00:00Well, I personally think the Electoral College is an abomination.
00:04For obvious reasons.
00:07James Wilson is sort of a shadowy figure to most.
00:11I mean, if you ask 500 Americans, they would never have heard of him.
00:16He did the one thing that we wish he hadn't done at the convention.
00:21He came up with the Electoral College.
00:26The Electoral College is a group of people, call it together, for one purpose, to decide who's going to be
00:33president.
00:36You can think of the Electoral College as a compromise on top of a compromise on top of a compromise.
00:43Your number of electors is your number of senators plus your number of House members.
00:48So Southerners will get some slave representation.
00:52In the small states, because every state gets two senators, it's going to do a little better in the Electoral
00:58College than they do in the House.
01:02The founders themselves were not in love with the Electoral College.
01:06It was defective from the beginning.
01:08We have a problem that a minority of the population, because of the structure of the Electoral College, in some
01:16cases, over the objections of the majority, is ruling the majority.
01:22I'm one who finds virtue in the Electoral College.
01:25And it's not just because I come from a smaller state, Arizona, that may benefit more than a larger state
01:31like California.
01:32It emphasizes our system of federalism.
01:35We are not a direct democracy.
01:37We're a representative democracy.
01:39The states have considerable power.
01:41The states run elections.
01:42That is a good thing to decentralize that kind of power.
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