No it wasn't and you're extraordinarily ill-informed about the US's political system to even make that claim. The US is a constitutional republic, not a direct democracy. The Electoral College is part of a carefully drawn up system by the Founding Fathers to prevent power from concentrating. For those who didn't learn and understand this at age 10 or so, check out Steve Farrell's series here:
The way in which it functions has indeed changed a bit in the wake of a few constitutional amendments. But make no mistake: It was intended to work the way it worked 200-odd years ago, not the way it works now. The popular explanation, which tries to justify how it works now and projects that justification onto its original designers, is a retcon.
Some of the various ideas and justifications follow:
Mr. SHERMAN was for the appointment by the Legislature, and for making him absolutely dependent on that body, as it was the will of that which was to be executed. An independence of the Executive on the supreme Legislature, was in his opinion the very essence of tyranny if there was any such thing.
Mr. WILSON renewed his declarations in favor of an appointment by the people. He wished to derive not only both branches of the Legislature from the people, without the intervention of the State Legislatures but the Executive also; in order to make them as independent as possible of each other, as well as of the States;
Mr. WILSON made the following motion, to be substituted for the mode proposed by Mr. Randolph's resolution, "that the Executive Magistracy shall be elected in the following manner: That the States be divided into ______ districts: & that the persons qualified to vote in each district for members of the first branch of the national Legislature elect ______ members for their respective districts to be electors of the Executive magistracy, that the said Electors of the Executive magistracy meet at ______ and they or any ______ of them so met shall proceed to elect by ballot, but not out of their own body ______ person in whom the Executive authority of the national Government shall be vested."
Mr. WILSON repeated his arguments in favor of an election without the intervention of the States. He supposed too that this mode would produce more confidence among the people in the first magistrate, than an election by the national Legislature.
Mr. GERRY, opposed the election by the national legislature. There would be a constant intrigue kept up for the appointment. The Legislature & the candidates wd. bargain & play into one another's hands, votes would be given by the former under promises or expectations from the latter, of recompensing them by services to members of the Legislature or to [4] their friends. He liked the principle of Mr. Wilson's motion, but fears it would alarm & give a handle to the State partisans, as tending to supersede altogether the State authorities. He thought the Community not yet ripe for stripping the States of their powers, even such as might not be requisite for local purposes. He was for waiting till people should feel more the necessity of it. He seemed to prefer the taking the suffrages of the States instead of Electors, or letting the Legislatures nominate, and the electors appoint. He was not clear that the people ought to act directly even in the choice of electors, being too little informed of personal characters in large districts, and liable to deceptions.
Mr. WILLIAMSON could see no advantage in the introduction of Electors chosen by the people who would stand in the same relation to them as the State Legislatures, whilst the expedient would be attended with great trouble and expence
Mr. GERRY, according to previous notice given by him, moved "that the National Executive should be elected by the Executives of the States whose proportion of votes should be the same with that allowed to the States in the election of the Senate." If the appointmt. should be made by the Natl. Legislature, it would lessen that independence of the Executive which ought to prevail, would give birth to intrigue and corruption between the Executive & Legislature previous to the election, and to partiality in the Executive afterwards to the friends who promoted him. Some other mode therefore appeared to him necessary.
I cannot find any debate over suffrage until after these discussions.
The antidemocratic sentiment is the Convention was very strong - there was debate on whether even the House should be popularly elected, on the grounds that:
Mr. SHERMAN opposed the election by the people, insisting that it ought to be by the State Legislatures. The people he said, immediately should have as little to do as may be about the Government. They want information and are constantly liable to be misled.
Mr. GERRY. The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not want virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots. In Massts. it had been fully confirmed by experience that they are daily misled into the most baneful measures and opinions by the false reports circulated by designing men, and which no one on the spot can refute. One principal evil arises from the want of due provision for those employed in the administration of Governmt. It would seem to be a maxim of democracy to starve the public servants. He mentioned the popular clamour in Massts. for the reduction of salaries and the attack made on that of the Govr. though secured by the spirit of the Constitution itself. He had he said been too republican heretofore: he was still however republican, but had been taught by experience the danger of the levilling spirit.
"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."
And while the popular vote does not decide the presidential election, it is not irrelevant if you are trying to measure the sentiment of the people (a strong electoral college win with a narrow popular margin says something different than a strong electoral college win with a huge popular margin).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._68#Pro_slavery_...
Edit: Looks like 147,029 votes is enough to flip Wisconsin and Florida and give Clinton the Electoral College.
> For those who didn't learn and understand this at age 10 or so
If you're going to provide corrections, please do so neutrally and without snark. Otherwise you degrade the discourse just like the non-factual comments do.
In the original intent of the Representative Republic designed by the founders, your state would pick it's Electoral College and then they would pick any president. You didn't actually vote for one candidate.
The issue I have with people who argue the EC needs to stay is that they don't realize we're no longer in a representative republic because we took the power from the EC to pick a candidate.
Otherwise the EC could effectively pick Jill Stein if they felt like it, even though trump won the EC state count. But we don't let them do that any more.
The formulas for allocating representatives and the exact details of the process by which some of them are chosen has changed over time, but its still a representative republic.
The way that I consider it to be a bastardization of the Representative Republic is that we don't care who the representatives in the Electoral College are we only care who they vote for.
If we elected the EC as people who were allowed to make a choice then it would be more of a representative republic. Instead we have a democracy in that we are really just voting for president, but some people's vote count more than others.
>> and because we don't have a monarchy -- that's the Republic part.
That is wrong. There is such thing as a representative democracy. That is where the majority always wins. AKA Popular Vote.
The President is an elected head of state and government, a characteristic of a representative republic, whether he is directly or indirectly elected.
> There is such thing as a representative democracy
Yes, representative republics are a subset of representative democracies (Constitutional monarchies are usually also representative democracies, though not republics, because monarchy.)
> That is where the majority always wins.
No, democracy doesn't mean "the majority always wins", and the distinction you are trying to make between representative republics and representative democracies is not what those terms actually mean.
That tipped me off to thinking that We may be using differing definitions of the word republic.
So I went to a semi more trustworthy source wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic
If you scroll down to the section on the Elections you'll see where I formed the opinion that an indirect election of the president conforms with the definition of republic I'm used to.
>> The indirect election of the president through the electoral college conforms to the concept of republic as one with a system of indirect election. In the opinion of some, direct election confers legitimacy upon the president and gives the office much of its political power.
So this is where I formed the (incorrect) idea that the word Republic had a hard and fast definition that corroborated this definition.
Obviously I was wrong, but I'd like to say that you are not correct either. Typically I hate being wrong, but through this exercise I was able to learn. So thank you for challenging me to dive deeper to find out why my definition didn't match the commonly accepted definitions and where'd I'd come to that conclusion.
The truth is, the US system is pretty damn awful. The good news is, everything else is also pretty damn awful. Also "This is a prescription for socialism and communism." makes me think that maybe the author of the article is a tiny bit biased. Also completely wrong.
Compare that to India where current Chief Minister of Delhi is from a party that started to break monopoly of two big parties in India and actually won. It's a total different thing that he turned out to be just another politician.