History of Electoral College
The Electoral College is the name for the electors who nominally choose the president and vice president of the United States. Each of the states receives a certain number of electors, which is determined by the total number of senators and representatives it sends to the U.S. Congress. Therefore, each state has at least 3 electors. The Electoral College was devised by the Framers of the Constitution as a procedure to elect the president by the people, at least indirectly. The framers came up with this procedure for many reasons. Such reasons included the lack of information to make a good choice by the people and it was also a way to control the power of the people. Although the Electoral College is still used today, it has undergone several changes and still contains certain weaknesses. When the Constitutional Convention chose a method of selecting a president, they took several problems into consideration. The first problem they had to solve was the lack of information that the people had due to poor communication. At the time the U.S. contained approximately 4 million people who lived spread apart along the Atlantic coast with very little communication or transportation. This
The first design lasted four elections but was changed after the presidential election of 1800. In this election, political parties began to build up and two candidates, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr of the same party, received equal amounts of votes. Due to this tie, the election was turned over to the House of Representatives. The House finally chose a president, but not after they had met and voted 36 times. This led to the adoption of the 12th Amendment to the Constitution in 1804. This Amendment said that in order to eliminate ties, each Elector would cast one vote for president and a separate vote for vice president. In case of no majority, the House would select a president among the top 3 contenders. All other features of the Electoral College were not changed or improved. The next change in the college took place after the election of 1876, which involved Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden. In this election, the dispute was about the validity of the electoral votes of four states, which were crucial to the outcome. As a result of the dispute, it was the duty of Congress to settle it, but they too found themselves to be deadlocked. This led to the creation of the Electoral Commission of 1877, which chose Hayes on a party vote. Later, Congress passed a law that gave states exclusive powers to resolve all controversies involving the selection of electors. The last change that has been made to the Electoral College came by way of
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Approximate Word count = 987
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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