Due to the recent election, I've been doing a bit of reading on the electoral college. There are a lot of people advocating for it's removal, but I've read a lot of good arguments to the contrary. What were the founding fathers' intentions when they included the electoral college? Have a majority of states always been winner take all? Did the reapportionment act of 1911 change the electoral college in a significant way? I know of the three (now four) cases where a candidate didn't win the popular vote and still won the election, but how many elections have there been where somebody didn't win the electoral vote? Are those elections as controversial? What are your opinions on the (non-)effectiveness of the electoral college, historically speaking? Sorry if this last question is in violation of the rules. It can be ignored if need be.
Hi there -- this question is fine here, but we want to remind any potential respondents that we forbid discussion of events less than 20 years ago, which would of course include the elections of 2000 and 2016. Thanks!
So a few quick things, there are five times including this election. Another point is that I've actually answered very similar questions over the last few days. Two of them are:
I also wrote about this in detail on my personal blog. One article discusses the history of American democracy prior to the Constitution and the Electoral College, another about the reason they created the electoral college in the first place.
That said, I will share a little more insight that I can go into briefly.
The electoral college was a system that was designed to pull back and limit democracy because some of the advancements made by democracy (in the states) seemed threatening to the Founders (please check out the answers above or the blog for more info or sources). My speciality is the American Revolutionary era and I'm not super qualified to talk about any of these upsets since the first one was in 1824, and it's well outside my own range. If you have any other questions about the electoral college in general from this period, please let me know.