The Electoral College and Majority Rule
In the United States, the Electoral College is often decried as a rigged, archaic system that undermines democracy. Especially after the 2016 election cycle, the Electoral College is under increased scrutiny once again. Is this uproar justified? An article from Sterling, Colorado’s Journal-Advocate suggests that those who clamor to crown the winner of the popular vote the victor in the presidential election are opponents of federalism and thus opponents of the nature of our constitutional republic. Nonetheless, it is said that winning the popular vote grants a mandate to the president elect to govern, something President-elect Donald J. Trump does not have. While majority rule in the United States may be limited to granting the president-elect a popular mandate, or not, it is worthwhile to consider the dangers of such a system.
In lecture, we learned about the mechanisms behind voting systems, all of which aggregate individual rankings to produce a group ranking, or a winner. In particular, majority rule operates to grant the victory to the alternative, or candidate, with more than half of the popular vote. For this reason, majority rule is often thought of as the de facto voting schema for a direct democracy. It, however, only operates without error as long as there are two alternatives. With more alternatives, the potential for a Condorcet paradox arises where majority rule done in pairs allows for conflicting majorities, and thus no group ranking. Agenda manipulation is also a possibility in this system, as the person or body that controls a sequential majority rule vote can base the victory on the sequence of pairs of alternatives chosen. While abolishing the Electoral College in favor of the popular vote is unlikely to produce errors due to the nature of the two-party system (i.e. the fact that we have only two real alternatives), it would make the minority defenseless against the tyranny of the majority.
Thus, deciding the winner of the U.S. presidential election by popular vote, as many disenfranchised Hillary Clinton supporters suggest, opens the voting system to vulnerabilities. The Electoral College was established by the Founding Fathers to protect against the tyranny of majority rule in a democracy. It is by nature undemocratic. And while it may not have produced a desirable outcome this time around, the Electoral College remains a critical part of our Republic and embodies the federalism enshrined in our Constitution.
Source: http://www.journal-advocate.com/sterling-columnists/ci_30610287/electoral-college-check-tyranny-majority-rule