September 15, 2025 • 11 mins
Dr. Sean Beienberg returns to examine the Electoral College through the lens of Federalist Paper 68, explaining the original intentions behind this complex system and how it rapidly evolved from its designed purpose. We explore how Hamilton's vision of a filtering mechanism for selecting "prudent statesmen" quickly transformed with the rise of political parties and changing electoral practices.
• The Electoral College has two key features: the allocation of electors (balancing federal and national interests) and the filtering mechanism for selecting presidents
• Electoral allocation reflects the mixed federal system—combining House (population-based) and Senate (state-based) representation
• Hamilton designed the system to select presidents with strong character who would be efficient administrators and effective international representatives
• States quickly moved from having deliberative electors to holding popular votes for pledged electors
• The 12th Amendment changed the system after the 1800 election tie, formally acknowledging party politics
• The Constitution remains "agnostic" on how states choose electors—state legislatures could legally choose them directly, though norms have changed
• Hamilton was so confident in the Electoral College design that he noted even anti-federalist critics weren't complaining about it
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everybody.
Today we have Dr Sean Beinbergback with us and today we're
talking about the ElectoralCollege, because the Electoral
College for a lot of people canbe very, very confusing, but
we're going to tie it in withthe Federalist Papers.
So, dr Beinberg, when we lookat the Electoral College and
specifically Federalist 68, whatis the argument here for the
(00:23):
Electoral College?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Sure, it's worth noting that what we think of as
the Electoral Collegefunctionally has, I think, two
distinctive features, one ofwhich is the focus of Federalist
68, which we'll spend most ofthe time talking about.
The other one is what peopletalk about more today, but
that's not what Hamilton spendsmuch of 68 talking about.
So the two features of theElectoral College are its
(00:48):
allocation of electors, and Ithink we'll do probably another
one later, so I'm just going togo over that one lightly but
effectively.
The allocation of electors is,effectively, who gets?
What's the number of electorsthat's allocated to the
difference in this case thestates.
What's the number of electorsthat's allocated to the
different in this case thestates?
And in this it borrows from thestructure of Federalist 39.
(01:12):
Remember we talked about howthe United States system is a
mix of a federal and a nationalsystem.
So the House of Representativesis allocated by population,
assuming it were national.
The Senate is allocated bystate, assuming it's federal,
and the Electoral Collegenumbers this it's 538 now
because of the wrinkle adding DCin the 1960s, but historically
(01:33):
it was 535, or the equivalentthereof, and that's just the
number of the House plus theSenate.
So people get sort offrustrated about that number.
But they're actually making amuch more fundamental critique
of the system than perhaps theythink they are, because the
allocation is designed toreflect the mixed federal
(01:53):
quality of the United StatesFederal Republic and so how the
allocation is determined is justliterally House plus the Senate
again, plus eventually addingthe little DC piece, plus the
Senate again plus eventuallyadding the little DC piece.
Hamilton doesn't talk too muchabout that, but he notes that
one of the advantages of theelectoral college system as
originally designed is to sortof break it up into multiple
(02:14):
little elections right.
What he's afraid of is the ideathat effectively all of the
people would gather together tomake the one big vote for the
president, and that would belike attacked by a mob or
pressured right.
So he says that by basicallydisaggregating this into and
through the states, this solvesthat particular problem of
significantly aggressivepressure.
(02:35):
But we also should again keepFederalist 39 in mind, which is
that the allocation of theElectoral College represents the
arguably core feature of theAmerican Constitutional Republic
as federal.
So that's the one that we talkabout more today, and I think
we'll talk about sort of more ofthe allocation debates maybe in
another one.
So I want to turn to Hamilton'smajor argument in Federalist 68,
(02:58):
which is pretty straightforwardand, I think, actually pretty
short, okay which is that, againremember, the president is
supposed to wield executivepower, not just all power, not
just presidential.
What we think of aspresidential power today, not
lawmaking power, butfundamentally is supposed to be
sort of a cool-headedadministrator as well as the
(03:20):
preeminent representative of theUnited States in foreign policy
.
And so this is supposed to besomebody not necessarily this
has a compelling politicalplatform, a compelling set of
policies, but somebody who isthought of as a thoughtful,
prudent statesman would be theterm that they would have used
right A leader, effectively,whose character is ultimately
(03:44):
what's the most important andbasically steady hand and
efficiently and fairlyadministering the law.
And the argument is you want asystem that will produce, in
effect, such a boring,straightforward figure that is
going to basically efficientlyexecute the law and represent
the country well on the stage.
And so Hamilton suggests andyou can see there's actually a
(04:05):
part in the beginning of theFederalist 68 where he's almost
gloating about this he says eventhose idiot critics of our
Constitution, by which we meanlike the anti-federalists, he
says even they're not evencomplaining about this.
