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Electoral College: Elections
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Originally, the Electoral College provided the Constitutional Convention with a compromise between the popular election of the President and Congressional selection. The 12th Amendment—ratified in 1804—changed the original process, allowing for separate ballots and contingency elections for determining the President and Vice President. A detailed history of the Electoral College is available at the Federal Election Commission website.
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Every four years, the Electoral College enjoys a fleeting moment of fame. But the impact of the college on presidential elections is far greater and more controversial than its brief life indicates. It has been the subject of much discussion and has both supporters and critics. Some of the arguments for and against the college are presented here.
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The Electoral College should be abolished, but there is a right way to do it and a wrong way. A prominent Republican lawyer in California is doing it the wrong way, promoting a sneaky initiative that, in the name of Electoral College reform, would rig elections in a way that would make it difficult for a Democrat to be elected president, no matter how the popular vote comes out. If the initiative passes, it would do serious da
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Debate over the merit of the Electoral College came to a head after the 2000 Presidential election, with some politicians, such as Senator-elect Hillary Clinton calling for a Constitutional amendment abolishing the system. Clinton conceded that the chances of enacting such a change were slim, and the idea has not been vigorously pursued since the 2000 election.
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In the election of 2000, Vice President Albert Gore won the popular vote but narrowly lost the electoral college to Texas Governor George W. Bush. Gore objected to the vote count in Florida, where Bush was certified as winning by 500 votes, but where 175,000 ballots were eliminated by voting machines that could not determine for whom the ballots had been cast. These “undercounted†ballots came disproportionately from districts that favored Gore. He demanded a hand recount of the disputed ballots to determine the intention of the voters, but Bush sued to stop the recount. By a vote of 5–4, in Bush v. Gore, the U.S. Supreme Court, prohibited a recount because not enough time remained to ensure the equal protection of all voters. Florida's electors, and with them the presidency, then went to Bush.
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Electoral colleges are an ancient institution. Germanic law stated that the German king led only with the support of his nobles. Thus, Pelayo needed to be elected by his Visigothic nobles before becoming king of Asturias, and so did Pepin the Short by Frankish nobles in order to become the first Carolingian king. While most other Germanic nations went to make a a strictly hereditary system by the first millennium, the Holy Roman Empire could not, and the King of the Romans, who would become Holy Roman Emperor or at least Emperor-elect, was selected by the college of prince-electors from the late Middle Ages until 1806 (the last election actually took place in 1792).
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