How has the Electoral College changed over time?

0:04Has the Electoral College changed much since it was created? Well, there was the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, which rectified one problem and created others, but on the original Electoral College, there was no separate balloting for vice president. Every electoral got to cast two ballots for president. The person who got the most votes became president, the person who got the second most votes became vice president.

0:32Rivals like Adams and Jefferson could end up as president and vice president, but that produced a very messy situation. It was a mess by 1800s, there was a crisis in 1800. They amended the constitution saying, you vote separately for president and vice president. That also led in effect to the appearance of tickets of a president and vice president running on the same ticket.

0:55The other major change that occurred was that for the first few years, electors meeting in their state capitals did try to deliberate, but then that was completely abandoned. The Constitution says that each state can choose electors in such manner as the legislature of that state should decide. You don't have to have a popular election for president. In the early years, in the first 20-30 years in many states, at least some of the time, did not have elections for president. The legislature alone chose. South Carolina continued doing that into the 1850s. South Carolina was laggard on this, but New York in 1824 in a very important election, the Legislature chose electors. There is no right to vote for president. We do not have a right to vote for president unless

1:45our state legislature grants us that right. By 1805, 1810, electors were really messengers now and they did not deliberate at all. There's a famous quote early on, I think it was as early as the 1790s but suddenly 1800-1808, somewhere in there, where one politician says about electorate X said "I choose him to act, not to think."