But let's just take a victorylap anyway to say how great this
system is.
He actually cites FederalFarmer, one of the
anti-federalist critics, by namein the footnote.
In the footnote, but he says,effectively, what have we done
(04:29):
is we've built a system thatcreates a filtering mechanism by
which prudent people will endup as the president.
And so he says nobody'sactually doing a direct election
, you're not necessarilyoriginally pulling a lever of
everybody who comes together andsays here's who we want for
president.
The idea is that the states, bywhatever measure they see fit,
(04:49):
will choose a set of electors.
And Hamilton goes through andwhat to us probably reads like a
weirdly long amount of detail,saying it can't be and this is
in the Constitution.
But basically you can't havesenators serve as electors, you
can't have representatives serveas electors, you can't have
people who are alreadyparticipating in this.
And again they have in mindsort of the model of the
Pennsylvania Constitution, wherethe legislators pick the
(05:12):
executive and basically becomesa tool of them or even one of
them themselves.
And so he says, effectively,you're going to have this
separate body that only existstemporarily, it's not going to
have a permanent set of interest, it's not going to have a
permanent set of incentives,this temporary body, however the
states want to do it.
State legislatures canbasically sort of pick what
their rule will be.
They can pick it directly, theycan throw it to a vote,
(05:33):
whatever.
But they will basically createa freestanding temporary body of
electors and those electorswill come together and basically
send on their pool to thenational sort of counting
mechanism.
And then he says assuming thata majority emerges from that,
we're done.
But in recognizing the factthat there might be weak
(05:56):
organization, maybe states inthe Northeast are going to have
one candidate they really likeor who they know really well,
but that person's not well knownin, say, the South.
If there's no majority, thenthe House of Representatives
will choose from among the topset of vote getters.
Basically, the idea is that atthat point the Electoral College
serves as a filtering mechanism.
(06:16):
All right, here's the baselineof people that we think are
reasonable and competent and theHouse of Representatives can
choose from among them if nomajority is secured.
I mentioned that this is afeature that sort of feels alien
to us today, because very, veryquickly the logic of the
electoral college is originallyconceived by Hamilton Falls away
(06:38):
.
Very quickly, states bothdecide that they should have
just the citizens choose,basically the electors, but with
a sort of party, with a sort ofpresident like pledge to a
presidential candidate, soeffectively they turn it into a
direct election by the statesAgain.
Some of the state legislatureshang on to this power for
(06:58):
decades, but fairly quickly.
Most of them basically makethis a popular vote within their
state.
And the other thing that makesthe system that work very well
is the logic of party politics,where you want to make
coalitions of people who aremore like-minded than you than
not, particularly to block folkswhose views you find abhorrent
(07:20):
or whose platforms or partisanalignments you find abhorrent.
But stronger parties create anincentive to basically band
together up front to sort ofpre-select your candidate,
rather than how the electoralcollege was originally conceived
, which is the states are allgoing to pick people who they
respect Maybe this is from theirown state, maybe this is from a
neighboring state and thenthey're going to send that that
(07:43):
list up sort of up the chain.
So there are some I mean,technically speaking, they're
occasionally state legislatorswill even run their mouths and
say, hey, let's go back to theold system, or something like
that.
So the Constitution actually isrelatively agnostic on how the
electors are chosen in this andbasically they leave that to the
states to determine.
But I think at this pointpretty much everybody would get
(08:05):
mad if the state legislaturejust suddenly said, yeah, we're
doing that again.
They legally could under theConstitution, but we have strong
enough norms of sort of that,particularly as the president
has shifted its sort ofobligations and powers that the
people should have a strongersay in that rather than sort of
this complicated filteringmechanism.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
So then this kind of translates to the Constitution,
specifically in Article 2, ofkind of going through and saying
, like here's how the electorsare going to be chosen.
It goes into a little bit moredetail.
When you talked about you know,if there's a tie in 1800, there
was a tie, correct, did that?
(08:47):
Like because it was in 1800,and you said that the kind of
system has changed since then,like, was that a turning point?
Was that this is how it wasdesigned and hamilton was like
this is you know exactly why wehave it?
Speaker 2 (09:03):
so the original model was effectively that, uh, the,
the, the president, the vicepresident would sort of
automatically assume they werenot run as a joint ticket, so
effectively a secondarycandidate, that was effectively
the runner up.
And the wrinkle was that veryquickly, as parties convened,
they say, oh, here's who we wantfor president and here's who we
(09:26):
want for vice president.
That's what created thescenario that you're describing
in 1800.
