at great peril to being elected. Rather than have the Congress or Senate choose the president, the Electoral College seemed to be a compromise where a specific representative of a state would pick the president. Nardulli 23 Each state is free to determine how its electors are selected, and various models have been used in the past. During the 1800s these two conflicting philosophies were acted out by the Federalist and the Democratic Republican parties, respectively.

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Jamie Raskin is right: The Electoral College threatens democracy

alexander hamilton on electoral college

Cable News Network, 30 July 2012. While the college has failed to produce a winner in the past, it has always been due to the presence of a third-party candidate. One is that if we are truly wedded to the notion of original intent, then we ought to entirely scrap the way we elect the president at the moment and select electors to head to state capitals each December and let them hash out who the president ought to be, and let the House be the arbiter of contests that lack an candidate who can garner the needed 270 from those individual contests something that Hamilton thought would happen frequently—he notes it in 68, and I have noted before that he says so in as well. And in that sense, it is more a partisan flashpoint than ever. It still would have needed to be ratified by three-fourths of the states, which was as unlikely to happen then as it is now. Without the Electoral College, only a few highly populated states, especially those on either coast and a few others in between could effectively elect the president of the United States. There is much for them to examine with Donald Trump.

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Alexander Hamilton explains the Electoral College: A way of opposing "cabal, intrigue, and corruption"

alexander hamilton on electoral college

Without the Electoral College, only a few highly populated states, especially those on either coast and a few others in between could effectively elect the president of the United States. Bennett 55 The Electoral College system envisioned by Alexander Hamilton was designed to be independent of the usual partisanship, with the principle goal of finding an individual who would best be suited as the country 's chief administrator and head of state. Until the late 18th century, executive power belonged to generations of warriors, chieftains, princes, Lords and kings, to martial strongmen — and occasional strong women too -- whose claims to power reflected muscle married to an assortment of self-serving mystical or religious myths. He explicitly states that it is meant to find the best man for the job, rather than subjecting the country to tumultuous elections. He felt like it was necessary to create a large national debt so that the government's credit would be built up over time. Writing in Federalist essay 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 or which has received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents.

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The Reason for the Electoral College

alexander hamilton on electoral college

The Federalist Papers: Number 68. That has made the Electoral College controversial from its inception, but it has also won the support of many champions of the less populous states. With vanishingly few exceptions, they simply vote for the candidate who won the popular vote in their state. The Vice President Surprisingly, Anti-Federalists seemed to have more issues with the method of picking a Vice President than that of the President. Cable News Network, 30 July 2012.


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