Electoral College Lecture Summary

Hello everyone! Once again, I come to you with a summary post of a lecture because I am in need of a GB Favor. Today's summary is based on a lecture on the Electoral College, brought to you through me by Michael Maibach. Mr. Maibach is a former Vice President of Intel Corporation, along other accolades, and possesses lots of background experience in the economic and political realm. He examined some of the history of America's founding, explained the problem the electoral college attempts to solve, and demonstrated how it does solve it. Here is a brief overview.
The founding fathers tried to create a Rome that worked, one without the flaws of the original. One of the biggest inspirations for their government model was John Locke's Second Treatise on Government. From this they drew the conclusion that the people should be the supreme source of authority in government, that there was no “divine right of kings”, and that men have “natural rights”. Another big inspiration for them was Montesquieu, from whom they obtained the ideas of a separation of powers, a system of checks and balances, and the notion that there needed to be a way to protect the minority from the majority. They realized that all of these issues led to what James Madison described as the “central challenge”, the issue of representation in government. If they were to establish the government they hoped for, they would need a system that gave fair representation to every citizen. The two big clashes in this were small vs. large states and states vs. people. The founders were very concerned about a tyranny of the majority, which is why they split the government into three branches and created a Congress with the House and Senate design. The electoral college system was designed to make all the states have a two-step process for the presidential election. It splits it up into 50 mini elections, one for each state, which makes sure that each state has more of an equal say in the election. That way it's not just the popular vote of a very populated state like California completely crushing all the votes of less populated states like Kansas. For example, Alabama has 7 House members and 2 Senate members, so Alabama gets 9 electoral votes. Each state is proportionally represented in this way, which evens out to more of a fair representation for states with a minority populace. This is why the electoral college is an effective system for equal representation.
Alright! That concludes my summary of the Electoral College lecture by Michael Maibach. Thank you for reading and I hope you have a great day!

~ Peyton Osborn :)

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