And so very quickly and this isone of the earlier
constitutional amendments, theyamend the Constitution to
basically have the president andthe vice president run on a
joint ticket rather thaneffectively the vice president
is sort of the runner-upperfallback from the presidential
model.
(09:46):
So yeah, I guess you couldargue whether it's the turning
point or whether it's thereflection of the turning point,
which is basically thedevelopment of parties
relatively quickly in Americanhistory over the 1790s.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Yes, and we will definitely get into more of that
in later episodes.
Dr Beinberg, as always, thankyou so much.
Welcome everybody.
Today we have Dr Sean Beinbergback with us and today we're
talking about the ElectoralCollege, because the Electoral
College for a lot of people canbe very, very confusing, but
we're going to tie it in withthe Federalist Papers.
So, dr Beinberg, when we lookat the Electoral College and
specifically Federalist 68, whatis the argument here for the
(00:23):
Electoral College?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Sure, it's worth noting that what we think of as
the Electoral Collegefunctionally has, I think, two
distinctive features, one ofwhich is the focus of Federalist
68, which we'll spend most ofthe time talking about.
The other one is what peopletalk about more today, but
that's not what Hamilton spendsmuch of 68 talking about.
So the two features of theElectoral College are its
(00:48):
allocation of electors, and Ithink we'll do probably another
one later, so I'm just going togo over that one lightly but
effectively.
The allocation of electors is,effectively, who gets?
What's the number of electorsthat's allocated to the
difference in this case thestates.
What's the number of electorsthat's allocated to the
different in this case thestates?
And in this it borrows from thestructure of Federalist 39.
(01:12):
Remember we talked about howthe United States system is a
mix of a federal and a nationalsystem.
So the House of Representativesis allocated by population,
assuming it were national.
The Senate is allocated bystate, assuming it's federal,
and the Electoral Collegenumbers this it's 538 now
because of the wrinkle adding DCin the 1960s, but historically
(01:33):
it was 535, or the equivalentthereof, and that's just the
number of the House plus theSenate.
So people get sort offrustrated about that number.
But they're actually making amuch more fundamental critique
of the system than perhaps theythink they are, because the
allocation is designed toreflect the mixed federal
(01:53):
quality of the United StatesFederal Republic and so how the
allocation is determined is justliterally House plus the Senate
again, plus eventually addingthe little DC piece, plus the
Senate again plus eventuallyadding the little DC piece.
Hamilton doesn't talk too muchabout that, but he notes that
one of the advantages of theelectoral college system as
originally designed is to sortof break it up into multiple
(02:14):
little elections right.
What he's afraid of is the ideathat effectively all of the
people would gather together tomake the one big vote for the
president, and that would belike attacked by a mob or
pressured right.
So he says that by basicallydisaggregating this into and
through the states, this solvesthat particular problem of
significantly aggressivepressure.
(02:35):
But we also should again keepFederalist 39 in mind, which is
that the allocation of theElectoral College represents the
arguably core feature of theAmerican Constitutional Republic
as federal.
So that's the one that we talkabout more today, and I think
we'll talk about sort of more ofthe allocation debates maybe in
another one.
So I want to turn to Hamilton'smajor argument in Federalist 68,
(02:58):
which is pretty straightforwardand, I think, actually pretty
short, okay which is that, againremember, the president is
supposed to wield executivepower, not just all power, not
just presidential.
What we think of aspresidential power today, not
lawmaking power, butfundamentally is supposed to be
sort of a cool-headedadministrator as well as the
(03:20):
preeminent representative of theUnited States in foreign policy
.
And so this is supposed to besomebody not necessarily this
has a compelling politicalplatform, a compelling set of
policies, but somebody who isthought of as a thoughtful,
prudent statesman would be theterm that they would have used
right A leader, effectively,whose character is ultimately
(03:44):
what's the most important andbasically steady hand and
efficiently and fairlyadministering the law.
And the argument is you want asystem that will produce, in
effect, such a boring,straightforward figure that is
going to basically efficientlyexecute the law and represent
the country well on the stage.
And so Hamilton suggests andyou can see there's actually a
(04:05):
part in the beginning of theFederalist 68 where he's almost
gloating about this he says eventhose idiot critics of our
Constitution, by which we meanlike the anti-federalists, he
says even they're not evencomplaining about this.
But let's just take a victorylap anyway to say how great this
system is.
He actually cites FederalFarmer, one of the
anti-federalist critics, by namein the footnote.
In the footnote, but he says,effectively, what have we done
(04:29):
is we've built a system thatcreates a filtering mechanism by
which prudent people will endup as the president.
And so he says nobody'sactually doing a direct election
, you're not necessarilyoriginally pulling a lever of
everybody who comes together andsays here's who we want for
president.
