Receiving 300,000 more votes than his best opponent, Candidate A was clearly the favorite among the eight million citizens who placed their vote. Much to his and the rest of the country's surprise, however, he was not elected due to a legal ramification that instead awarded the office to Candidate B. Does this sound like a fable taking place in a non-Democratic, unorganized country? In fact, the above scenario was the United States Presidential election of 1876 between Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, Candidate A, and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, Candidate B. Thanks to a confusing and rarely publicly understood Constitutional system known as the Electoral College, United States citizens can still be supremely governed by leaders not chosen by the majority.

The founding fathers of our nation met in Philadelphia on May 25th, 1787 for the Constitutional Convention. On August 31st a committee of eleven persons was formed to resolve disputes between the large and small states regarding house legislatures and executive voting methods. Two major methods of electing the president were being debated at the Convention, congressional elections and direct voting. It was initially

The opposing executive voting plan was the direct vote system, backed primarily at the Convention by James Madison, James Wilson, and Governor Morris. This was the only true form of voting democracy because it provided for presidents to be elected solely on the popular vote and would most accurately reflect the views on the people. Unfortunately, many representatives were against this method of election. Reasons such as distrust in American voters to intelligently select the best candidate, the fear of a consolidation of too much power and influence in one person (Longley and Braun, 27), and a loss of relative influence from the South due to non-voting slaves were all voiced by many of the delegates (Longley and Pierce, 23).

The proportional plan is concerned with the winner-take-all, unit rule aspect of the college. It would allow states to divide their electoral votes in proportion to the popular vote up to the nearest 1/1000th, thus trimming the margin of victory for every election after 1864 to the present (Wilkman). A strong point against this plan is that it allows for less than 40% of the popular vote to elect the president.

The direct vote plan is often called the only true democratic way of holding elections and totally abolishes the electoral college. It reverts the voting process to the same one used for electing state governors, senators, and members of the House. Whoever receives 40% of the popular vote in the first round wins under this reform strategy. Voters rank order the candidates; later, votes from bottom winners are re-allocated until a winner crosses the 50% mark.

Electoral college reform dates back to January 6th, 1797. This first resolution by Republican William L. Smith of South Carolina met the same ultimate rejection that many other proposed plans of reform faced. There are currently four distinct proposals of electoral college reform that have materialized over time. The automatic plan, known for it's "voter equity" (Best, 67), is the most modest of the four proposals and keeps a majority of the electoral college as it originally was. Receiving Jefferson's support in 1801, it primarily remedies the possibility of a faithless elector and modifies the House of Representatives dependent elections. A negative effect of this plan is that the electoral vote to

Some common words found in the essay are:
House Representatives, Longley Pierce, Neal Pierce, Convention August, House Representational, Virginia Census, Longley Braun, House Representative, Governor Morris, Policies Receiving, electoral college, popular vote, electoral votes, house representatives, college reform, direct vote, electoral college votes, electoral college reform, college votes, electoral college electors, longley pierce, plan electoral, district plan, state's electoral votes, 40% popular vote,
Approximate Word count = 1560
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)