The Electoral College

THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE
by William C. Kimberling, Deputy Director FEC Of?ce of resource Administration

(The views expressed here ar solely those of the author and are not necessarily shared by the Federal resource Commission or any division thereof.)
In entrap to appreciate the reasons for the Electoral College, it is essential to understand its historical stage setting and the problem that the Founding Fathers were trying to solve. They faced the dif?cult interrogative of how to elect a president in a commonwealth that:


was composed of thirteen large and small States jealous of their hold rights and powers and suspicious of any central national government contained only 4,000,000 people spread up and down a m miles of Atlantic seaboard barely connected by merchant marine or communication (so that national campaigns were impractical even if they had been model desirable) believed, under the in?uence of such(prenominal) British political thinkers as Henry St John Bolingbroke, that political parties were mischievous if not out-and-out(a) evil, and felt that gentlemen should not campaign for public of?ce (The verbalise was The of?ce should seek the man, the man should not seek the of?ce.).











How, then, to film a president without political parties, without national campaigns, and without upsetting the carefully designed balance between the presidency and the Congress on one hand and between the States and the federal government on the other?

Origins of the Electoral College
The Constitutional Convention considered several executable methods of selecting a president.

One idea was to have the Congress recognize the president. This idea was rejected, however, because some felt that making such a choice would be too divisive an issue and go too many hard feelings in the Congress. Others felt that such a procedure would invite unseemly political bargaining, corruption, and possibly even interference from foreign powers. Still others felt that such an arrangement would...If you want to get a full essay, arrangement it on our website: Orderessay



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