The idea is that the states, bywhatever measure they see fit,
(04:49):
will choose a set of electors.
And Hamilton goes through andwhat to us probably reads like a
weirdly long amount of detail,saying it can't be and this is
in the Constitution.
But basically you can't havesenators serve as electors, you
can't have representatives serveas electors, you can't have
people who are alreadyparticipating in this.
And again they have in mindsort of the model of the
Pennsylvania Constitution, wherethe legislators pick the
(05:12):
executive and basically becomesa tool of them or even one of
them themselves.
And so he says, effectively,you're going to have this
separate body that only existstemporarily, it's not going to
have a permanent set of interest, it's not going to have a
permanent set of incentives,this temporary body, however the
states want to do it.
State legislatures canbasically sort of pick what
their rule will be.
They can pick it directly, theycan throw it to a vote,
(05:33):
whatever.
But they will basically createa freestanding temporary body of
electors and those electorswill come together and basically
send on their pool to thenational sort of counting
mechanism.
And then he says assuming thata majority emerges from that,
we're done.
But in recognizing the factthat there might be weak
(05:56):
organization, maybe states inthe Northeast are going to have
one candidate they really likeor who they know really well,
but that person's not well knownin, say, the South.
If there's no majority, thenthe House of Representatives
will choose from among the topset of vote getters.
Basically, the idea is that atthat point the Electoral College
serves as a filtering mechanism.
(06:16):
All right, here's the baselineof people that we think are
reasonable and competent and theHouse of Representatives can
choose from among them if nomajority is secured.
I mentioned that this is afeature that sort of feels alien
to us today, because very, veryquickly the logic of the
electoral college is originallyconceived by Hamilton Falls away
(06:38):
.
Very quickly, states bothdecide that they should have
just the citizens choose,basically the electors, but with
a sort of party, with a sort ofpresident like pledge to a
presidential candidate, soeffectively they turn it into a
direct election by the statesAgain.
Some of the state legislatureshang on to this power for
(06:58):
decades, but fairly quickly.
Most of them basically makethis a popular vote within their
state.
And the other thing that makesthe system that work very well
is the logic of party politics,where you want to make
coalitions of people who aremore like-minded than you than
not, particularly to block folkswhose views you find abhorrent
(07:20):
or whose platforms or partisanalignments you find abhorrent.
But stronger parties create anincentive to basically band
together up front to sort ofpre-select your candidate,
rather than how the electoralcollege was originally conceived
, which is the states are allgoing to pick people who they
respect Maybe this is from theirown state, maybe this is from a
neighboring state and thenthey're going to send that that
(07:43):
list up sort of up the chain.
So there are some I mean,technically speaking, they're
occasionally state legislatorswill even run their mouths and
say, hey, let's go back to theold system, or something like
that.
So the Constitution actually isrelatively agnostic on how the
electors are chosen in this andbasically they leave that to the
states to determine.
But I think at this pointpretty much everybody would get
(08:05):
mad if the state legislaturejust suddenly said, yeah, we're
doing that again.
They legally could under theConstitution, but we have strong
enough norms of sort of that,particularly as the president
has shifted its sort ofobligations and powers that the
people should have a strongersay in that rather than sort of
this complicated filteringmechanism.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
So then this kind of translates to the Constitution,
specifically in Article 2, ofkind of going through and saying
, like here's how the electorsare going to be chosen.
It goes into a little bit moredetail.
When you talked about you know,if there's a tie in 1800, there
was a tie, correct, did that?
(08:47):
Like because it was in 1800,and you said that the kind of
system has changed since then,like, was that a turning point?
Was that this is how it wasdesigned and hamilton was like
this is you know exactly why wehave it?
Speaker 2 (09:03):
so the original model was effectively that, uh, the,
the, the president, the vicepresident would sort of
automatically assume they werenot run as a joint ticket, so
effectively a secondarycandidate, that was effectively
the runner up.
And the wrinkle was that veryquickly, as parties convened,
they say, oh, here's who we wantfor president and here's who we
(09:26):
want for vice president.
That's what created thescenario that you're describing
in 1800.
And so very quickly and this isone of the earlier
constitutional amendments, theyamend the Constitution to
basically have the president andthe vice president run on a
joint ticket rather thaneffectively the vice president
is sort of the runner-upperfallback from the presidential
model.
(09:46):
So yeah, I guess you couldargue whether it's the turning
point or whether it's thereflection of the turning point,
which is basically thedevelopment of parties
relatively quickly in Americanhistory over the 1790s.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Yes, and we will definitely get into more of that
in later episodes.
Dr Beinberg, as always, thankyou so much.
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