A brief study of the history of the
Electoral College makes it apparent how far the process of the selection of the
president of the United
States has changed from the vision of the
Framers of the Constitution and the practices of the early years of the Republic
and helps to appreciate better its purpose.
The Electoral College was inspired
by the College of Cardinals, which elects the Pope. Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Catholic signer of the
Declaration of Independence, is credited with its creation. He had authored a distinctive provision in Maryland’s first
Constitution in 1776 that established a body of popularly elected electors who selected
the state’s senators. At the
Constitutional Convention in 1787, a provision based on Maryland’s was adapted as the basis of the
constitutional method for the selection of the president. A key difference between the two, out of respect
for state sovereignty, under the constitutional principle of federalism, is
that the electors do not meet as a whole body, but separately in each state and
the District of Columbia. The words “Electoral College” do not appear
in the Constitution as a name for this institution, as the presidential
elections are the collective work of 51 individual bodies.
Because of current practices
regarding the selection of the president, it is commonly believed, at least by
those who recognize that electoral votes are more than a kind of point-scoring
system that evens out the weight of the states, that the presidential and vice
presidential electors (the members of what popularly became known as the
Electoral College) serve as a check on the people, which, in practice, has
become true. However, the history of
their office reveals the electors were intended more as representative of the
people, as well as of the states.
In creating electors as a method of
selecting the president, the Framers chose neither direct popular election, nor
election by the Congress, as some of them had favored, but instead established
a method that was representative of the people and the states. Except for the later provision of electors
for the District of Columbia,
the allocation of these electors matches that of the combined number of members
of both chambers of Congress. The number
of representatives in the House is based upon population because they are elected
to represent the people, while each state is represented in the Senate by an
equal number of senators. Therefore, the
size of the Electoral College is the result of a compromise that, like the
Congress, balances population with state equality, in keeping with federalism. Similarly, the composition of the Electoral
College helps prevent domination by the larger states over the smaller ones. Beyond the composition of the Electoral
College, the role of the states in the selection of the president, who presides
over the Union of the states, is preserved
through the power of state legislatures to choose the electors by whatever
means they decide, even if they chose to make the office of elector elective.
The Framers opposed democracy (direct
rule of the people), preferring representative republican government. The office of member of the House of
Representatives was the only constitutional office the Framers established that
was necessarily elected popularly, as the president, vice president and
senators were not directly elected under the original terms of the
Constitution. Even the office of
presidential and vice presidential electors was not necessarily elective, but
could be appointive. Therefore, the only
two federal offices established by the Framers that could be elective were both
representative in nature. Appointive
electors, like senators, were appointed by state legislatures to be primarily representative
of the states while elective electors are more representative of the
people. Nevertheless, in both cases, the
electors, like the Congress as a whole, represent both the people and the
states. This dual representation is noticeably
conserved in contingency elections, whereby the House elects the president, but
votes by state.
Like any representatives, presidential
and vice presidential electors are supposed to exercise their judgment, in good
conscience, as to what is in the best interests, not only of the union, but of
the states and the people. As the method
of selecting a president is not based primarily on the will of the people, an elector
who carries out this duty as a representative is thus not a “faithless”
elector, but a faithful one.
This representative role of the presidential
and vice presidential electors can also be observed in the state laws of the early
period of the Republic regarding the selection of these electors. Some state legislatures opted at first to
appoint their presidential and vice presidential electors, others to allow them
to be popularly elected. A few even
alternated between presidential elections from the elective to the appointive
method. Gradually, all of the states
adopted the method of popular elections, but with South Carolina as the last holdout, the
first presidential election in which all of the electors were popularly elected
was not until 1868. For extraordinary
reasons, there have been subsequent occasions when electors have been appointed. The states retain the power to set aside the
election of the electors, even after they have been elected, and appoint them
instead. Even though the states exercise
their discretion to allow the people to elect the electors to represent them,
it is important to remember that this representation occurs only through the
power of the states.
In the Federal period, those
electors who were popularly chosen were elected directly by the people, unlike the current practice, whereby the
voters elect them indirectly by casting ballots for presidential and vice
presidential candidates them that are counted for an unnamed slate of electors
who are nominated by the presidential candidates. In some states currently, it is not even
mentioned on the ballot that the election is only for the electors nominated by
these candidates, which misleads people even more to believe they are voting
directly for president and vice president.
The representative role of the Electoral College was thus clearer in this
original method of direct election than today’s method, in which it is
popularly believed that the presidential election is essentially a democratic exercise,
and that the purpose of the electors is mainly to even out the strength of the
states.
Not only did these early methods of
selecting presidential and vice presidential electors emphasize their
representative role, but common practices at the time did, as well. It is critical to understand that in the
first several decades of the Republic, no one personally campaigned for
president, vice president or for any other political office, including even
presidential and vice presidential electors. The popular belief at the time was that seeking
office would be arrogant, as “the office seeks the man, not the man the
office.” The similarity between the Electoral
College and the College of Cardinals was more noticeable then, as no one
publicly campaigns to be elected Pope and the selection is sometimes a surprise
to the public whenever a less relatively known person is selected. There were no political campaigns in the
early Republic in the more modern sense, but informal public debate, which was
conducted through conversations among the people and through the exercise of
the freedom of the printing press. It
was not until 1840 that anyone personally campaigned for president or vice
president of the United
States.
Before the rise of political parties,
there were originally no names on ballots for offices; there were only write-in
votes. Later, parties united behind
candidates whose names were placed onto election ballots, through changes to
election laws. Similarly, at the
Electoral College, there were only write-in votes for president and vice
president.
The rise of political parties also
led to a democratizing trend away from the original vision of the Framers for
the presidential and vice presidential electors, which has increasingly blurred
the distinction between electing the electors and electing the president and
vice president. Making the office of
elector elective, instead of appointive, and binding electors nominated by the
presidential and vice presidential candidates to vote for those candidates,
instead of allowing the electors to be free to exercise their judgment, have
weakened the representative role of the Electoral College. Such democratization helped to mislead the people
into believing that presidential elections were primarily supposed to reflect
their will because many people perceived that they were voting directly for the
candidates for president and vice president whose names appeared on the
ballots, instead of only casting ballots for electors. Others who had at least some awareness of the
Electoral College believed they were indirectly electing the president and vice
president by voting for the presidential and vice presidential candidates who
would then necessarily win the votes of the electors from their states, as the
electors were nominated by the presidential candidates and were often bound to
vote for them by state law. However,
contrary to common parlance and belief, unless one is an elector or U.S.
representative, no one votes for president and vice president. No presidential ticket receives any “popular
votes.”
As envisioned by the Framers, a
person need not personally campaign, be named on any ballot and receive any
“popular votes” to be elected president of the United States by members of the
Electoral College, who are not themselves necessarily elected or, even if the
were, need not to have personally campaigned for office, and whose names need
not to have appeared on any ballot. And
someone could be elected president after having received as little as one
electoral vote.
Although the Electoral College is at
least recognized nowadays as a check on the popular will, the origin and early
history of this institution suggests that the presidential election was never
intended to be primarily a democratic exercise, but an exercise in
representative republican government. A
restoration of the role of the electors as representatives of the states and
the people would not be a usurpation of the will of the people, but a return to
the vision of the Framers of the Constitution.
