Incorrect Claims About the Reason for the Electoral College

The electoral college is a controversial system for electing the United States President. Whether it's good or not is not this article's reason for existing; instead, I wish to correct what seems to be a major error as to claims about why it was created in the first place.

You've probably seen this claim over and over, which is that the reason the president is elected by the electoral college rather than the popular vote was to prevent the more populated states from running things, or in order to try to give better representation to the less popular rural areas. Basically, the claim is that those who made the Constitution came up with the electoral college to try to give less populated areas of the country more equal power to the populated areas, or something similar to that.

One thing you may notice is that no one ever gives any citation for such a thing, or at least I have never seen anyone give any citation. Surely, if this was their reasoning, there must be a quote or writing of one of them. But no one ever provides such a thing.

So let's look at actual statements made on the issue. First, consider this statement by James Madison, considered to perhaps be the most influential person when it came to writing the Constitution. This quote was given in his notes about the Constitutional Convention and is found here. He stated:

If it be a fundamental principle of free Govt. that the Legislative, Executive & Judiciary powers should be separately exercised, it is equally so that they be independently exercised. There is the same & perhaps greater reason why the Executive shd. be independent of the Legislature, than why the Judiciary should: A coalition of the two former powers would be more immediately & certainly dangerous to public liberty. It is essential then that the appointment of the Executive should either be drawn from some source, or held by some tenure, that will give him a free agency with regard to the Legislature. This could not be if he was to be appointable from time to time by the Legislature. It was not clear that an appointment in the 1st. instance even with an eligibility afterwards would not establish an improper connection between the two departments. Certain it was that the appointment would be attended with intrigues and contentions that ought not to be unnecessarily admitted. He was disposed for these reasons to refer the appointment to some other source. The people at large was in his opinion the fittest in itself. It would be as likely as any that could be devised to produce an Executive Magistrate of distinguished Character. The people generally could only know & vote for some Citizen whose merits had rendered him an object of general attention & esteem. There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections. 

Now, this and the other quotes he includes are from James Madison's notes so they can be more properly considered a transcription of general thoughts rather than a literal word-for-word rendering of what was stated. However, James Madison could be trusted, I think, to get his own ideas right. Here we see nothing of population, but rather that states with a lot of slaves would object to a popular vote because their slaves can't vote and thus they would not have as much power in a national election. While this one does at least relate to the issue of population, it does so in a very different manner than those who claim it's a matter of high populations vs low populations suggest.

It should be noted, of course, that with the abolishment of slavery, this consideration is negated.

There is another quote that can be found, from The Federalist Papers. The Federalist Papers were pseudonymously written by James Madison, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton under the name of "Publius." Their purpose was to try to explain why everything in the Constitution was the way it was in an effort to convince people it was a great idea. Given that these men played a major role in drafting the Constitution to begin with, their testimony is particularly valuable. While a little caution must be exercised because these documents were propagandistic in nature, nevertheless they are one of the best guides we have as to why. The discussion on the electoral college is found in Federalist #68. 

Most of it is not concerned with the question of why you use electors rather than a popular vote, and is rather an argument as to why electors are preferable to other non-popular-vote options such as having the House of Representatives do it. I will analyze it. Note that while there are strong speculations based on the writing style of each part of the Federalist as to who wrote what, we do not know for sure. #68 is believed to have been written by Alexander Hamilton who is the one I will credit, but it is possible that it was Jay or Madison.

THE mode of appointment of the Chief Magistrate of the United States is almost the only part of the system, of any consequence, which has escaped without severe censure, or which has received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents. The most plausible of these, who has appeared in print, has even deigned to admit that the election of the President is pretty well guarded. I venture somewhat further, and hesitate not to affirm, that if the manner of it be not perfect, it is at least excellent. It unites in an eminent degree all the advantages, the union of which was to be wished for.

It was desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided. This end will be answered by committing the right of making it, not to any preestablished body, but to men chosen by the people for the special purpose, and at the particular conjuncture.

It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.

Although little time is actually devoted to explaining why this is preferable to a popular vote, we do see the idea that the decision "should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation." Thus, "A small number of persons, elected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations." Not a word is stated about issues of population.

