What was the founders’ vision for the Electoral College?
The narrator says voters chose two electors who couldn't be from the same state. Under the original Constitution, each elector cast two votes, and at least one had to be for someone outside the elector's state. This point was not tested.
The check-ins use the correct version. The video is Khan Academy's, unchanged.About this video
The video explains that the Electoral College was a compromise between those who wanted Congress to choose the president and those who wanted a direct popular vote. Voters in each state chose electors, who then met and voted for president; the top vote-getter became president and the runner-up vice president. The founders saw it as an intermediate step that kept the people indirectly responsible for choosing the president.
You'll be able to
- describe the two options the Electoral College compromised between.
- explain how the original system chose both the president and vice president.
- explain why the founders saw the Electoral College as a middle path.
Key words
- Compromise
- An agreement where each side gives up part of what it wants.
- Unitary executive
- A single person holding executive power, rather than a committee.
- Legislative supremacy
- The Articles of Confederation idea that the legislature holds the main power.
- Direct election
- A system where all the people vote directly for the president.
- Runner-up
- The candidate who came second; originally this person became vice president.
Transcript
The Electoral College is actually this compromise. Even once there is agreement that we're going to have a single unitary executive, one person who's going to be elected in some fashion, there are some who want the president to be chosen by Congress, reaffirming the legislative supremacy model of the Articles of Confederation. There are others who really pushed for a direct election that the people would all vote directly for president. It's really only after weeks and weeks of debate that the Electoral College emerges as a compromise. Where the idea is that the voters are going to choose in each state in a manner determined by the legislature of that state, they're going to choose two electors. The only rule was that the electors couldn't be from the same state. Then once you voted for your electors, the electors would meet in the electoral college and in turn vote for a president. The idea was that the electors were representatives
of the people they were voting for it to be precedent, where whoever got the most electoral votes would be president. Whoever got the second most votes, the runner-up would be vice president. This is a time when the founders were not thinking about political parties, but rather we're thinking about just expertise and representation. The idea was that if the second most vote getting candidate was vice president, that would be a powerful sign of how the country was to be represented.
In that sense, the Electoral College was a way of bridging the gap between direct election and a privileged elite choice by the legislature, where there'd be this intermediate step. We're still having it done on a state-by-state basis, but where the people are at least indirectly responsible for how we choose the president and the vice president.
Video © Khan Academy, used under CC BY-NC-SA. Watch on Khan Academy. Puzzicle is not affiliated with Khan Academy.