Fall 1996
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If U.S. citizens are heartily sick of negative campaign ads, proliferating polls and the self serving rhetoric that characterize the present day presidential nominating process, they need not blame the founding fathers. The framers of the United States Constitution never intended that the public would play so prominent a role in the presidential selection process. The delegates who met in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 designed an electoral college to insure that only the very best men would be called upon to nominate so august a personage as the nation's chief executive. A review of the rules for nominating the president illustrates how far our political process has strayed from the principles of Republicanism that inspired the Revolutionary leadership.
Current day historians portray the Constitution as an effort to reign in some of the democratic "excesses" of the time. The new national government, staffed by men of wider vision than those found in the typical state house, would assert control over such troublesome issues as taxes, trade and money. The legitimacy of a national government of expanded powers required a popularly elected House of Representatives. Within the national government, however, the House would be boxed in between a judiciary, a Senate and a chief executive. All of the latter offices were to be a step or two removed from popular control.
Some called the presidency a "kingly office". Its powers outstripped those of the chief executives in the states. The president was vested with veto powers over acts of congress, assumed control of the nation's foreign policy and had considerable patronage at his disposal. It was a position that called for man of "exalted character", and the convention delegates encountered some difficulty devising a system to insure that the office was filled by a man of proper credentials.
On seven occasions the delegates settled on a mode of selecting the president -- only to reverse themselves on later vote. Originally, it was agreed that he be the choice of Congress (the same way governors were selected in most states). The president would serve a single term of 7 years. Yet, some delegates worried that this mode of selection would give the legislative branch too much leverage over the executive. Prohibiting presidents from re-election would remove the temptation of executives kowtowing to Congress to keep their jobs, but this was not enough independence to satisfy James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and others.
The proposition that the people elect the president enjoyed little support inside the Constitutional Convention. Elbridge Gerry branded the idea "radically vicious", even though his native state of Massachusetts elected its chief executive by popular vote. George Mason of Virginia asserted that it would be "as unnatural to refer the choice of proper character for a chief magistrate to the people, as it would to refer a trial of colors to a blind man." [McCormick, p. 20] Distrust of the electorate was one hallmark of revised Republicanism of the post Revolutionary leadership.
Delegates debated the issue of presidential selection late into convention. The controversy was left to a "special committee on unfinished business." It was this committee that returned to the full body with the innovation of the electoral college. Many of the features of the system had been brought up -- and rejected -- in the convention previously, but now they were packaged anew. The framework was apparently a satisfactory one in the eyes of the convention. Provisions for electing the president excited little further debate in Philadelphia or in the later ratifying conventions of the various states. The relevant sections of the Constitution (Article II, Section 1) are reproduced in Appendix 1 of this document. The procedures set forth for presidential selection reflect several pressing concerns of the men who met in Philadelphia: (1) maintaining the independence of the executive branch, (2) forestalling the appearance of cliques or political parties and the corruption that would inevitably follow, (3) balancing the interests of small and large states, and (4) seeing that only the "best men" serve as head of state.
Let us quickly review the workings of the electoral college. This body is selected in each of the states by whatever manner a state chooses. The sole duty of the members of the college is to meet in their various states and come up with the names of two people for president. The only limitation the Constitution imposes on the electors is that at least one of their choices for president be an inhabitant of another state. In this way, the Constitution forces electors to consider candidates beyond their state borders, an important consideration given how provincial minded most Americans were in the 1780s. (Would George Washington have been the unanimous choice of the electors had they been allowed only one choice for president?) The results of the balloting in the states are conveyed to the United States Congress where they are opened and counted. If the largest vote getter also has a majority of the vote he is the new chief executive. If no person has a majority, the House of Representatives selects the president from among the top five names emanating from the electoral college. The Congress would also have to make a choice between two candidates who emerge with a majority of the vote and are tied - a mathematical possibility since each elector casts two votes for one office.
Reviewing the details of the plan framed in Philadelphia we can see that it addressed several issues that vexed the framers in the summer of 1787. First, the document insured the independence of the executive by depriving the national legislature of full power of appointment. The House could select the president only if no majority vote emerged from the electoral college, and then the congressmen had to make their choice from the top 5 names supplied by the electors. The Constitution stipulates that the congress make this selection "immediately" after they count the votes of the electoral college, probably to discourage unseemly politicking on behalf of one candidate or another. The one qualification for the office of elector excluded members of the Senate or House, "or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States." This ruling further removed legislators from the selection process and prevented presidents from retaining office by getting his appointees into the electoral college. Perhaps this is why the final document dropped the single term rule and permitted chief executives to run for re- election as often as they liked.
