The Electoral College Versus a Direct Election System Essay -- Politic

The Electoral College Versus a Direct Election System â€Å"The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President†¦they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President† (Findlaw.com). The Twelfth Amendment set forth the rules and regulations for which the Office of President shall be determined. The founding fathers, in the second constitutional convention, laid the grounds on which setup what would be the Electoral College. Adoption of the Electoral College plan came late in the Convention, which had previously adopted on four occasions provisions for election of the executive by the Congress and had twice defeated proposals for election by the people directly. So why not conduct a direct election, by the people? After all, the President was to serve the people. There were four main reasons why the delegates of the Second Constitutional Convention wanted an electoral system. For one, a census as a prelude to the first election could not be taken. The first election served more as an appointment. There was not time for delegates to go back home, while under this newly formed Constitution, and search for delegates. Who would serve to defend the Constitution while this happened? The delegates knew this before hand. The states had a wide variety of suffrage requirements. If electors were to be chosen on the basis of population, should slaves count as a property, or under population? Even though they held large populations, the larger states rejected the idea of a popular vote. Virginia, one of the largest states of the time, had a population of 748,000. Of those, 306,000 were slaves, whic... ...cedure, until a 3/5ths of the states decide against it. Even the Founders themselves once supported a direct election process, but as they researched the outcome of such a system, the repercussions and consequences outweighed the chance to be a true democracy. Even so in 2000, the Electoral College has seen action for 200 years, and it will continue standing in lieu of public scrutiny, and even dimpled chads. Works Cited Census.gov. Visited Dec 5. http://www.census.gov/. Ferrand, Max, ed., Records of the Federal Convention. New Haven, 1911. 2:584 Findlaw.com. Visited Dec 6. http://www.findlaw.com/ James Madison to Henry Lee. 14 Jan. 1825, Records, ed. by Max Ferrand, 3:464. Kuroda, Tadahisa. The Origins of the Twelfth Amendment. Greenwood. 1994. Wood, Gordon. Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787. Chapel Hill 1969.