As I watched the election returns and realized Donald Trump will be our next president, I found myself thinking about our Founding Fathers.

I imagined them traveling forward in time 237 years to see how their concept of a president, as defined in the Constitution they had just created, turned out. I believe they would have been appalled, but not surprised.

Creating an executive position of power they called a “president” was a point of much debate. Having just won a bloody war for freedom from King George, there was deep distrust of executive power. Some believed the selection of a president should be by a vote of Congress. Others favored a popular vote of “qualified” citizens.

There were many concerns about the capabilities and qualifications of citizens to select a president. At the time, most people could not read or write. News and information traveled very slowly. How could citizen voters make an informed choice?

Even more so, the Founders feared putting power in the hands of a populist president who appealed directly to the people. They had seen the destruction that a headstrong, democratic mob could effect, steering the country far astray of its principles. The French Revolution they initially thought would parallel our own degenerated into an angry mob intent on violent revenge against their rulers. “Off with their heads!” was the cry as the French vented their social anger with the guillotine.

The memory of the Salem witch trials also haunted the Founders’ thoughts about the danger of popular rule. In the name of religion, many people were murdered based on the false testimony of young women accepted without question by the general population and stirred up by the leaders of their church.

The solution they designed was the Electoral College. The actual vote for president would be by electors from each state, the number of electors being proportional to the population. Each state would select their best and brightest to make this important decision.

States were free to hold a popular election to advise the electors of citizen sentiment, but electors were free to apply their own insights and considerations. In fact, only about half of the states held a citizen election when George Washington was first elected. He was a unanimous choice of the electors.

Alexander Hamilton explained the safety net of “electors” in Federalist Paper No. 68. Electors would be men most likely to have the information and discernment to make a good choice, avoiding the election of anyone lacking the requisite qualifications.

He explained that the “arts of popularity” alone could elevate a candidate in a popular vote, but that there were many other talents and merits for a presidential candidate necessary to establish the esteem and confidence of the whole nation.

At the time, there were no political parties and the Founders assumed no candidate would win an electoral majority, allowing the House of Representatives to select the president. They trusted themselves to select a worthy leader far more than an uninformed and capricious citizenry.

When our two-party system emerged, electors became a rubber stamp for the popular vote, eliminating the more thoughtful and educated consideration of character and qualities of leadership beyond popularity.

As citizen voters, we became entrusted to look deeper than popularity. Unlike the general population in 1789, we have the ability to read and write. We have easy access to all news. We can research in great detail related information to understand the issues of our time, what is working and what isn’t. We have over two centuries of history to understand the qualities, traits, character and experience that are essential to good presidential leadership.

Despite this access and the opportunity of education, have we really measured up to the carefully constructed process our Founders created to select the best qualified to be our president?

Or have we anointed a populist leader granting him vast power based on the whim of a self-focused mob indulging emotion rather than reason?

In my opinion, we have failed the test spectacularly. I’m reminded of the words of Martin Luther King Jr. about the persistence of racism despite all our knowledge: “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

Collectively we have either sincerely or conscientiously ignored how unqualified Trump is to be our president. We have proven the concerns of our Founders that we’re unqualified to select a president.

We can only hope the dangers this presents are more imagined than real, and that the momentum of our democracy will persevere through incompetence.