Madison's Republican Vision: Electoral College and Factionalism

Introduction: Democracy vs. Republicanism in Early America

During the controversial presidential election of 2000, the popular press criticized the American Electoral College system as undemocratic in both its enactment and intent. And indeed, the institution of having states possess certain electoral votes — apportioned according to population totals — reflects the Founding Father James Madison's deep distrust of pure democracy. In Madison's original vision of American government, states would first elect "electors": respected men who had pledged to vote for a particular candidate but who were not legally bound to do so.

The Electoral College as a Check on Popular Will

Instead, once elected, the members of the Electoral College would have time to reflect upon the man best suited to lead the nation before casting their votes. Thus, the election of the President was not determined solely by the popular will. The very notion of electing representative politicians — rather than deciding all political questions by popular vote — is republican in spirit. But the further dilution of the potentially fickle popular will, so feared by Madison, reveals the extent to which the first American political institutions were republican rather than democratic. Madison stressed the need to think long-term rather than short-term, and ideally these reasoned electors would be less susceptible to the pressures of the immediate moment than the more emotionally driven general populace.

The emotional, immediate, and fickle nature of popular will was one of the central fears expressed by Madison in Federalist Paper No. 10, and the Electoral College's removed and supposedly more reasoned approach was the direct result. Of course, if an elector today refused to vote for the party candidate to whom he or she was pledged, that elector would be summarily removed from the party and might provoke a crisis of confidence in the entire party system. The original design thus relied on the presumed wisdom and independence of electors — a safeguard that has since been substantially curtailed by partisan loyalty.

Limited Suffrage and the Property Requirement

The original voting populace was not democratic in its enfranchisement, either. It excluded not only women and enslaved Black Americans, but also men who did not own property. Property owners were considered to have a more lasting stake in the republic, in contrast to potentially transient or mobile citizens without property ties. Only later was universal suffrage extended to all American men, regardless of property ownership. This deliberate restriction of the franchise further illustrates the founders' intent to temper direct democratic impulses with republican filters.