Alan Keyes on the Wisdom of the Electoral College.

I saved this essay of Alan Keyes four years ago, which lays out point for point why the Electoral College exists, and why it should continue to exist. While it reads as somewhat dated, it is still the best explanation yet for why we need to continue to rely on this institution of security against the tyranny of the majority. This is reprinted without permission of WorldNetDaily, so I hope no one sues me, but they are the copyright holders.

The full text of this article is here. I have edited it a little, because it's somewhat long, but the rest of it is definitely worth the read. Emphasis added is mine.

The Founders' Wisdom
© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com
November 13, 2000

Nothing about the current extraordinary aftermath of the presidential election has been quite as alarming as the spectacle of almost uniform ignorance among our political elites, media and citizens, of the very purpose and principled justification of the constitutionally prescribed procedure by which the United States selects its presidents.

Senator-elect Hillary appears to believe that the Electoral College is merely an archaic reflection of our elitist ancestors and their distrust of democracy. Why shouldn't the people elect the president directly, she wants to know, as she prepares to take her seat in that equally "archaic" institution, the Senate, in which, as a senator from New York, she will have precisely as much constitutional authority as senators from Wyoming and Alaska. Possibly she will soon be moved to question the "injustice" of such disproportionate representation.

There has been criticism of the system in the last several days because it is alleged that a simple and direct election of the president by means of the national popular vote would have avoided the controversy regarding the Florida totals. But the current troubles are actually a clear vindication of the wisdom of the Electoral College. It has confined the controversy to one state, because it holds the balance of the Electoral College, rather than spreading it throughout the entire country. Without the Electoral College, the entire country would be consumed by the question of the popular vote, in which Vice President Gore and Gov. Bush are separated by about 4,000 votes per state. That means that from Alaska to Florida, Maine to California, partisans of both men would be subjecting the election totals of their communities to recounts, challenges, litigation -- the inevitable temptation to fraud -- and other attempts to find the few votes that might make the difference to the national total.

I have often compared the Constitution to a nuclear reactor, with the power of self-government understood as nuclear power. If you don't have the control rods in place, if everything isn't set up properly, you don't have a controlled and useful reaction -- you have a meltdown, or the makings of a bomb. That's what democracy is like. If it is not properly structured, it is highly destructive. If it is properly structured, it is probably the best form of government we can attain to. And I think the design bequeathed us by our founders comes pretty close.

The founders understood that a government designed to respond directly, immediately and completely to the will of the majority would be extremely unstable. Among other threats to political stability in such a system they concentrated particularly on the danger of what they called "factionalism." A system that awarded political power to any group achieving simple majority status would be vulnerable to the possibility of a majority faction that would not represent the good of the whole. Regional factions, for example, might form on the basis of an interest common to residents of the region, but detrimental to the Union -- such as in the period leading up to the Civil War.

In our day, shallow, superficial and selfish "leaders" neither understand this history, appreciate the benefits it has brought, nor fear the evil its abandonment will bring. Led by Bill Clinton, they have assaulted the character of American decency and good will that alone makes self-government possible. And now they are preparing an assault on the balance and separation of powers, seeking to undermine the entire cathedral of American liberty by their selfish and childish insistence on immediate exercise of their individual will.

The Electoral College is one safeguard that was introduced in order to help stabilize the American system against factionalism by increasing the odds that a president has to attend to the whole country, not just to a particularly intense concentration of his political support within it. The Electoral College system tends to reward a candidate with modest majorities in many states, rather than a candidate with overwhelming support in a few. As we are being reminded vividly by the current election, there is no benefit to a candidate for president in having much more than a bare majority in any given state -- he gains nothing from those votes beyond the one that gives him victory in that state. It is a wise and good system promoting truly national leadership that encourages presidential candidates to seek a plurality in many states, rather than basing his support in a few states overwhelmingly committed to his cause. This is not a guarantee that candidates will be nationally-minded, of course. But it is a generally effective protection against the worst kind of regional factionalism in presidential politics. This protection is subtly accomplished by the Electoral College system in every presidential election, and we would be short-sighted indeed if we abandon it in a selfish and stupidly willful reach for direct influence of our individual votes.

In fact, resentment of the Electoral College usually reveals a deeper resentment to the principles of the American Republic. Zealots of the popular will cannot stomach the notion that every one of us has an obligation to something other than our own will -- and that as American citizens we have an obligation to seek not our own private benefit, but justice for the whole. The Electoral College system is merely one of the ways that our constitutional system requires us to accept the fruitful paradox of American statesmanship -- that higher principles than the popular will must be respected in the constitutional outcome, but that these higher principles cannot ultimately govern American politics unless they are freely accepted by the people.

Political ambition in America cannot be absolute, but must always be limited by the demands of prudence and the ultimate goal of justice. The oft-repeated but seldom understood statement that America is not a democracy but a republic reduces ultimately to this fact.

It is ironic that at the end of the most lawless administration in the history of our country, the man who stood silent in the shadow of that lawlessness and became its accomplice should demand from the American people "respect for the rule of law." But for those of us who have been defending the principle of the rule of law throughout these difficult years, it is neither ironic nor difficult for us to demand that same respect for justice here that we wanted in the case of Bill Clinton.

At the end, let us hope and pray, of the Clinton era, this amazing election has made it suddenly necessary that all Americans consider questions usually reserved for the statesman or the founder. We must remember the deep meaning of the institutions and procedures by which the Constitution helps us to replace mere popular willfulness with the considered judgments of the better angels of our national nature. And we must remember as well that such statesmanship is the duty of the citizen even in the particular and passing contests of political life, when our passions tempt us to seek triumph without due regard for justice.