The nettlesome problem of weighing the interests of small and large states was also neatly finessed by the electoral college. During the proceedings in Philadelphia the smaller states made a determined effort to maintain their equal status with the larger states under the new federation. The question whether the all important legislative branch was to be apportioned by population or to allow each state one vote only (as was then the case with the Articles of Confederation) was the most rancorous issue of the convention; it nearly brought the deliberations to an untimely end. The Great Compromise resolved the crisis by arranging for the apportionment of the House by population and the Senate by state. The electoral college preserved this arrangement by assigning the number of electors for each state based on its representation in both houses of congress. While this arrangement would give small states more than their due representation (based strictly on population) it nonetheless insured the large states a preponderant influence. The small states won back power in the event the selection process went into overtime. When the Congress selected the president out of the 5 top vote getters the balloting was to be by states, with each state delegation having one vote. Given that Congress has only had recourse to this procedure twice in its history (1800 and 1824) the small states would appear to have come out with the worse end of the bargain. But this may not have been how it seemed in 1787 if we suppose that the electoral college was expected to function more as a nominating body than an elective one.
The Constitution sets up a system that discourages the electors of the various states from engaging in deliberations or deal- making that would narrow down the field of candidates. Congress was given the authority to see that the delegates met in their separate states on the same day. (Having all the delegates convene in one location at the same time made the process all the more inconvenient for the electors but more convenient for the agents of corruption.) This would prevent a candidate from amassing momentum -- the "Big Mo" of modern politics -- that would induce other electors to vote for him. Moreover, the electors only needed to make their choice known to congress, transmitting their "sealed" results to the Vice President. One of the convention delegates later claimed that it was assumed that the votes of the members of the electoral college would be secret and unknown until opened before the Congress. Secrecy and simultaneous decision- making would help squelch the "intrigue," "cabals" and -- worst of all -- political parties that so distressed the Revolutionary generation.
If carried out as intended, the electoral college could rarely be expected to settle on a choice for president. Mason predicted that in 19 cases of out 20 the electoral college would fail to register a majority for anyone. This, of course, was not the case in 1787; George Washington was on everyone's short list. But the delegates might well have imagined that his successors would not be so obvious. Congress exercised wide latitude in making its selections, choosing among the top five finalists, probably because it was anticipated that no one would emerge with more than a small minority of the vote. The delegates in Philadelphia squabbled for some time over the arrangements for making the final selection when a majority of in the electoral college did not obtain; this is further evidence that the electoral college was expected to function mainly as a nominating body rather than an elective one.
The results of the first presidential election certainly conformed with such expectations. All the electors voted for Washington, but the consensus broke down when it came to a second choice. John Adams came up with a bare majority of 35 votes, and electors scattered another 34 among 10 other candidates. Moreover, John Adams owed his victory not so much to the independent assessment of the electors as the politicking of Washington, Hamilton and Madison, who wanted to insure that only a friend of the Constitution emerged a heartbeat away from the presidency. They wrote to the electors in the various states urging a united front behind Adams. Plainly, the constitution's provisions were not cabal- proof, as demonstrated by the most prominent of the framers themselves.
One by-product of the electoral college's two vote rule was the creation of a new federal office. The records of the convention make no mention of the vice presidency in the early discussions in Philadelphia. The committee of unfinished business invented the office only as a means of keeping the members of the electoral college honest. Electors had to cast two votes, one of them for a person outside their own state. Electors interested only in promoting a "favorite son" might be tempted to throw away their second ballot by voting for a nonentity (i.e., someone who would not out poll the elector's first choice). By creating the vice presidency for the runner up, the founders were forcing the electors to take their second choice more seriously. The convention then needed to come up with a job description for the vice president. They made him titular head of the senate and, of course, the back up president. The nation's first Vice President, the ever sensitive John Adams, was the first to realize the job's limitations. "My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived." [Boller, p. 4] Woodrow Wilson's vice president, Thomas Marshall, liked to tell the story of two brothers. "One ran away to sea, the other was elected vice president, and neither of them was heard of again." [Boller, p. 198]
The Constitution deferred to the states, specifically the state legislatures, regarding the manner in which the electors were to be selected. In the early presidential elections of the "First Party System" (1788 - 1824) the states experimented with a variety of formats. In 1789 only Pennsylvania mandated the current day system of having the full slate of electors voted upon by in a general election. Elsewhere (Massachusetts and Virginia) voters selected the electors on a congressional district basis rather than statewide. New Jersey's legislature told the governor to appoint the electors (with approval of his cabinet). New York failed to select any electors because the two houses of the state legislature could never agree on a procedure -- no surprise there. The legislatures appointed the electors themselves in some states; this remained the most common procedure up to the Age of Jackson. In 1812, for example, half the states selected the electors in this manner (and South Carolina would continue to do so until the Civil War). It is worth noting parenthetically that there is nothing in the Constitution that would prevent any state legislature from doing the same today.
Even where the state legislatures authorized the voters to select the electors, the founders hoped to discourage politicking. Campaign practices of the day frowned on candidates making an open bid for votes by making promises to the electorate -- this was the technique of the demagogue. Moreover, there was not a whole lot at stake to tempt the prospective elector. This was a position of honor, to be sure, but it was a post that ceased to exist after the elector fulfilled his sole duty. Even so, newspapers and posters in Pennsylvania in 1887 quickly identified the electors affiliated with either the Federalists (who wanted to see Washington and Adams as the choices) or the Anti- Federalists (who supported Washington and Governor George Clinton of New York). The Federalists won this battle, but sacrificed Republican principles along the way.
