electoral college constitution

To this day, millions of … The process of using electors, as defined in the Constitution and clarified by the Twelfth Amendment, is considered a compromise between a popular vote by citizens and a vote in Congress. That’s because each state is awarded electoral votes based on the number of representatives it has in the House, which is roughly proportionate to its population, plus the number of U.S. Article II of the U.S. Constitution grants the power to elect the president and vice president to the states through the Electoral College system. Each state has a number of electors equal to the number of senators plus the number of districts or congressmen in that state.2,3 The elec-tors vote for the President and the Vice President through majority rule.4, 5 How electors are selected in each state is not specified in the Constitution. The way the Electoral College actually functions today isn’t even enshrined in the Constitution. Every four years this part of the complicated process once again comes to the forefront of discussion. The Obsolescence Debate . The framers of the Constitution established the Electoral College. The winner-take-all method is nowhere in the Constitution. II, § 1, to vote as he may choose in the electoral college, it would not follow that the requirement of a pledge in the primary is unconstitutional. The basis for the Electoral College is found in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, which spells out how the president shall be chosen. It sought to make the process more workable. [20] One early virtue of this wording was that if certain states decided not to participate in the election by failing to appoint any electors, a president could still be elected by a majority of those who were appointed. The Electoral College was devised at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The next Charlotte Senior Center Wednesday lecture is “The Electoral College: A Disaster for Democracy” with Jesse Wegman, May 5. The Founding Fathers chose it as a compromise between allowing Congress to choose the president and having the president elected directly by the popular vote of the people. Article II, section 1 of the Constitution establishes the Electoral College. Origins of electoral colleges. The problem is, this disproportion isn’t the fault of the Electoral College, it’s the fault of a constitutional perversion enacted in 1921 that we’ve blindly followed ever since. It gives each state “in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct” electors equal to its representation in Congress. Each state elects the number of representatives to the Electoral College that is equal to its number of Senators—two from each state—plus its number of delegates in the House of Representatives. The Founding Fathers established it in the Constitution, in part, as a compromise between the election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens. Lawmakers have tried to amend or abolish it more than 700 times. “However, even if such promises of candidates for the electoral college are legally unenforceable because violative of an assumed constitutional freedom of the elector under the Constitution, Art. A transcript from the Constitutional Convention records the official report creating the Electoral College. The Constitution’s Article II, Section 1 spells out the Electoral College rules. The Founders believed that most common citizens of the day were poorly educated and … After the 1800 election, when the nation adopted a constitutional amendment to fix problems with the Electoral College, New Englanders who proposed getting rid of the three-fifths language were ignored, according to Amar. So, the framers of the constitution created the electoral college, with each state choosing electors. For this reason, and many others, the Electoral College is a pivotal piece of the constitutional puzzle. The Electoral College has always been an imperfect, yet prudent, compromise. In this usage, “college” refers to a group of people that share a common purpose or responsibility. Tags: News, Constitution, Electoral College, House Democrats. The Winner-Take-All Electoral College Isn’t In the Constitution Many who dislike the winner-take-all Electoral College argue that its bias toward small states is unfair. States have the power to … The Twelfth Amendment did not essentially alter the electoral college. The Electoral College was an ingenious compromise, allowing the popular election of the president, but on a state-by-state basis. The framers of the Constitution battled over it. In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution does not require that people elected to serve in the Electoral College be free to vote as they choose. Make sure to update your bookmarks! Citizens vote for president, with the winner in each state taking all the state’s electoral votes based on the number of seats that state has in the Senate and House combined. The system is outlined in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution. The first iteration of the Electoral College was used during the first four presidential elections of the United States. Next week, the Electoral College will convene as is required by the Constitution to formally elect the next president and vice president of the United States. It was the first part of the Constitution to fail and was drastically overhauled in … Original Author: Michael Lee. From it we learn the structure and function of the Electoral College, and which aspects of it were governed by the Federal government or by individual States. The Electoral College is often not a well-understood entity. The Constitutional Electoral College . The Electoral College, like so many aspects of the Constitution, is an ingenious instrument that ensures the interests of the national will are not able to run roughshod over the interests of the federal bodies, aka states. The Electoral College was created as a compromise at the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Under the Constitution, the highest-ranking U.S. officials elected by the direct popular vote of the people are the governors of the states. Article II, Section 1, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution provided the original voting … Original Location: House Democrats introduce constitutional amendment to ban Electoral College. The Electoral College system was established by Article II of the U.S. Constitution in 1788. To be elected by the electoral college, the Constitution requires that a candidate receive "a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed." The Electoral College is a process, not a place. The Electoral College is the constitutional system through which the United States elects its president. The Twelfth Amendment (Amendment XII) to the United States Constitution provides the procedure for electing the president and vice president.It replaced the procedure provided in Article II, Section 1, Clause 3, by which the Electoral College originally functioned. Natural Born Citizen: Someone born with U.S. citizenship includes any child born "in" the United States, the children of United States citizens born abroad, and those born abroad of one citizen parent. Electoral College: The voters of each state, and the District of Columbia, vote for electors to be the authorized constitutional members in a presidential election. Although the Constitution itself does not use the term “Electoral College,” it does mandate that each state select “electors” who in turn elect the president. The Electoral College was created by the framers of the U.S. Constitution as an alternative to electing the president by popular vote or by Congress. Often these represent different organizations, political parties or entities, with each organization, political party or entity represented by a particular number of electors or with votes weighted in a particular way. It was a compromise between those who wanted direct popular elections for president and those who preferred to have Congress decide. Before adopting this method, the Convention considered selection of … The Electoral College was one of the last considerations of the Constitutional Convention. An electoral college is a set of electors who are selected to elect a candidate to particular offices. U.S. National Archives, CC BY-NC-ND The Electoral College has changed several times, each by constitutional amendment. Since the Electoral College process is part of the original design of the U.S. Constitution it would be necessary to pass a Constitutional amendment to change this system. It is extremely difficult to amend the Constitution. Since the Constitution was ratified in 1789, there have been more than 700 attempts to amend or abolish the Electoral College, all of which have failed to pass the Senate. Only with the adoption of post-Civil War amendments that abolished slavery and extended political rights to Black Americans did the Three-Fifths Compromise end. The Electoral College website now has an easy-to-remember address. But the Electoral College has produced recurring political controversy over the centuries and also experienced significant constitutional, legislative, and political upheaval and revision. The Electoral College is a system put into place by our founding fathers following the American Revolution. 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