In 1787 at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, the framers of the Constitution of the United States of America worked together to identify the best way to elect the President (Patterson, 2013). The ideas suggested varied and ranged from selection by members of congress chosen by lottery, to a popular vote of the people. By the end of the Convention the matter had yet to be settled as the framers fore saw that many of the suggestions were prone to corruption, error, and were very chaotic. The issue was passed down to the Committee on Postponed Matters, who in turn created the system that is used today and is commonly known as Electoral College (Kazin, 2011). The Electoral College was outlined by the Committee to up hold the views of the founding fathers, who were the framers of the Constitution.
The Committee on Postponed Matters was created on August 31, 1787, it took four days for them to make a proposal to the Constitutional Convention on the election process (Kazin, 2011). The proposed process included electors known as the Electoral College, each elector would have one electoral vote (Kazin, 2011). States would each have the same number of electoral votes as it had members in Congress (members in the Senate and in the House) (Kazin, 2011). However, the electors were to be selected by way of each states’ choosing as Congress members were prohibited from becoming electors (Patterson, 2013). The states would then hold a public vote for presidency and the
The Electoral College was designed in 1787 at the Constitutional Convention. A variety of ideas were originally brought to attention. Two significant and highly regarded options were a) Congress selects the
The Electoral College gained its origins when our countries fore fathers gathered at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and began brainstorming on different methods to elect a President. The Electoral College at the time was created to be a
The Constitutional Convention of 1787 went over several systems that were proposed for electing a new president which included but were not limited to by the governors of the states, by the state legislators, and by direct popular vote. The issue was soon referred to the Committee of Eleven on Postponed Matters, where the plan for the current electoral college was devised. The electoral college issued each state a number of electors equal to the sum of the
The Electoral College derived as a compromise during the Constitutional Convention; some wanted the president to directly chosen while other rathered Congress or State Legislatures to choose him. It was finally decided to create an institution in which reflected both of these ideal, named the Electoral College. It would be an independent body that connected states and the national government through a pre-delegated electors that would vote based off how the people in their state’s voted. Over the years, several modifications were made, but no serious accusations were made until 1824 when Andrew Jackson won the popular vote yet lost the presidency. This shocked the nation and presented the question of whether the Electoral College best reflected what the people
The Electoral College was established in 1788 by Article II of the US Constitution revised by the Twelfth Amendment (ratified June 15, 1804), the Fourteenth Amendment (ratified July 1868), and the Twenty-Third Amendment (ratified Mar. 29, 1961) (tumblr.com). Electoral college made up of 538 electors each state is allowed one elector for each Representative and Senator (Washington DC) is allowed 3 Electors a group of electors is chosen by each political party each presidential candidate has their own unique slate of potential Electors. Political parties chose the electors for the slate these people are chosen to recognize their service and dedication to that political party. When voters cast their vote on election day they are voting to select their state’s Electors.
While he agreed that “the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the [president],” he made clear the importance of “afford[ing] as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder.” This would require the will of the people to be tempered by “an intermediate body of electors.” Not only would this be a compromise between the competing ideas in the Constitutional Convention, it would prevent any one group from having undue discretion when it came to electing the most powerful person in government. Of these competing ideas, two are prominently reflected in the Electoral College. The first is democracy, an idea largely advanced by Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America. Democracy, loosely defined as the direct representation of people in government, seems the most logical way to conduct an election. The second is federalism. Understanding how this could become problematic, the founders decided to include states in the election process. According to Federalist 68, this would allow “the people of each State [to] choose a number of persons as electors…who shall assemble…and vote for some fit person as President.” This balance of individual and state discretion would soon be codified in Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution.
The Constitutional Convention of 1787 considered several methods of electing the President, Including allowing the members of congress, state Governors, state legislatures, and by direct election by the people (Staff, 2010). Because there was so many plans and thoughts on the process, a committee was formed which devised the Electoral College system. This plan received widespread approval by the delegates and was put in the final document.
