America and the Electoral College

In his Federalist Paper 68, Alexander Hamilton proudly stated the mode of
appointment of chief magistrate of US is almost the only part of the system, of any
consequence, which has escaped without severe censure.. I hesitate not to affirm that if
the manner of it be not perfect, it is at least excellent (Longley 19) Yet, no more than 40
years after Hamilton published such glowing statements about the Electoral College,
President Andrew Jackson was already calling for the abolition of it (Gregg xiv). It is
interesting to see how even after two hundred years the debate over this controversially
unique institution persist, and with no clear consensus on the matter in sight. After the
election of 2000 between Al Gore and George Bush brought the topic under the
microscope once again, many have asked why the framers of the Constitution would
create such a complex system rather than simple using a popular vote to select the
president. The only way to answer such an intricate question would be to understand the
political environment surrounding the summer of 1787- the year in which the founding
fathers gathered at the Constitutional Convention (Longley 16)- and recognize how it
influenced their decision on the method to be used for selecting the president.
Three main methods of appointing the president were hotly debated over at the
Convention: direct election, legislative selection, and an intermediate election involving
electors. Unfortunately for the supporters of direct election, this was the method that was
most easily tossed aside for several reasons. In the late 18th century there were very few
options in terms of large-scale communication, seeing as the advent of the mass-market
newspapers, radio, television, and social media would not come about until at least the
19th century (History of mass communications). Thus, delegates were quick to question

the populations ability to choose a president, given that the severe lack of
communication would allow Americans to be easily misled and inhibit the masses from
being able to make informed choices about national candidates (Edwards 101). They also
figured that this would result in people voting largely for candidates from their own state
who they are much more familiar with, thus giving large states an advantage because the
greater population would give their candidates the higher popular vote (Edwards 101).
Delegates from smaller states were also displeased with the fact that a popular vote would
give them little power in deciding who wins the presidency due to their smaller
populations (Longley 18). Delegates from the South also didnt appreciate the relative
loss of influence they would have because their large slave population that was ineligible
to vote (Longley 18). Thus, the decision was a tossup between legislative selection and an
intermediate election. Even though the method of legislative selection was approved four
times throughout the Convention (Edwards 99), there was so much opposition that the
Committee of Eleven was charged with the responsibility of presenting the Convention
with a compromise that could, for the most part, be agreed upon (Longley17). One of the
major cases against legislative selection of the president had to do with the framers
desire to have a distinct separation of powers. They wanted the president to be somewhat
independent of both the people and the other branches of government so he could make
decisions independently of these two entities. If Congress were to appoint the president,
he would no longer be able to have such an independent role because he would be too
busy trying to please Congress in hopes of gaining a second term in office (Edwards
101).
On September 4, 1787 the Committee of Eleven recommended the Electoral College as

the mode of presidential selection and the plan was quickly accepted with little debate.
The reason for this speedy acceptance was because of all the ways in which the operation
of the Electoral College aligned with the founders intentions for our country (Longley
18). The concept behind this mode of presidential selection is that each states electors
would assemble every four years each and use their own discretion to vote for two
different presidential candidates-one of which must be from a different state. Whichever
candidate receives the majority electoral votes would then become the president while he
who receives the second highest number of electoral votes would become the vice
president. The framers originally intended for the electors to be wise elders and free
agents who would vote according to their own will and with no external influences,
making them the most qualified to analyze who would make the best president based on
ability rather than political attachments (Edwards 49). The method of choosing the
electors was left to the states discretion with the only requirement being that those
chosen did not hold an office so as to limit the potential for cabal, intrigue, faction, and
corruption in the selection of the president (Edwards 99). In the early years of the
Electoral College, states would often go back and forth between holding popular
elections to select the electors and having the state legislatures pick them. Another
precaution put in place to prevent corruption in the Electoral College was the
constitutional requirement that all the electors cast their votes on the same day so that
they are less likely to be pressured by each others decisions (Edwards 103). Reflective of
the Connecticut Compromise, the number of electors a state received was the same as the
number of congressmen it had, giving less populated states a small advantage because
they would always get at least three votes- the two from each state Senator and at least

one representative- allowing them to have at least some say in which candidate would
win the presidential election (Longley 18-21). However, the real concession made for the
small states was in the process of choosing the president when no candidate won the
majority of the electoral votes. Should this occur, the election would be thrown into the
House of Representatives, where each state would get one ballot to vote for one of the top
five contenders in the presidential race (Edwards 106). Another constitutional
requirement was that of the two votes each elector was granted, one must be given to a
candidate from another state, thereby ensuring that the candidate who wins the election
would be the one who had the greatest national appeal (Hardaway 90). However, above
all of these positive aspects found in the electoral college was the implicit understanding
among the framers that nineteen times out of twenty there would be no majority winner
and the House of Representatives would be the one to decide the winner (Edwards 107).
In fact, George Mason responded by saying that the elector system was a mere
deception on the American peoplethrown out to make them believe they were to
choose [the president][when in] reality [they] have no hand in the election (Edwards
108). Therefore, they assumed that, in the end, the Electoral College would act much like
todays nominating conventions while the House would be the actual selection agency
(Edwards 107). This was the main reason the college was so easily accepted and left
relatively unchanged after its proposal. However, less than ten years after being written
into the Constitution, a series of events would occur, ultimately changing the electoral
college into its current model- a model that is nothing as our founding fathers had
intended.
As former President George Washingtons second term was nearing its end, political

