Editor’s note: Richard La Near provided a version of this column to the Globe several years ago. He has rewritten the column for our use before the presidential election.

As was much of the Constitution, the “electoral college” was created as a compromise between the different interests of small and large states and rural and urban areas. And as Madison’s dream of check and balance (or separation of power) was incorporated via the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, Roger Sherman’s “Connecticut Plan” was to give each state two senators (placating the small states) while allowing the larger states to have more representatives in the House. The same thought went into the electoral college, whereby a balance was struck between the small and large states.

‘Tyranny by majority’

Since Madison, Hamilton and most of the founders were property owners and relatively wealthy, they did not want to create a “direct” democracy where a direct vote (or plebiscite) could tax away their property.

They felt that pure (or direct) democracy was “mob rule” or “tyranny by majority,” and John Adams likened this situation to “three wolves and two sheep voting on what to have for dinner.” After watching the passage of the 16th Amendment in 1913, and seeing personal income tax rates go from a top rate of 7 percent to more than 90 percent during World War II, I now can see that the founders were right in not wanting a direct democracy. They did not want the president, senators or Supreme Court justices directly elected, only House members.

As Madison wisely pointed out in the Federalist Papers, the path down which direct democracies descend is the path of the tyranny of the majority, thus the founders emphatic insistence upon an indirect democracy. As I have always pointed out to my students, “pure democracy without rational, informed voters who possess some moral and ethical values is mob rule.” It is clear that the founders’ intent was not “one person, one vote,” since they thought subjecting people to the popular will would endanger the precious concept of “liberty.” I wholeheartedly concur. The president was to be selected by the electoral college (not popular vote), senators were selected by state Legislature (later changed to a direct vote by the 17th Amendment), and justices were appointed for life by the president. This elaborate system of “check and balance” was to limit government power by causing all decision-making by government (power) to pass through a slow, deliberate and tedious filter, instead of instantaneously responding to popular opinion in a “snap” election, whereby the voter may or may not be rational and well-informed.

Compromise

This precious Constitution of ours was delicately crafted as a vast compromise among many competing issues; what kind of chief executive to have (if any), sectional and regional differences over the issue of slavery (North vs. South), and power sharing between large states and small states (based on land mass and population). Some wanted a king, some wanted no chief executive (like the original Articles of Confederation), and others wanted a directly elected president.

The resulting compromise was an “indirectly” elected president via an electoral college, whereby each state gets the number of electors equal to its two senators plus House members. But, whoever got the most votes in each state got all of that state’s electoral votes. Thus, while New York would get a large number of electoral votes, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Delaware could offer a counterbalance of power to New York’s large electoral votes.

This is exactly what we witnessed in the election of 2000; those states with the largest urban cities (and electoral votes) such as New York and California, went for one candidate (Gore), while most of the states with the smallest urban areas went for Bush. Gore won the popular vote by winning almost every large urban area, but lost the electoral vote by losing too many states — Bush won 30 states, while Gore won 20. For another perspective, Bush won 2,434 counties, while Gore only won 677, and in the 20 states that Gore won electorally, more counties voted for Bush. And to make matters worse for Gore, he lost his home state (Tennessee) and even his own Congressional district, something I believe has not ever happened before in a U.S. presidential election.

The 22 smallest states currently have fewer people than California, yet have twice as many electoral votes, as the founders intended. The northeast (Boston and New York City), the West Coast (San Francisco, Seattle, and L.A.), and the upper Midwest (Chicago and Detroit) voted for Gore, while the “hinterland” (the entire south and most of the west) voted for Bush. If we did not have an electoral college, the 18 to 25 largest cities could elect the president, ignoring the rural (and more conservative) rest of the nation. Some of the founders did not want this to happen and compromised via the electoral college. With no electoral college, most of the campaigning would be done in very selected geographic (and urban) areas. We would end up with a president who only represented the “regional” interests of urban liberalism and cultural elitism, something the founders compromised to prevent.

Vigilant against populism

If many people (mostly Democrats) are disgruntled by the electoral college, then they must also be upset by the fact that every state gets two senators, allowing a sparsely populated state like Montana to carry the same weight as California. They must also be upset by the fact that Kansas has one House electoral vote per 413,000 population, while California only has one per 551,000.

It is true this electoral college over time has been cruel to Democrats, who have always claimed the mantel of “class warfare” and “populism” (Jackson in 1824 tried to do away with it), but the wise founders were vigilant against populism (since they did not want their property “taxed” away.) The only outlet for this outrage comes from Article V of the Constitution, where the founders allowed for the amendment process. They can band together behind Senator Hillary Clinton to try to amend the Constitution via elimination of the electoral college and give “poor” California and New York more senators and representatives.

This will obviously not happen, and once again the founders by their self-interested desire to protect their property and limit “power,” have proven far wiser than they could have ever imagined. I stand in awe at this delicately crafted work of art, compromise and “power limiter” called the Constitution and give thanks to God for its intricate nuances such as the “electoral college.”

Dr. Richard La Near is the J.R. Kuhn Distinguished Professor of Economics/Finance at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin.