U.S. Electoral College

The United States Electoral College is the electoral college which chooses the President and Vice President of the United States at the conclusion of each Presidential election. The Electoral College was established by Article Two, Section One of the U.S. Constitution and meets every four years with electors from each state. The electoral process was modified in 1804 with the ratification of the 12th Amendment and again in 1961 with the ratification of the 23rd Amendment.

History

Scholars continue to debate the reasons for the adoption of the Electoral College. Some believe it was created to protect small states. Others believe that the Founding Fathers intended to create a system of indirect election whereby the electors would come to a carefully considered decision to nominate a selection of good candidates and then the House of Representatives would again make a careful consideration of the names presented. Others still believe the system of electing the President was given little thought beyond a desire to have George Washington as the first President, pointing in particular to the extremely casual way in which the Vice President was selected, and that Congress was intended to be the most important part of the Federal government.

Related Topics:
Founding Fathers - House of Representatives - George Washington

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Still others hold that it was devised as a compromise between the election of a President by the states and by the Congress. Initially the electors were selected by the state legislatures, and it was not until later that states started holding a popular poll for the presidential elections to determine how they would cast their votes. Yet another theory contends that the

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Framers strongly opposed the development of political parties, as evidenced by the total absence of any reference to parties in the Constitution, and were aware of the difficulties in mass communication, and were attempting to devise a system that would function well with neither cheap, instantaneous, nationwide communication nor a strong political party system.

Related Topics:
Political parties - Constitution

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The Electoral College may have been implemented to negotiate compromises in cases of a split vote where each state was pushing its own native son. The U.S. presidential primary and the emergence of a two-party system has largely rendered this historical. One lasting theory is that the Electoral College helps soften the effect of votes from densely populated centers (major U.S. cities and the District of Columbia) which may steer away from the concerns of the rest of the country. Others have noted that the Electoral College enabled the Founding Fathers to deftly incorporate the Connecticut Compromise and three-fifths compromise into the system of choosing the President and Vice President, thereby sparing the convention further acrimony over the issue of state representation.

Related Topics:
U.S. presidential primary - Two-party system - Connecticut Compromise - Three-fifths compromise

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Regardless of why the system was chosen, the term "electoral college" is not used in the U.S. Constitution, and it wasn't until the early 1800s that it came into general usage as the unofficial designation for the group of citizens selected to cast votes for President and Vice President. It was first written into Federal law in 1845, and today the term appears in 3 U.S.C. section 4, in the section heading and in the text as "college of electors."

Related Topics:
U.S. Constitution - 1800s - 1845

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Section 1, Article II of the Constitution says, "Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector." It then goes on to describe how the electors vote for President.

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Originally, each elector voted for two persons, with no designation for President or Vice President. The person receiving the greatest number of votes (provided that such a number was a majority of electors) would be President, while the individual who was in second place became Vice President (and did not need the backing of the majority of electors; in theory the Vice President could have been elected with the support of as few as two electors if every other elector either cast the sole vote for a candidate, voted for a virtually unanimous choice for President or did not cast their second vote). If no one had received a majority of votes, then the House of Representatives would choose between the five highest vote-getters, with each state casting one vote. In such a case, the person who received the highest number of votes but was not chosen President would become Vice President. If there was ever a tie for second, then the Senate would choose the Vice President.

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The original plan, while working extremely well in the absence of political parties and organized presidential campaigns, broke down almost immediately once they developed. In 1796, for instance, rumors of conspiracies led to some Federalist electors only using one of their two votes so that their Presidential candidate John Adams came in first, but the Democrat-Republican candidate for President Thomas Jefferson placed second. Thus, the President and Vice President were from different parties. Although a situation like that is arguably not a problem, the situation that occurred in 1800 was most certainly a problem: Republicans (that is, the 18th- and early 19th-century party, later known as Democratic Republicans, that eventually became the modern Democratic party) Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied the vote. Jefferson was the intended presidential contender, while Burr was the Vice Presidential one. However, electors did not differentiate between the two, nor could they under the system of the time, and all electors supporting them cast one vote for each. The electors for the Federalists, however, arranged it so that one elector voted for the Federalist presidential candidate but not for the Vice Presidential candidate. They voted instead for another person altogether. The election was thrown into the House of Representatives, which was controlled by the Federalists. The House voted 35 times, with Alexander Hamilton offering his support to Thomas Jefferson with the condition that Jefferson support certain Federalist policies and office-holders. Jefferson won on the thirty-sixth ballot after Delaware's only Representative, James Bayard—a Burr supporter—abstained in exchange for the terms Hamilton had originally offered. Burr became Vice President. For this, and numerous other reasons, Burr held a grudge against Hamilton, whom he later killed in a duel.

Related Topics:
1796 - John Adams - Thomas Jefferson - 1800 - Democratic party - Aaron Burr - Alexander Hamilton - James Bayard

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To address the problem of the 1800 election, the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed. It made some minor and major changes to the Constitution. First, electors would no longer cast two ballots for President. Instead, they would cast one vote for President and a separate vote for Vice President. The individual receiving a majority of votes in a particular election would be elected. If no one received a majority in the presidential election, then the House of Representatives would choose between the top three, again voting by state. Similarly, the Senate chooses between the top two in the case of the Vice President. Under the new rules, the House of Representatives did elect the President on one more occasion: the 1824 four-way race between Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William H. Crawford, and Henry Clay resulted in no candidate receiving an absolute majority of electoral votes. The House elected Adams on the first ballot, even though Jackson received the most electoral and popular votes.

Related Topics:
Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution - 1824 - Andrew Jackson - John Quincy Adams - William H. Crawford - Henry Clay

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Under the provisions of the Constitution there is no requirement for a state to poll its voters. The state legislature can in theory appoint the electors as it likes, and, until 1860, South Carolina did just this. Furthermore, in 1788 the concept of "democracy" was widely seen as analogous to mob-rule, while the idea of political parties was equally frowned upon, and so the idea of a directly elected head of state was anathema to many. The Federalist Papers suggest that it was commonly assumed by the Founding Fathers that most Presidents would be selected by the House of Representatives, and the order of the articles of Constitution, in which Congress is established in Article I and the presidency in Article II, supports this view.

Related Topics:
1860 - South Carolina - 1788 - Federalist Papers - House of Representatives - Congress

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