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By EUGENE MCCARTHY
Rappahannock Newt Contributing Writer
After prolonged debate, the Constitutional Convention of 1787 finally approved the principle of electing the President by a body created specifically for that purpose, namely, the Electoral College.
In the first presidential election, some electors were appointed by state legislatures. A few states, including Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, provided for popular election of the electors.
By 1796, the first election after Washington’s two terms, electors were chosen by the people in six states and by legislatures in 10 states. By that time, within eight years after the adoption of the Constitution, partisanship had reached a point at which, in every one of the 16 states then a part of the Union, electors were picked as men pledged to one candidate or the other: John Adams or Thomas Jefferson. The Electoral College as conceived by the Founding Fathers — a body of responsible, trusted persons — was hardly tested.
As partisan politics has become more dominant, the independent role of the Electoral College has been all but forgotten and electors vote automatically for the party candidate to whom they are committed. Because of the development of partisan politics, and for other reasons, the original conception of how the Electoral College was intended to work has been confused and neglected. A popular opinion has developed that the Electoral College is either a bad idea or one that is unworkable.
It is neither. The trouble is that it has not been used as it was intended.
The original conception was that electors would be chosen for one task only, a very important one in the new republic: the selection of a President of the United States. As electors they were to be agents of the people of their states. It was anticipated that the electors would be wise and responsible, that they would be more free of involvement with politics and legislative matters because they were not members of Congress.
The Electoral College, as it was called, was designed to deny both Congress and the voters total and direct power over the election. Whereas the Founding Fathers knew what political factions were — division being the mark of every political society — they hoped and believed that these divisive and power-seeking organizations would have a limited influence in the choice of members of Congress and especially of the President.
The states could by individual and separate actions restore the electoral process to what it was intended to be. They are unlikely to do so, any more than they had moved to extend the vote to women or to persons between the ages of 18 and 21 before Constitutional amendments accomplishing those purposes were adopted. Maine is the only state that has moved, even modestly, to conform to the Constitutional intent.
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