The United States’ presidential election system has been a source of contention since the delegates to the Constitutional Convention first debated the matter on June 1, 1787. On that day and several thereafter, the delegates discussed whether “the people” should elect the president. Some steadfastly championed the idea and consequently proposed that a national popular vote determine which person would become president. The following account illuminates why such proposals were defeated, why the Electoral College was adopted instead, and the prospects of a national popular vote in the future. 

Opposition to the national popular vote option at the Constitutional Convention

The convention delegates identified three ways to pick the president. A national popular vote, as we have seen, was one option. The other two were to have either national legislators or state officeholders pick the president. Delegates who favored the latter two options opposed a national popular vote for the following reasons. 

• Some contended that the masses would be unstable, misinformed and easily duped by demagogues. (The counterargument was that, given the slowness of communications and the diversity of the nation, nefarious characters never could beguile the entire county’s sprawling, heterogeneous populace, whereas they could target and intrigue with national legislators or state officeholders. For this reason, of the three options, a national popular vote could be seen as the best safeguard against domestic and foreign foes). 

• Others claimed that common folk would be unfamiliar with individuals beyond their state or region. (The counterargument was that as time passed and the bonds of union strengthened, more figures with continental reputations would emerge as prospective presidents.)

• Still others argued that a small-state resident never would win presidential contests. (This issue could be addressed by having voters cast multiple ballots and establishing requirements concerning how many had to be for a person who resided in a different state than the voter.)

• Finally, there were those who observed that southern states would be disadvantaged by a national popular vote because, collectively, one-third of their inhabitants were enslaved Black Americans, who were disenfranchised. (The counterargument was that, for now, southern states ought to acquiesce for the greater good’s sake, and, in the future, they could expect to surpass their northern counterparts in population and possibly affect slavery’s end). 

On July 25, the convention voted down by a five-to-six margin (with each state delegation casting one vote) a motion to consider a popular vote system in which each voter would have cast multiple ballots. The narrow defeat arguably marked the closest the U.S. has come to instituting a national popular vote to elect the president. Ultimately, proponents of a national popular vote pushed for what they considered to be the next closest thing, a system which became known as the Electoral College.

The Electoral College at the Constitutional Convention

To win supporters, the architects of the Electoral College leveraged what delegate James Madison often referred to as “expedients” (i.e., features which could be used for outreach and compromise). As a result, the Electoral College offered something to most everyone. 

• The president would be picked by electors, who themselves would be chosen for that one duty. The people would not directly elevate a person to the presidency, which appeased opponents of a national popular vote.

• Each state would be allotted a sum of electors equal to its representation in Congress. Numerically, the Electoral College would be identical to a joint session of Congress. The inclusion of the Senate in the formula for allocating electoral votes among the states advantaged small states. (Even so, among the delegates, the general assumption was that large states would exercise an influence on presidential elections mostly commensurate with the sizes of their respective populations.) The inclusion of the House in the formula advantaged slaveholding states, a benefit derived from the Constitution’s Three-Fifths Clause, which allowed states to count three-fifths of their enslaved residents when determining their haul of House seats. Thus large, free states would be underrepresented in the Electoral College while small states and slaveholding states would be overrepresented. Of the latter two, the advantage accorded to slaveholding states had a greater influence on the nation’s trajectory.

• Electors could not be national lawmakers or hold “an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States.” This provision was designed to thwart cabal and corruption.

• Congress could determine when electors would be chosen. This provision, like those which empowered Congress to establish when electors would assemble and the manner in which their votes would be certified and transmitted to the nation’s capital, aimed to prevent state interference with the system’s operation.

• Electors would be appointed in a manner directed by their respective state legislatures. The advocates of a national popular vote wanted electors to be popularly elected; other delegates wanted state lawmakers to select electors. This provision was the politically optimal solution, for it required neither state lawmakers nor the people to pick electors but permitted both to do so. 

• Each state’s electors would meet and vote on the same day in their respective states. The scattered (and temporary) nature of their work was deemed a security measure in age before instantaneous long-distance communication. Consequently, this provision proved immensely important, even decisive, for it afforded protections against domestic cabal and foreign interference which no other presidential election system could match, a national popular vote notwithstanding.

