But the situation is somewhat changed to-day: for a hundred years it has been the case that the electors have inevitably been deprived of all free choice. They are as passive as a printed ballot. They are no longer elected in order to come to a decision as to the best President, but merely to vote for this or that special candidate as designated, and for a hundred years not a single elector has disappointed this expectation. Thus the election of the President is practically accomplished on the day in November when the electors are voted for. McKinley defeated Bryan for the Presidency on the ninth of November, 1900, although no elector had officially voted for either one or the other; nor would he have a chance to vote until the first day of January, when he was mechanically to deposit his ballot.
The indirect election prescribed by the Constitution has therefore become to all intents and purposes a direct one, and the whole machinery of electors is really superfluous. It may, indeed, be said to have become contradictory in itself.
Since the original intention to make an electoral college of the best citizens has been frustrated by the popular spirit of self-determination, the electoral apparatus can have to-day no other significance than to give expression to the voice of the majority. But now just this it is in the power of the electoral system completely to suppress. Let us suppose that only two candidates are in question. If the election were simply a direct one, of course that candidate would win who received the most votes; but with electors this is not the case, because the number of electors who are pledged to vote for these two candidates need not at all correspond to the number of ballots cast on the two sides. If in the State of New York, for instance, three-fifths of the population are for the first candidate and two-fifths for the second, the three-fifths majority determines the whole list of 36 electors for the first candidate, and not an elector would be chosen for the other. Now it can very well happen that a candidate in those states in which he secures all the electors will have small majorities, that is, his opponent will have large minorities, while his opponent in the states which vote for him will have large majorities; and in this way the majority of electors will be pledged for that candidate who has received actually the smaller number of votes. It is a fact that both Hayes in 1877 and Harrison in 1889 were constitutionally elected for the Presidency by a minority of votes.