From The
First Presidential Contest by Jeffrey Pasley. The Electoral College was perhaps
the least successful element of the U.S. Constitution. (And not unexpectedly,
modifications to the Electoral College process came quickly.) The Framers did
not want the public to directly elect the president, since previous experiments
in direct elections at the state level had reinforced the conclusion that pure
democracy was too dangerous. But the framers didn't want Congress to elect the
president either, because that would lead to "cabal faction & violence."
So the idea was adopted of having influential or "notable" community
leaders who were not in Congress as electors, with the people voting
for these electors because they believed they had good judgment. And these
electors were expected to use that good judgment to cast their votes rather
than simply reflect the choice of the people:
"We
must [now] delve into the workings of America's murkiest political
institution, the indirect system of presidential elections now known as the
Electoral College. If ever there were a constitutionally defined role for
America's local 'notables,' the Electoral College was it.
"The
national 'college' never met, acting instead as a filtering mechanism to
concentrate the large pool of names that bubbled up from below. The guiding
logic was that the country was too big, and even most of its locally prominent
men too parochial, to ever coalesce around a single candidate other than General
George Washington. Most would vote for someone from their own state or region,
argued Connecticut's Roger Sherman, generating a list too large and
miscellaneous to be useful. At the same time, it was considered too dangerous
to have a single body like Congress choose the chief magistrate all on its
own: that could lead to 'cabal faction & violence' as in the elective
monarchy of Poland, where nobles and foreign governments battled it out to name
a new king. So Article II, Section I of the Constitution provided for each
state legislature to designate, by whatever method it chose, a number of
electors equal to the size of its congressional delegation (the number of House
members plus two for each state's equal number of senators). Each state's
electors were then to gather simultaneously, in their own state, to prevent
said cabals. Each elector would then vote for two men, including at least one
man who was not from the elector's home state. Next the electors were to send
their certified lists to Congress, where the votes would be compiled and the
two top vote getters named president and vice president if they were selected
by a majority of the electors. If not, then Congress would make the decision,
according to complex rules that need not detain us here, choosing from the top
five candidates the electors had voted for. At no point in any step of the
process was anyone bound to vote a certain way (except for Congress choosing
from the top five), and no provision was made, as we have seen, for running
mates or party tickets. Instead, individual electors were to exercise their
independent judgment of individual candidates.
"The
format was a compromise hammered out in the last weeks of the Federal
Convention in 1787 by the Committee on Postponed Parts, a working group made up
of one member from each state delegation. The major issue the Electoral College
settled was the summer-long dispute over how and by whom the new office of
president would be filled. Given that one of the chief impulses behind the
movement for a new Constitution was the creation of a government insulated
from the excessive democracy and localism of the state governments, popular
election of the president was a nonstarter at the Convention. A few of the
large-state delegates made self-interested pitches for it, but most rejected
the idea as impractical if not downright dangerous. George Mason of Virginia
argued that 'it would be as unnatural to refer the choice of a proper character
for chief Magistrate to the people, as it would, to refer a trial of colours to
a blind man. The extent of the Country renders it impossible that the people
can have the requisite capacity to judge of the respective pretensions of the
Candidates.' The other major option, selection of the president by Congress,
had more proponents than nationwide democracy, but it reminded too many of what
Americans considered the corrupt British parliamentary system with its
unseparated powers (the prime minister controlling Parliament and the executive
functions of government). A legislative election would also be a playground for
conspirators and party-builders. Said Gouverneur Morris, 'It will be the work
of intrigue, of cabal, and of faction: it will be like the election of a pope
by a conclave of cardinals.'
"The
idea of a secondary popular election, with the people choosing the choosers,
was originally suggested by nationalist James Wilson of Pennsylvania, who was
trying to preserve some advantage for the large states but also some element of
democracy in the presidential selection process. Wilson did not do this because
he was any great lover of the common man -- common Philadelphians had tried to
kill him in the 'Fort Wilson' riots in 1779 because of his alleged softness
toward Loyalists. Wilson's attitude was more of a healthy fear; he had learned
the hard way that in a free country, the common people needed to at least feel
that their views were respected. Wilson's suggestion was ignored until John
Dickinson of Delaware, arriving late to the deliberations of the Committee on
Postponed Parts, challenged his colleagues over the legitimacy problems that a
completely unelected president would face. Shocked that the Convention was
still leaning toward a president selected by Congress, Dickinson wrote, 'I
observed, that the Powers which we had agreed to vest in the President, were so
many and so great, that I did not think, the people would be willing to deposit
them with him, unless they themselves would be more immediately concerned in
his Election.' In response, James Madison immediately sketched out a version
of Wilson's idea on a piece of paper, and the Electoral College was born.
"On
paper, the Electoral College served well as a way to steer theoretically
between the large and small states and between oligarchy and democracy. What
the Framers never discussed was how the thing was supposed to work in practice,
or why it would be effective in meeting their goal of a chief magistrate who
felt like the people's choice without being beholden to parties, parochial
interests, or popular opinion. Excesses of democracy were still a far bigger
worry for most of the Framers, who filled the Constitution with firebreaks
against the potential depredations of the mob."