• Electors would cast two ballots for president, one of which had to be for a resident of another state. This provision served three purposes: it increased the likelihood that a small-state resident would be elected president ; it countenanced nationalism; and it abetted majoritarianism (if electors cast one ballot, so the reasoning went, presidential contests likely would end with a large-state resident finishing first with a plurality of electoral votes, whereas if electors cast two ballots, it would increase the chances that one or more persons would receive votes from at least half of the electors).

• The person who received the most electoral votes would become president if a majority of electors had cast a ballot for that person, in which case the person with the second-most electoral votes would become vice president. If no person received a majority of electors’ votes, the House would choose the president from among the top-five electoral vote-getters, with each state delegation casting one vote. These provisions further increased the chances that a small-state resident would become president.

Given the political realities at the convention, this complex arrangement, reflected delegate Abraham Baldwin, was “not so objectionable when well considered, as at first view.”

The Electoral College’s defining traits

The Electoral College originally had six defining traits. 

• It promoted democracy. It was the closest thing to a national popular vote politically possible, for it included the potential for the people’s participation in presidential elections. 

• It promoted nationalism. Nationalism was countenanced to the extent that the president was rooted in the people. Moreover, the system was explicitly interstate in design. Finally, safeguards protected it from state interference. 

• It promoted national security. Whatever delegates thought about the system’s democratic and nationalistic traits, virtually all acknowledged that, compared to having national legislators or state officeholders pick the president, it provided unmatched defenses against domestic cabal and foreign interference, which many if not all regarded as vital to the republic’s survival. The primacy of shielding the system from enemies may have been the one thing upon which the delegates agreed.

• It advantaged slaveholding states.

• It advantaged small states, principally by increasing the likelihood that a small-state resident would be elected president.

• It satisfied delegates who wanted state legislatures to direct electors’ manner of appointment.

These traits abetted the Electoral College’s approval at the Constitutional Convention and subsequent state ratifying conventions.

The Electoral College in 2024

The Electoral College’s current output mostly bears the opposite character of that which it originally was designed to produce. 

• It does not promote democracy. It violates one of democracy’s essential features (political equality) and can violate another essential feature (majority rule).

• It does not promote nationalism. It effectively renders Americans in non-competitive states spectators and it inhibits the formation of interstate affinities.

• It does not promote national security. It is, in fact, a vital security risk: instead of having to influence many votes across the entire U.S., foes may target relatively few votes in competitive states alone. 

• It modestly advantages small states, principally through the inclusion of the Senate in the formula for allocating electoral votes, whereas the size of the state from which a would-be president hails is of comparatively little to no importance. 

• It still accords state legislatures the power to direct the manner in which their respective electors are appointed.

Ironically, the last of these was not something the system’s leading lights had desired, but rather was a necessary accommodation designed to win over other delegates.

The Electoral College’s future

There is little doubt that the Electoral College’s principal architects would have preferred a national popular vote, just as polling has long shown it to be the people’s preference. What are the chances that a national popular vote ever will be affected? That subject merits an analysis of its own. But, for now, three observations warrant brief consideration. 

• First, state legislatures’ power to direct electors’ manner of appointment, which constitutes a surviving trait of the system’s original design, is the primary instrument for instituting the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC), a binding agreement between states which, if put into operation, effectively would result in a national popular vote. 

• Second, since its conception in 2006, the NPVIC has been adopted by 18 jurisdictions (specifically, 17 states and the District of Columbia). These 18 jurisdictions currently control 209 electoral votes (meaning the NPVIC is 61 electoral votes short of the 270 required to make it operational). 

• Finally, the NPVIC’s durability and accomplishments make it uniquely positioned for future success. According to a to-be-published national study which I oversaw in September 2024, it’s the preferred option among a plurality of Americans under age 50 and it draws in roughly equal measures from Republicans, Democrats and independents. Its base, in short, is broad, balanced and young. Thus the NVPIC movement arguably has brought the nation as close as it’s been to a national popular vote since the one-vote defeat of a motion to that effect at the Constitutional Convention on July 25, 1787, and it is poised to bring it still closer.

The NPVIC movement may crash upon the shoals of opposition, atrophy and perish. Or it may secure 61 more electoral votes and, assuming it is subject to a legal challenge, the approval of five Supreme Court justices. If such should be the case, finally might the people pick the president.