I should also note, of course, that the electoral college has been an utter failure in accomplishing this goal. No one is selected as an elector with the purpose of it being someone who will analyze who should become president; people are chosen specifically because they will not perform any such analysis and will rather vote for a particular predetermined candidate. The electors for Trump were chosen because they were people guaranteed to vote for Trump, and the electors for Biden were chosen because they were people guaranteed to vote for Biden. While there have been a few faithless electors in the past, these were done more as a protest than any actual goal of changing the election result (to my knowledge, no faithless elector in US history has ever voted for the other primary candidate; rather, they vote for someone else entirely). This is how it has been for a very, very long time. The idea of people analyzing who would be the best president after being chosen for electors is a pipe dream.

The next several paragraphs of the Federalist Paper are unimportant for our purposes so I'll skip them, as it is an explanation for the specifics of the electoral college, such as why they meet in their own states rather than all in one location, or why elected officials like Senators or Representatives are not allowed to be electors. But the final paragraph on the election of the President should nevertheless be noted:

The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States. It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue. And this will be thought no inconsiderable recommendation of the Constitution, by those who are able to estimate the share which the executive in every government must necessarily have in its good or ill administration. Though we cannot acquiesce in the political heresy of the poet who says: "For forms of government let fools contest That which is best administered is best," yet we may safely pronounce, that the true test of a good government is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration.

If anyone can look at the people who have been elected Presidents of the United States, and say the office of President has never fallen "to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications" then I would have to say they have an extremely low standard for requisite qualifications.

But the bottom line here is that in the most detailed explanation of the reason for the electoral college, the constantly spouted claim of it being related to better representing less populated areas is not found or even hinted at. If someone wants to claim that's a valid reason for the existence of the electoral college now, fine, but it wasn't at all what was in mind for the people who actually set it up.

It may be noted that Madison's statement from the Constitutional Convention regarding slaves is not mentioned here; most likely, this was omitted because New York (where these pamphlets were distributed) had a very small slave population. I suppose someone could try to say that they would omit any mention of giving more representation to smaller states because New York was one of the more populated states (behind Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts at the time), but the point remains that still no explanation was given for it being an issue of state population.

So here we have two sources as to the why of the electoral college, but neither says anything about the much-touted claim that the reason for the electoral college was to prevent the high population states from controlling the presidential election. Rather, they give totally different reasons. Until such time as someone is able to provide any proof that the electoral college was made to prevent large states from controlling the popular vote, I see no reason to accept this often made claim.

If someone wants to claim that the electoral college accomplishes the goal of giving smaller states better representation... well, I'm not so sure about that, but they can at least try the argument. But don't claim that was the reasoning of the people who made the electoral college without providing any proof for it, particularly when the proof one can find demonstrates the opposite.

Kwadjo Peter (or Kojo Peter, or Kwadwo Peter)

Back in 2015, there was a report about a man in Ghana named "Kwadjo Peter" (I have also seen his name rendered as "Kojo Peter", undoubtedly the differences come from alternate romanizations of the language) who supposedly came back to life after being dead for a month. According to his account, he died, spent some time as a spirit, including a trip to hell, before resurrecting. An example report of it can be found here. Elements of the story were corroborated by family members, who said he was indeed Kwadjo Peter. He even ended up getting on an episode of a religious TV talk show.


If all this is true, it's very notable, especially because he gave an account of what he experienced while dead, such as visiting hell. As is noted in that article:

"In the next world, Kwadjo claims he started flying and got infuriated by the fact that he could still see his family and friends but none responded to him whenever he called out their names. He claims he even tried holding his one-year-old son but it was to no avail. He then met a bearded man who directed him to follow him on a narrow path. He obliged and was shown the Biblical hell fire with Michael Jackson and Pope John Paul trapped in it."

If this was made up, then we can completely ignore it as well as any information he claimed to have obtained through the experience. But if it was real then we would want to sit up and pay attention to his claims.


It was years after the fact that I first happened to hear about it, and I tried to see if I could find information about it. Did they dig up the body to check to see if it had disappeared, which would verify the story? Did they perform a DNA test to see if this was the same guy? I just couldn't find any information about it beyond the initial reports. The most I found was this article which briefly mentioned it ("To cut a long story short it was a publicity stunt – no iota of truth"), but unfortunately without going into detail on it.

