I agree on the history, so “founded on” was wrong on my part.
But arguably the current “one person, one vote” standard controls. The Equal Protection clauses of the 5th and the 14th amendments are incommensurably in conflict with the electoral college. As between them, since the Equal Protection clauses (at least the 14th Amendment) are more recent, those arguably supersede in case of conflict.
At this point the US has massively diverged from the original intent. The original intent was that only wealthy male land owners would vote. Further the entire US government is just a very slightly modified version of what the UK used just with a President in place of a King, and states in place of noble houses.
There is unfortunately a massive sentiment in the US to uphold the founders as some kind of perfect ideal of democracy and that anything that differs from their original intent is somehow wrong. The reality of course is that they were flying by the seat of their pants and largely making it up as they went. In addition ideas and morals have changed greatly since that time. We should be far less concerned about what a bunch of people who died centuries ago would think about some law or ruling and far more concerned about what impact it would have today.
So yes, the Electoral College was intentionally set up as an attempt to prevent direct democracy, but so what? The question should not be what did they intend, the question should be do we still need/want it?
I agree on the history, so “founded on” was wrong on my part.
But arguably the current “one person, one vote” standard controls. The Equal Protection clauses of the 5th and the 14th amendments are incommensurably in conflict with the electoral college. As between them, since the Equal Protection clauses (at least the 14th Amendment) are more recent, those arguably supersede in case of conflict.
That’s my reasoning anyway.
At this point the US has massively diverged from the original intent. The original intent was that only wealthy male land owners would vote. Further the entire US government is just a very slightly modified version of what the UK used just with a President in place of a King, and states in place of noble houses.
There is unfortunately a massive sentiment in the US to uphold the founders as some kind of perfect ideal of democracy and that anything that differs from their original intent is somehow wrong. The reality of course is that they were flying by the seat of their pants and largely making it up as they went. In addition ideas and morals have changed greatly since that time. We should be far less concerned about what a bunch of people who died centuries ago would think about some law or ruling and far more concerned about what impact it would have today.
So yes, the Electoral College was intentionally set up as an attempt to prevent direct democracy, but so what? The question should not be what did they intend, the question should be do we still need/want it?