Within their lifetimes, the framers of the constitution saw their electoral college effectively dismantled. And, as we a have seen, the makers of the Constitution themselves bear a heavy responsibility for manipulating the process from the first time. They did not wish to risk that a truly independent body select an opponent of the Constitution for vice president, so they rounded up votes for Adams. Later on, the competition between Hamilton and Jefferson would spur the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans to see that the electors follow the party line. With Washington no longer interested in running in 1796, straight ticket voting by the members of the electoral college prevailed. All the electors in six states voted either for the Federalist candidates (Adams and Thomas Pickney) or the Democratic Republican choices (Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr). When one Pennsylvania elector made it know that he intended to support Adams and Jefferson, the Federalists who had put him on their ticket condemned his independent course. "What!" one letter to the editor complained, "Do I chuse Samuel Miles to determine for me whether John Adams or Thomas Jefferson shall be President? No! I chuse him to act, not to think!" [Boller, p. 9]
There would have been more straight ticket voting in 1796 except that supporters of Adams and Jefferson were wary of voting for their second choice lest Pickney or Burr emerge with most electoral votes and capture the presidency. The Twelfth Amendment, adopted in 1804, removed this complication by requiring electors to cast one vote for president and the other for vice president. The system was now easier to manipulate, and the electoral college's services as a nominating board no longer seemed necessary. Another provision of the Twelfth Amendment limited congress' range of choices to the top three vote getters. The expectation now was for the college to produce a greater concentration of the votes among a few candidates -- agreed upon ahead of time -- rather than scattered among many in a largely uncoordinated process.
Most of the contingencies that the electoral college was supposed to avert had come to pass by the 1820s. Not only had political parties come into being, but the legislature effectively usurped the power to choose the chief executive as Federalists and Democratic Republicans nominated their presidential and vice presidential candidates in party caucuses composed of congressmen and Senators. The identification of various electoral slates with specific candidates logically followed, and the electorate was invited to judge for itself the qualifications of the various presidential candidates. The final blow was the selection of Andrew Jackson, the barely literate, backwoods indian fighter whom Jefferson regarded as wholly unfit for office.
The formal mechanism of the electoral college remains in place long after it has outlived its purpose. Over time, various informal bodies -- legislative caucuses, party conventions and now primaries -- control the selection process. The Constitution nowhere provides for these mechanisms because they violate its central principles. One New Jersey Senator complained as early as 1817 that scarcely any official was "elected or appointed by a rule so undefined, so vague, so subject to abuse, as that by which we elect the Chief Magistrate of the Union." [McCormick, p. 3] No feature of the Constitution has been subject to as much complaint as the electoral college. By one count, there have been over 500 amendments proposed to change system, mostly to insure that the winner of the popular vote be awarded the presidency. A constitutional crisis is perhaps all that is required to ensure the adoption of measures that would remove any pretense that the task of selecting the nation's chief executive was properly the work of a body of distinguished citizens.
Article II, Section 1
The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice-President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows
Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all persons vote for, and the number of votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the list the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the states shall be necessary to a Choice. In every case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest number of votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.
The Congress may determine the Time of choosing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.
Twelfth Amendment
The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by Ballot for President and Vice President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same State with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted as Vice President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice- President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate; -- The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted; -- The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no Person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; A quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or Members from two thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice President shall act as President, as in the case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President. -- The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.
Okay, okay. I'll admit it. I did not go to the National Archives to copy the Constitution from the original -- as any good historian would. I took the material from the appendix to The Federalist Papers, compiled by Clinton Rossiter (New York, 1961).
Hamilton lauds the workings of the electoral college in Federalist Paper #68, and John Jay briefly touches on the subject in #64. A popular -- if somewhat dated account -- of the workings of the Constitutional Convention can be found in Carl Van Doren's The Great Rehearsal, The Story of the Making of the Constitution of the United States (New York: 1948). Background information on the mindset of the constitution makers borrows heavily from Gordon Wood's The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: 1991) as well as Edmund S. Morgan's Inventing the People, The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America. Wood's work puts the intellectual framework of Republicanism within a social context. His work is, I suppose, the definitive work on Republicanism -- for the time being. I find Morgan's account, a narrower intellectual history, very provocative given our culture's populist tendencies.
The largest part of this essay drew from Richard P. McCormick's, The Presidential Game: The Origins of American Presidential Politics (New York: 1982). The book follows the changing rules and stratagems of electing the chief executive from 1787 to the institutionalization of party conventions in the Jacksonian Era. I am indebted to Professor McCormick for much my published work to date -- and figure that he could hardly notice or care that I ripped off yet another piece of his scholarship.
Abbreviated coverage of each of the presidential elections can be found in The History of American Presidential Elections, 1789 - 1968 edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (New York: 1971). Readers looking for a lighter fare will want to check out Paul F. Boller, Jr., Presidential Campaigns (Revised edition: New York, 1996).