However, I did eventually find it, almost by accident. I missed it because the article in question giving the aftermath rendered his name as Kwadwo Peter, and I was looking for Kojo or Kwadjo because that is how the initial articles were writing his name. It seems like the spelling can vary. But the point is, it was found. But what was the final verdict? It was a fake.

The full scoop can be found here and I am incredibly grateful for that website as it gave me the critical information. His actual name was Emmanuel Osanyongmor, a guy who looked incredibly like the original Kwadjo Peter. After the original had died, various people told Emmanuel how much he looked like him. Inspired by this, he did research on Kwadjo Peter in order to pass on him and deceive Kwadjo Peter's family so they could be used as support for his claim. The hope was that the news about being a resurrected man would gain him fame and fortune. It initially worked, but people forgot about the story pretty quickly, dashing such hopes. Later on he felt so guilty about it he tried to kill himself, leaving himself in critical condition. All of that is mentioned in the above link, but several days after that post he ended up dying for real as a result of the suicide attempt; information about that can be seen here.

So that's the truth of it all. His claims about his resurrection, including visiting the afterlife, were made up. He was able to get away with it due to having a very strong resemblance to the actual person and conducting some independent research on the deceased so he could pretend to have knowledge of their life. This could have been of course also proven wrong by digging up the body, but perhaps because the story went away so quickly there wasn't enough incentive to do so.

Given the difficulty I had in finding this out, I thought it would be good to make a blog post on the subject. That way, should anyone try searching out "Kwadjo Peter" (rather than "Kwadwo Peter") they may stumble upon this article and get information about it.

More Thoughts on Third Parties

A while ago I posted this in which I discussed third parties (in particular the American Solidarity Party) and ranked choice voting. This is a bit of an update, I suppose.

In that post I advocated for supporting the American Solidarity Party on the grounds that its platform was uniquely suited to presenting an alternate option to the Democrats and Republicans, and also said that Ranked Choice Voting (of the specific "Instant Runoff" variety) would be useful for aiding in them or other third parties becoming viable.

Since then, there have been some developments. The party did fall a bit short of what I hoped in the US presidential election, but it should be noted that it was a notable improvement over 2016. In 2016, the candidate (Michael Maturen) received 6,777 votes (putting him in 14th place) whereas the 2020 candidate (Brian Carroll) received 40,230 votes, almost 6 times as much, and bringing him to 10th place. I expect it would've done even better if not for COVID coming along and making it very hard for a newer party to gather up the necessary signatures to get onto the ballot in some states.

The amount of donations was up quite a bit, too. Now, one has to be careful when comparing donation amounts. You can't compare a presidential year to a non-presidential year, for example, and the time periods have to be the same. The FEC does list the amount they received in the back half of 2016 (when they first started reporting it), but to make a proper comparison I had to wait until the back half of 2020. I am not sure if you can get that information off the FEC's websie now given that it lists 2019-2020, but I did see how much was given between 2019 and mid-2020, so I could subtract the amount given totally in 2019 and 2020 to find out how much was given in the back half of 2020, which was more than four times as much as was made in back in 2016.

The total numbers are still not that impressive, even compared to the Libertarian and Green Parties (the total amount in 2019-2020 was nearly that of the Constitution Party, though). But it still shows growth. This is good for it. Not as good as a supporter may hope, but still good.

The other point to bring up is Ranked Choice Voting. This was on the ballot as a referendum in two states: Massachusetts and Alaska. It failed in Massachusetts but succeeded in Alaska, which is a bit surprising to me; I would've actually predicted the opposite. The Alaska one was more broad, though. It abolishes party primaries entirely and allows for a primary where as many people from any party can run as they want. People vote in that primary, and the top 4 people advance to the general election, which is decided by RCV. I am not sure what I think of this, but I can say it's an improvement over the current system, and unlike California which has open primaries and has the top two advance to the main election, isn't likely to result in what California does which is to have two Republicans or two Democrats go up against each other in the election.

We've also seen an increase in Approval Voting, with St. Louis adopting it (though not the state). In Approval Voting, you vote for as many people as you want, and the one with the most votes wins. This is better than our current plurality voting system (everyone votes for one person and whoever gets the most votes wins), though I have my doubts that it's superior to RCV. But any improvement is nevertheless an improvement.

