On The Electoral College and Progressivism

The Electors are selected by the state legislature. Under the state constitution the legislature may be bound to honor the popular vote and select a slate of Electors proposed by the political party that wins the popular vote in that state. There are states with GOP majority legislatures where the public votes for a Democrat in the election. Under the state constitution that state legislature has to select the slate proposed by the party that the legislature does not belong to, even though that legislature was selected by the same voters and possibly in the same election or one a year earlier. Originally most state legislatures in America were elected annually, and the voters knew that their choice would then appoint the Electors for the President. That made the separate popular vote for the POTUS superfluous. Once the Electors are appointed they can vote as their conscious directs, for any candidate.

Ideally people would vote for only a limited number of offices, and most of those in small local districts, to ensure accountability and control by the citizenry. Voting units with hundreds of thousands or millions of voters produce corruption gerrymandering and expensive media driven campaigns subject to external manipulation. It was intended that people would vote for their Representative in Congress, from a district of less than 50,000 persons and fewer voters, and no other national offices. The other offices people voted for were their governor, state legislature, usually two chambers with one at least smaller than the congressional district, the local mayor and alderman, the local sheriff and judge, and the coroner. That totals nine offices, with most elected annually. The state legislatures selected the United States Senator as well as the Electors for the Presidency and the higher state judges.

The states had an incentive to jealously limit corruption and abuse by the federal government and the federal government had an incentive to jealously limit corruption and abuse, which is inevitable, in the states. What the Progressives did by transferring power to the federal government, in part by downgrading the states through the direct election of Senators and the ostensibly apolitical Civil Service system, was to infect the federal government with the corruption, self serving bureaucratic machinery, and partisanship that was the hallmark of state level government. Children are taught that the Progressive Movement through the Wisconsin Plan professionalized government in a manner that strengthened Democracy and reduced opportunities for abuse. That is a lie. What it did was eliminate local control over the government and reduced the voters to dependents subject to coercion bribery and manipulation by national level parties. Voters no longer could even control their local and state governments, who became mere conduits to administer federal money and programs, let alone the federal government that became essentially unchained from subordination to the citizenry.