@Cruiser “The EC is iron clad”
“Ironclad” is one word, and it has two possible definitions:
1. Covered in iron.
2. Impossible to contradict or change.
I’m pretty sure you didn’t mean either of those, so you may want to pick another word.
”[It] worked exactly as Hamilton envisioned it to work even 200 some odd years later.”
We could have had a system where each of the states was worth a certain number of points. Hamilton was the one who wanted the electors to be actual people who would watch the election and be free to vote against the person to whom they are pledged if he or she proved incompetent. This was specifically to keep people like Trump out of the office (which is why the group that was trying to stop the Electoral College from voting for Trump called themselves the “Hamilton Electors”).
Hamilton also wanted to prevent the electors from being people who were too devoted to any particular candidate. After all, it makes no sense to insist on using actual people if you’re only going to nominate diehard fans who would never become faithless electors. But while he got his way with regard to keeping elected officials from being electors, he was not able to prevent candidates from stuffing the Electoral College with diehard supporters.
In short, the simple fact of the matter is that if the Electoral College had worked exactly as Hamilton envisioned it to work, Hillary Clinton would be the president-elect right now (though Bill would not have been allowed to be one of her electors).
“It worked 8 years ago…it worked this year and every election since it was created.”
I suppose it depends on what you mean by “worked.” Obviously, the Electoral College has continued to be the actual determiner of the president, but that’s a pretty thin definition of “worked.” I suppose it has also served its original elitist goal of keeping the presidential election out of the hands of the people (and in deferring the question of slavery into the future so that the Founders wouldn’t have to deal with it). But if that’s the Electoral College “working,” then I’d much prefer it not to work.
Besides, the question isn’t whether or not it works. The question is whether it works well—and whether or not something else would be better. Remember, the Constitution was created as a response to the failures of the Articles of Confederation, and one of its explicit purposes was “to form a more perfect Union.” The Founders knew not just that they were fallible, but also that no unchanging document could be fit for an ever-changing world. So they wisely included an amendment process in the Constitution to be used when change was needed.
Finally, one last point about Hamilton. One of the less discussed reasons for Hamilton’s support of the Electoral College is that he believed it would make it harder for foreign powers to interfere with US elections. Yet it was precisely this electoral anomaly that foreign powers sought to take advantage of this time around. The modern age makes it a lot easier to target the Electoral College system than the popular vote, and so what may have once been a strength has become a potential weakness. In that regard, then, the Electoral College cannot be said to have worked at all this time.
There’s also a distinct irony in a conservative resting so heavily on the opinions of a Federalist like Hamilton. So while you have accused @Dutchess_III of being against the Electoral College because her candidate lost, it seems more likely that you are for it because your candidate won. After all, you were willing to agree with @Jaxk five years ago when he said that times had changed.
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