FARGO, N.D. (Valley News Live) – With election day just days away North Dakota Secretary of State is reminding voters how secure North Dakota elections are.

“Absolutely, the North Dakota legislature has been very proactive in implementing election integrity really long before election integrity was cool,” said North Dakota Secretary of State Michael Howe.

North Dakota is being very proactive in keeping it’s elections safe “We utilize paper ballots in the state of North Dakota. Are paper ballot tabulators have zero internet connection whatsoever. We have a voter ID law so there are a lot of common sense things in North Dakota state law,” said Howe.

7 counties in North Dakota have already utilized in-person early voting.

“We have 7 counties in the state of North Dakota utilizing in-person early voting and we’re seeing very high turn out early on,” said Howe.

Secretary Howe says historically the state sees high voter turnout for President “historically for Presidential elections in North Dakota we average 63% statewide turnout we’re already approaching 15% turnout a week before the election so we’re going to have a high or above average turnout for this election,” said Howe.

A reminder Secretary Howe wanted to get across about election security was “that’s probably the biggest thing as we enter the final week of the election and then the days after to keep that in mind what you may hear in another state may not and probably doesn’t apply to how North Dakota conducts our elections,” said Howe.

Stick with Valley News Live for all your election coverage.

Copyright 2024 KVLY. All rights reserved.

FARGO — When she was a child, Kari Dordal Christianson, of Elk River, Minnesota, remembers hearing stories of how her grandmother Bertha died young and was buried in a remote cemetery in western North Dakota. The rest of Bertha’s family — her husband and three young children — moved east following her death.

“I used to think how lonely it must be that Bertha was alone in that cemetery with no one visiting or caring for her grave,” Kari said.

Although Bertha’s grave marker — inscribed with “Mrs. L. Dordal, May 19, 1880 – May 8, 1917” — was rarely adorned with flowers lovingly placed by family, the nearby town of Sims never forgot her, and for some, it felt as though she never really left.

To them, Bertha is “The Gray Lady of Sims,” a ghost who still walks the church and parsonage in the dark of night.

As another Halloween rolls around and eerie tales are spun of vengeful spirits, shadowy figures and restless souls crossing over from the great beyond, please understand that this is not one of them.

This ghost story is more sweet than scary. But one that still attracts visitors to this once-thriving town 47 miles southwest of Bismarck. The story has been told for more than 100 years, but not always accurately.

Bertha’s granddaughter, Kari, and grandson, Mark, visited Sims years ago and uncovered some of the truth about their mysterious grandmother and the legacy she left behind.

Sims, North Dakota, was founded in 1883 off the Northern Pacific train route. Coal mining and the town’s brickyard helped the population swell to more than 1,000 people within a couple years.

In 1884, Scandinavian immigrants — 35 men and eight women— built the Scandinavian Evangelical Lutheran Church and parsonage to house the minister who would lead the thriving congregation.

From 1916 to 1918, Rev. Dr. Lars Dordal, his wife Bertha, and their three young children, Raymond, Adeline and Harald, lived here.

The Dordals had answered the call to Sims (and nearby Almont) from Madison, Wisconsin, where Lars was serving as a pastor for a congregation. While there, Bertha contracted tuberculosis. They figured a change of climate in western North Dakota might help restore her health.

They moved to North Dakota in the fall of 1916. Lars’ brother, Rev. Jacob Dordal, wrote of them: “Joyous and happy, they undertook their work there. The congregations were also happy and thankful for the young and active minister and family God had sent to them.”

However, the disease slowly took its toll on the beloved pastor’s wife. Bertha soon was too weak to play the church organ or head Ladies’ Aid.

In 1917, just shy of her 37th birthday, she died.

Less than a year later, Lars remarried a woman named Clara, who had been hired to care for the Dordal children. (Over the years, several newspaper stories, magazine articles and books have reported that Clara was Bertha’s sister. She was not. Kari believes the confusion came because, for a time, Lars’ sister Anna cared for the children. The stories have also incorrectly reported dates the family was in Sims, as well as the age at which Bertha died.)

The Dordals left Sims in 1918. Lars eventually became a long-serving pastor in Larimore, North Dakota, where he and Clara added two more children to their family.

