U. S. Elections: The Misconception of the ‘Popular Vote’

There is no such thing as a ‘popular vote’ in the U.S. presidential elections. Sovereignty is divided between the federal government and the states, as Tocqueville explained....

The left-wing prophets and pundits who dominate discussion in ‘mainstream’ media in the United States often bring up what they call ‘the popular vote’ in presidential elections. This is a number they get by adding together the votes that each candidate receives in each state. They point out for example than in 2016, Hillary Clinton received more votes overall than Donald Trump even if he was elected president because he received more votes in the Electoral College to which each state sends as many delegates as amounts to the combined number of senators and representatives for that state. For example, Texas sends 38 delegates to the Electoral College because that state has two senators and 36 representatives while Wyoming sends three delegates because that state has two senators and one representative.

But the so-called ‘popular vote’ has nothing to do with the election of the president. It is totally irrelevant to the process. The president is not chosen by the American population at large, but by the fifty states comprising the United States of America. This is a federation of states, and the states possess certain rights. One of them is to send two senators to the U.S. Senate irrespective of the population of the state. Another right is that of electing the president. Different rules apply in different states. In Maine and Nebraska, for example, the delegation to the Electoral College is elected by proportional voting, but in all the other states it is elected by majority voting, so that the presidential candidate with the most votes in the state gets all the delegates.

Since America is a federation of states, sovereignty is divided between the individual fifty states and the federal government in Washington. When the thirteen colonies on the East Coast in 1776 rebelled against rule from London, they wanted to restrain the power of authorities. They therefore agreed on a Constitution which calls for decentralisation, the separation of powers and numerous checks and balances. This was the main reason Alexis de Tocqueville thought the passion for equality had not destroyed liberty in the United States, as it had done after the 1789 Revolution in France. The U.S. had enjoyed political stability and progress while France had gone through terror and military dictatorship and two more revolutions, in 1830 and 1848. 

According to Tocqueville, in his great work, Democracy in America, the United States were “small sovereign nations, that together form the great body of the Union.” The Senate was based on the federal principle and the House of Representatives on the idea of a popular will. The bicameral system was a restraint on federal government. Some other restraints on it were a decentralised administration, an independent judiciary, the presidential veto, a free press, and the jury system. Moreover, the many intermediary institutions and associations in America, from the states down to counties and towns, not to forget spontaneous associations such as congregations and clubs, encouraged social engagement, invigorated the civic spirit and restrained central government. They served “like so many hidden reefs that slow or divide the tide of popular will.” Although Tocqueville was first and foremost an ardent supporter of individual liberty, he accepted democracy and equality. But democracy must not, he said, degenerate into an unrestrained exercise of the popular will, while equality had to be the equality of free individuals.

Those who bring up the popular vote in U.S. presidential elections as something more than an interesting discussion topic and who complain about the ‘undemocratic’ structure of the Senate fundamentally misunderstand the American system. John Maynard Keynes famously observed: “Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.” I have little doubt who the scribbler is in this case. Jean-Jacques Rousseau took democracy to mean that there is a General Will, unrestrained by any checks and balances, and that sovereignty is undivided and unlimited. Rousseau’s ideas were implemented in the French Revolution with terrible consequences. Whether or not modern pundits know it, they are usually invoking his idea of undivided popular sovereignty when they criticise the American system of checks and balances, including the Electoral College. In Europe this idea would mean that Germany should have ten times more to say in running the European Union than Austria, because her population is ten times that of Austria. It is the idea that there should only be two political agents, the masses and the state, with the virtual elimination of the intermediate institutions and associations in which individuals can play a meaningful role. The individual would turn into mass man, with only the liberty to agree with the General Will, imposed by left-wing prophets and pundits.