History of the Electoral College

History of the 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 made it difficult for the people to choose a president from a list of people that they know little about. Another main reason they chose a system such as the Electoral College was as a way to control the power of the people. The members of the convention felt that the direct election of the president by the people would give them too much power.

Before choosing the Electoral College, the Constitutional Convention came up with several methods of selecting a president with those reasons under consider...

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...hey 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 the 23rd Amendment. This Amendment gave residents of the District of Columbia the right to vote for three electors just as the residents of every other state.

I think that the Electoral College should be eliminated because the people should be allowed to vote for the president directly, since the United States is a democracy. I feel that it is wrong for a candidate to be able win an election through electoral votes, but lose the popular vote. Having the Electoral College takes away the rights that the people should have.