What is the Electoral College? The Electoral College is consisted of educated people who become electors. They come together from each state every four years to vote for the upcoming president and vice president. The “Founding Fathers” of the Constitution thought that the public intelligence of choosing a president wasn’t as efficient as the Electoral College intended. In 1803, the Constitution Framers created a legislative branch, so that the president and vice president are qualified for the occupation, this is decided by the Electoral College. In addition, The Electoral College was created to check on the power of the president. (Brigid Callahan Harrison, Jean Wahl Harris, and Michelle D. Deardorff. American Democracy Now, Pg. 362)
The Constitutional Convention of 1787 considered several methods of electing the President, Including allowing the members of congress, state Governors, state legislatures, and by direct election by the people (Staff, 2010). Because there was so many plans and thoughts on the process, a committee was formed which devised the Electoral College system. This plan received widespread approval by the delegates and was put in the final document.
The founding fathers created the Electoral College as a compromise for the Constitutional Convention. Since the delegates could not agree on a solution for the problem of creating a system to elect the President, it was given to the Committee of Eleven on Postponed Matters. Ultimately, that committee decided to create the Electoral College. The first system consisted of electors which each had two votes for president. Whoever obtained the most votes would become president, and the person who received the second most amount of votes In order to compromise for the best solution possible, they added a limitation that electors could not cast votes for two candidates from their own state.They justified this restriction for three reasons. One reason the committee chose to use the Electoral College was the electorate system promotes federalism or a system of government where the individual states share power with the central state. One example of a federalist system is the United States. The United States’s central government sets laws for the whole country, but each individual state can make their own
The founding fathers established the Electoral College in the constitution as a compromise in the election of the president by voting in congress and electing the president by popular vote of citizens who are qualified. Existing for a long time by Article Two of the United States Constitution in the result of United States presidential election system to hand-pick the President of the United States and Vice President of the United States. The people of the United States get to vote in each state at a widespread election to choose a list of electors pledged to vote for a party’s candidate. Each states is entitled to their assigned number of electors which equal the number of members in its congressional delegation. This is, for each house of
The Electoral College is the process in which each state selects or votes on a group of electors from each political party. The electors with the most votes are then the ones chosen by the state for the presidential campaign. This process is conducted differently than just normally voting for a presidential candidate directly by the people. It’s what occurs before people can directly vote for a candidate to be president. Each state gets a number of votes solely based on the number of senators they have and the number of seats in the House of Representatives which is different for each state because it’s based on their population. The Founding Fathers’ came to an agreement on this so that each state was represented fairly.
The idea of the electoral college was established by the founding fathers “in the Constitution as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens.” (www.archives.gov) In 1787, the Constitutional Convention discussed several methods of electing the President. The electoral college system was designed by the Committee of Eleven on Postponed Matters. The original method of electing the President and Vice President was replace by the 12th Amendment and ratified in 1804. Today, there are a total of 528 electors allocated thorough out the country. To be elected President, the majority of 270 electoral votes is needed. The number of electors each state receives equals the number of members in that states “Congressional delegation: one for each member in the House of Representatives plus two for your Senators.” (www.archives.gov) Although the District of Columbia is not a state but
The Electoral College is a form of process that consists of the electors’ selection. It is the meeting of the electors in which they will conduct the selection of the President and the Vice President. The process also involves the electoral votes counting by Congress. The founding fathers of the Electoral College had established it within the Constitution as the compromise between the President’s election by the vote within Congress as well as the election of the President based on the common vote of eligible citizens. The establishment of the process both has some advantages and disadvantages.
The United States presidential election is one of the most important things that happens to us as U.S citizens. We wait four years to see if our previous president has done the job we wanted him to do, and if not, we get to elect a knew leader of our country. The President has a lot of influence on our country, therefore we want to elect the best one for our nation. Thus, our founding fathers created the electoral college. Designing the mode of selecting the President had to be one of the most difficult tasks that confronted the framers. The difficulty in the legislative case lay in the fact that almost all delegates knew exactly what they wanted, but different delegates wanted different things: small-state delegates wanted to preserve the