[Short] Wembley: Who Came Up With the Electoral College?

Who in the world came up with the idea of the Electoral College?

What a crazy way to select the leaders of the executive branch of our government.

When the original colonies separated from our mother land England, they established a confederation. The rules for this union were developed in the “Articles of Confederation” established in 1781. Each colony was essentially a free and independent country unto itself. They were joined for mutual defense and for international agreements. They had open borders and each had their own currency.

Every year the States were to send from two to seven representatives to meet in Congress on the first Monday of November. At that time, the President was selected by the state’s congressional delegates and he could only serve “one year out of three”. There was no public input involved.

The whole system didn’t work very well and so after six years, they decided to try again. A committee was established to revise the Articles of Confederation. The committee rebelled and instead wrote a whole new constitution in 1787.

Absolutely the biggest issue facing the creators was how to provide for equality in state representation in the new federal government. Some states were physically large but had small populations. Other states were small with relatively large populations. Still others were small with small populations. Different regions had different needs. How to distribute the power of government to everyone as equally as possible?

Thus we have the current system with two legislative houses one with a fixed number of state representatives per state and the other a variable number based upon population. Agreement had to be established between both houses on all legislation. It was an attempt to assure that one region would not have more control over our governmental affairs than another.

But how can you select an administrator to lead the government who would represent all states equally regardless of size or population?

You do the same thing. Or at least similar. They never thought about soliciting public opinion for the selection of an administrator and his assistant for executing the laws enacted by congress.

They didn’t want the congress to appoint the leadership either. That didn’t work out that well the last time. So they set up a system for choosing the President and Vice President by having a committee of electors in each state select their preferences by voting for the President from a list of candidates. The results of the voting along with the list of candidates were then sent to Congress and the person with the most votes nationally would be President and the runner up would be Vice President. Again there was no plan to seek public opinion on the national level.

This system was amended in 1804 by the 12^th amendment. In the current system, the list of candidates for President and Vice President are separated in the state electoral voting, a selection process is executed for each office by the state legislatures. The state electors vote for the candidates for each office and the results are sent to congress for consolidation. The U.S. Congress then selects the

President and Vice President based upon whoever has the most votes.

At no time was any consideration given to use the desires of the populace in selecting our national leadership. In fact, doing so would allow dominance by the more heavily populated regions like New York and California over the less populated regions. This is just what our founding fathers tried to avoid. Eliminating the Electoral College and using national poplar voting to select the President and Vice President makes as much sense as eliminating the U.S. Congress and have all laws approved by popular vote. Now there’s an Idea!

— Written by Wembley

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Who is Wembley?

Wembley is the nom de plume for an older gentleman who loves history and politics, writes often, but is technology challenged. He wants so much for people to read what he writes. After many arguments over the subject, he doesn’t want to build a following or even have his own substack… even though he has much to say. He absolutely insists that I publish it for him.

So, he will write and I will publish. This is just a short essay he did and the first of many.

The older generations have so much to teach us.