- [Instructor] In this series of videos
about the Constitution,
we've been discussing all the elements
of balance and compromise that appear in the Constitution,
the balance between large states and small states
and between the different branches of government.
But in this video I want to talk
about one particular compromise
made at the Constitutional Convention
over how the president of the United States is elected,
and that is the electoral college.
I think these compromises reveal some real conflict
among the framers over how they think
the American Revolution did.
Did they think that the Revolution
went too far,
had created too much equality
and too much liberty for people who weren't ready
to deal with it?
Or did it not go far enough?
So let's talk about this idea
that perhaps the Revolution went too far,
that the average American Joe,
or Jedediah, I guess,
could be the Revolutionary version of Joe,
had too much a sense of his own importance,
was going to tear down the social structures
that had seemed natural during the American Revolution,
the wealthy elites, the middling farmers,
the rough and rowdy workers.
You'll remember that one of the incidents
that led to the decision to revise
the Articles of Confederation was Shays's Rebellion
in which a group of unruly farmers,
Revolutionary War veterans,
had marched against the governor of Massachusetts.
So the people were used to rebelling,
and they first had rebelled against Great Britain.
But now that war was over,
and they started rebelling against state governments.
So there's a real sense throughout the Constitution
that the founders were attempting to balance democracy,
a representative government,
with what they saw as too much democracy
or mobocracy in their words,
that unruly mobs
who perhaps lacked the virtue
of elite, educated citizens
would foolishly tear down government
that they weren't prepared to be part of.
Now, you see that in things like the Senate.
The members of the Senate were appointed, not elected,
up until the 20th century.
The idea that there had to be one part
of the legislative branch that was selected
by the better sort of men,
the sort of people who really knew
what good leadership looked like,
not by a mob that might be swayed
by any fancy talking politician.
The founders didn't want all white men to be able to vote.
They wanted voting to be reserved to the elite,
the propertied, the educated,
those who were prepared to be virtuous citizens.
It wouldn't be until the 1820s
that all white men could vote in elections,
regardless of how much property they owned.
Of course, it wouldn't be until the late
19th and 20th centuries that women and minorities
would get the right to vote.
So they had a very dim idea
of the average citizen's ability
to engage productively in democracy.
And another way that they show this in the Constitution
is in the process of electing the president.
Article II establishes the executive branch,
and it also discusses how presidential elections shall work.
And it's a kinda complex process, the electoral college.
But the simple version is that instead of having citizens
vote directly for the president,
the citizens would vote in each state,
and then that state would have electors
equal to the number of senators and representatives.
And those electors would then cast votes for the president,
and whoever got the most electoral votes
should be president.
And we still have this system today.
This is a map of the current number of electoral votes
that each state has.
And really, what the founders intended here
was to have a safeguard
of the office of the president,
believing that it would be possible
for a mob to be swayed,
even the better sorts of citizens,
into voting for a politician
who wouldn't be good for the office.
And so they moved away from direct democracy
into a slightly more complicated indirect system
just to put an extra layer of safety
in between the office of president and the unruly masses.