parties began to emerge, gaining national support for their candidates and pledged
electors to their slates (Longley 22), causing two very important changes in the framers
original plan. First, electors changed from their intended role of independent thinkers to
party loyalists who were chosen to be electors mostly because of their partisanship and
monetary donations to the party who nominated them (Edwards 12). Rufus King, a
delegate at the Constitutional Convention and signer of the Constitution, noted in 1816
that electors had become rubber stamps, contrary to what the framers had contemplated
(Edwards 104). This new arrangement gave rise to what is now known as a faithless
elector: electors who vote against the candidates they were pledged to because they
believed another candidate to be the better choice. When Samuel Miles, a Federalist
elector in the 1796 election, became the nations first faithless elector by casting his vote
for Thomas Jefferson instead of John Adams the public responded by saying I chuse him
to act, not to think (Longley 23). The second change caused by the rise of political
parties is the very obvious fact that the Electoral College did not end up becoming the
nominating agency the delegates had assumed it would be, but rather the final decision
(Longley 24). Another change in the electoral college was the permanent establishment of
using popular elections to select electors, caused mostly by negative political experiences
and the fact that states found it difficult to return to legislative selection once they granted
the people the ability to vote for their electors (Longley 24). For political expediency
the winner-take-all arrangement was also made more widespread than what it had
originally been. The final and most structural change to the Electoral College came from
the 12th amendment, a direct product of the Jefferson-Burr election of 1800 (Longley 25).
Both candidates were Democratic nominees for presidency, but the party knew that they

wanted Jefferson as president and Burr as vice president. However, the Democratic party
had forgotten to tell one of the electors to withhold a vote from Burr, allowing both to get
73 electoral votes and making this the first election to be thrown into the House of
Representatives (Gregg 35). Rather than the contingent election being quickly resolved,
Burr lived up to his label as the man who could not wait and took the opportunity to
fight tooth and nail for the presidency (Longley 25). After thirty-six ballots over a period
of seven days, Jefferson was finally elected president as originally planned (Longley 26).
Four years after this headache of an election, the 12th Amendment was ratified and made a
few structural changes to the college, the most important of which was the new
requirement that of the two votes allocated to each elector one must be specifically for
their presidential choice and the other for their choice of vice president (Gregg 33). Thus,
though most of the structural plans made by the framers are still intact, the practical
aspect of the Electoral College is nothing like how it was intended to be.
Regardless of whether or not the current Electoral College lines up with the framers
intentions, it has still greatly impacted the presidential contest. Because the number of
electoral votes is what determines who the president is, rather than the popular vote,
campaigns tend to focus on battleground states that have the highest populations and,
thus, the greatest number of electoral votes. Often, candidates must run targeted, statespecific campaigns in hopes of winning over the states that are most important in
obtaining the dream: 270 electoral votes (U.S. Department of State). However, the
greatest impact it has had on the presidential contest, of course, is the fact that it makes it
possible for a candidate to win the presidential election without getting the most popular
votes, an event that has occurred four times in American history: 1876, 1888, 1960, and

2000 (Edwards 62) Immediately after the election of 2000, in 2004, and again in 2011,
the Gallup Poll showed that at least 61% of Americans supported having an amendment
put in place that would abolish the electoral college and replace it with a direct election
(Saad)
Though opponents of the Electoral College agree that abolishment of the
institution will not fix everything, they do recognize such an action would be a movement
that would bring America a step closer to the principle of one man one vote (Kallen 34).
As proven by the 1876, 1888, 1960, and 2000 elections, the man or woman who obtains
presidency may not always reflect the will of Americas majority for a variety of reasons
(Kallen 30). For one, the vote of one person may not carry the same weight as another
because the ratio of a states population to the number of electoral votes they receive can
vary greatly between states, fundamentally benefiting smaller states. For example, in
2010 Wyoming received one electoral vote for every 187,875 people in their state while
California only received on vote for every 677,345 people (Kallen 30). What these
discrepancies mean is that a citizen voting in a small state has a mathematically greater
influence in determining who gets their states electoral votes than a citizen from a larger
state. In the case of Wyoming and California in 2010, this influence was nearly four times
greater in Wyoming than in California. (Edwards 46). Another case made against the
Electoral College is its affect on the presidential campaign. As mentioned earlier, because
it is the number of electoral votes that matter, not the number of popular votes, candidates
often will not waste time or money campaigning in red or blue states because they
already know what the outcome is going to be and would much rather focus their
resources on battleground states with more electoral votes. What this does is

disenfranchise people in red or blue states with opinions that differ from their state as a
whole and prevent candidates from addressing, and most certainly from trying to
persuade, people who are not already inclined to applaud most everything [the
candidate] say[s] or promise[s] (Kallen 32). Unfortunately, this truth can be seen in the
2000 election where Gore and Bush failed to visit eighteen different states even once
throughout their campaign because these states were seen as foregone conclusions
(Kallen 32).
All in all, regardless of whether or not it the Electoral College will be abolishedthough such an event seem unlikely in the near future- it is important to recognize this
deeply incorporated establishment and its influence on who is selected as the leader of the
free world.

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