So what is the conclusion of all this? Well, it seems things are moving in a good direction, although very slowly. Another state has picked up RCV. Approval Voting is gaining ground. And the American Solidarity Party is gaining popularity. All of these are going slowly, but they are going. Hopefully we'll see these pick up steam and increase exponentially.

What can you do to help? Well, as I've noted, if you want to help a third party succeed, you should do more than just vote for it come election time. Donate money, even a small amount. If you have problems with the American Solidarity Party, try another one. Do the same for the issue of Ranked Choice Voting, Approval Voting, or whatever alternative voting system to our very flawed one is; see if there's a movement in your state to try to get it approved. Donations are an easy enough way to help and actually do help.

The Number of the Beast Is Not Three 6's

The Number of the Beast from the Book of Revelation (specifically, Revelation 13:15) is famously 666. The meaning of this number has engendered much speculation, and while I have my musings, that isn't the point of this post. I want to set the record straight on what the number actually is. It means six hundred sixty-six. It does not mean three 6's.

Why is this distinction critical? Because in the Book of Revelation, it's written out as the numerical value. Now, in the numerals we use, if I want to write two hundred forty-three, I just write a 2 (in the hundred's place), 4 (in the ten's place) followed by a 3 (in the one's place). So when I write 243, I am functionally saying (2*100)+(4*10)+(3*1), which equals two hundred forty-three.

Greek back then was different. It has its own numerals for 1 through 9. But then there's a completely separate numeral for 10, then a new one for 20, a new one for 30, and so on through 90. And then there is again a new numeral for 100, a new one for 200, and so on. There's more past that, but that's enough for our purposes. Thus to write 243, you don't simply write 2 then 4 then 3. Instead, you would write the numeral for 200, then the numeral for 40, and then the numeral for 3.

In Revelation, what is written is χξϛ. Now, χ is the symbol for 600, ξ is the symbol for 60, and ϛ is the symbol for 6 (modern versions of those symbols are a little different but the general idea remains the same). Thus, χξϛ says 600+60+6 which equals six hundred sixty-six. If the number was supposed to be three 6's, then we would have simply seen ϛ repeated three times, but that's not the case. It is clearly referring to the numerical value of 666.

Far too often, people just spot three 6's and conclude "it's 666!" Sometimes contortions are required to even get to the three 6's, but this problem occurs even when we can see three 6's "naturally." For example, I've seen people try to cite examples of 6.66, 66.6, 6666, 6660, or 60606 in conjunction with something or other as evidence of the Number of the Beast. But as noted, the Number of the Beast is the numerical value of six hundred and sixty-six. Thus no other number, even if it has three 6's somewhere in it, is equivalent. This similarly applies to dates such as June 6, 2006 (6/6/6) because it is not a number, but rather three 6's in close succession.

I also someone claim the OK Sign (this is when you make an O with your thumb and second finger while holding the other three fingers up) was satanic because it looks like a 6 and the three raised fingers signify three 6's. Now while it is true a few people might try to use it like that to be edgy, the fact is it doesn't create the actual Number of the Beast. As noted, it would only create three 6's, not the numerical value of six hundred sixty-six. If there is any numeral value from the OK Sign, it's 18, as 6+6+6=18. For that matter, the symbol we nowadays use for 6 didn't even exist at the time of Revelation.

So don't freak out just because you see something that might be interpreted as several 6's. It's the numerical value of 666 (six hundred and sixty six) that was being discussed. This was obvious in the way the Greeks wrote it, but is less obvious when rendered as 666. It's probably better to write out six hundred sixty-six rather than 666 to help avoid these misunderstandings. There is enough speculation already concerning what the number means without dragging in things that aren't actually six hundred and sixty-six into it.

More Stuff Coming Soon!

This blog has ended up being less active than I originally planned; there were only two posts last year! Truth is, I've been holding onto a number of posts (some short and others long) that I hope to be putting out soon to make it more active. So going forward, hopefully there will be more posts on this blog.

It might not have even been necessary to make this post at all, and rather just put up some those posts, but this also gives me an excuse to share this video:

This is legitimately one of the most adorable things I have ever seen.