In the years after the family left, parishioners suspected Bertha hadn’t gone anywhere.

They heard footsteps when no one was there, and the organ played, even years after it had been removed from the church.

Was Bertha, once again, playing beautiful hymns for her congregation?

Olga Nelson lived in the parsonage with her pastor husband in the 1930s. She said she used to see “a gray shape upstairs.” Tuberculosis victims often have a gray pallor to their skin.

The term “gray lady” was born.

While the name “gray lady” might sound ominous, the reports of Bertha’s hauntings tell a different story. She is described as a warm-hearted and gentle spirit, known for covering guests with blankets on chilly nights, opening windows when the air was stuffy, and gently opening and closing cupboards to show where things belong.

As the years passed, the sightings of Bertha’s ghost continued, as Sims became a ghost town.

The boom was over, the railroad moved, the post office closed and Sims was all but deserted, except for the beloved church and parsonage, which still served people in the neighboring area. It continues to serve the region today as an active church community with services held every other Sunday.

The church is also frequently visited by curiosity seekers, paranormal investigators and others who have heard the legend of the Gray Lady of Sims. It is even listed on

North Dakota’s Official Tourism Department website.

While tourists come to Sims to see the Gray Lady, the Gray Lady’s granddaughter hadn’t even heard about Bertha until 1988, when she read an Associated Press story about her in The Forum.

Kari said her father, Harald, knew the story but didn’t talk about it much.

“The only mother he knew was his stepmother, Clara. So, I think he was protective of Clara’s role in the family,” Kari said. “Clara absolutely was our grandma.”

Harald, like his father, became a pastor and reverend doctor, serving congregations and later working in Concordia College’s education department.

Through his job, Kari believes Harald traveled to Lutheran congregations in the area, including Sims. Her assumption is backed up in William Jackson’s book “More Dakota Mysteries and Oddities.”

In it, Sims historian Sig Peterson said that, around 1960, he went out for coffee with Harald Dordal and a few other pastors in Sims.

“One of them told us about his first call in western North Dakota when he had to leave on account of a ghost,” Jackson wrote. “That’s when Harald told him the ghost was his mother!”

Kari said after her father retired from Concordia in 1977, he spoke more about his mother, the ghost.

“He became very active in Kiwanis, and that was one of the stories he did for one of their meetings — ’I’m the son of the Gray Lady of Sims,’” she said, laughing.

She said her father had a sense of humor about the ghost stories; however, he and others in Bertha’s family were sometimes frustrated by inaccuracies and misinterpretations of Lars and Bertha’s life together.

“He liked ghost stories, but I’m not sure he necessarily believed in ghosts,” Kari said.

In 2014, Kari and her brother Mark, who lives in Moorhead, decided to visit Sims to learn about their grandmother Bertha, the famous Gray Lady of Sims.

“The stories we heard when we were in Sims was that this was a very kind person. She loved to hear children sing, and because she was a nurse, she would bring blankets to people at night when they were cold. Those were the kinds of things we heard, that she was a kind, benevolent kind of ghost,” Kari said.

Two of the people Mark and Kari met in Sims had seen or experienced Bertha’s ghost in some way. But they didn’t have the same luck.

“Unfortunately, Bertha did not choose to come and greet her grandchildren. We tried!” Kari said with a laugh.

Even so, the trip to Sims, which she recorded in dozens of photos, was a win.

“We heard all kinds of loving stories about Bertha,” she said. “There was a lot of love.”

Not everyone will believe ghost stories — scary ones or sweet ones like Bertha’s. But for the Gray Lady’s granddaughter, that’s OK.

“I would say that there’s a part of that end of existence, or existence in a different realm, that I absolutely do believe,” she said. “I think there are things that I don’t understand.”

While she didn’t meet her grandmother, it was comforting to see that Bertha wasn’t alone in that cemetery in Sims, after all.

“I saw that it is well cared for and well-loved, and it’s the most gorgeous, peaceful, beautiful cemetery that I’ve ever seen,” she said.

Bertha’s meticulously kept grave rests on a hill overlooking the church where, on this Halloween, 106 years after her death, she could still linger. A lucky few might see or feel her presence. The luckiest few — those who spend a chilly night in Sims — might even feel the warmth of an extra blanket.