Why did the US adopt the electoral college?

Answer 1

The US adopted the Electoral College in the original Constitution as drafted and ratified. The Convention had many proposals for how to elect "the chief magistrate". It debated state governors, state legislatures and the Congress before going through several versions of what became the Electoral College. In Federalist Papers #68, Alexander Hamilton wrote an essay explaining how the President should be elected. He said that the goal should be 1) from the people in states, in coalitions; 2) immediate, not disrupted, not corrupted; 3) by the people, not by courts, not by legislatures. Hamilton said the Electoral College met these standards. The Electoral College had to allow all the different voting systems in the states. Most states allowed only white, free (not indentured), landed men to vote. But some allowed laboring men without property (Pennsylvania), propertied women (New Jersey), and free propertied blacks (New York). The number of Electoral College votes for each state was linked to the number of representatives in the US House, plus two, as in the US Senate. The decennial census would change the power to elect a president up or down in each state based on the people living there. The smallest states would always have three votes, no matter how big the big states grew. The people in each state elected state legislatures with different takes on electing the President, so the Electoral College had to allow a variety of systems. These included 1) single member electoral college districts (two more than Congressional Districts), 2) Congressional Districts plus two state-wide, 3) legislature only, 4) half legislature, half direct popular vote, 5) totally direct state-wide popular vote.

Answer 2

It was meant to be both a compromise and a protection.

Our Congress is divided into the House, which reflects the popular vote, and the Senate, where each state gets equal say, for much the same reason. Doing things by pure popular vote would basically allow the biggest states to dictate everything, and the smaller states would never be able to address the concerns of their citizens.

In much the same way, if we elected a president by pure popular vote, the big states would be able to dictate that choice, and the small states would never be heard. In order to create a protection against that, and to make a compromise between pure popular vote, and the true needs of all the people who aren't always in the majority, they set up a way for each area to get electors, based on their representation in the house AND the senate, so each state gets at least 3, no matter how small. Most states throw all their support to the most popular candidate rather than dividing the electors by popularity, in order to exert more power, but some send electors based on the popular vote division (for instance if a state had 10 electors, and the popular vote was 60% democrat, 30% republican, and 10% Constitutional party, they would send 6, 3, and 1 to cast votes for each group).

With the electoral system it is still possible for the larger-population states to dictate a lot of things, but it gives at least the possibility that many small states banding together can make their voices heard.

Answer 3

Farmers didn't create the electoral system, but the constitution did create a system that is a compromise between election of the president by a vote in congress and the election by popular vote.

Answer 4

They believed that almost all future elections would be made by the House of representatives