On July 17, 1787 the Constitutional Convention voted down to elect the president by popular vote 9 states to 1! The Founding Fathers really didn’t want the people electing the president directly.
They first wanted to have Congress select the president. But they weren’t happy with this choice either because the president would then be too dependent on Congress for his job and they wanted to maintain the independence of the presidency as a check on Congress becoming too powerful.
After spending all summer debating and arguing, they still couldn’t decide how to select the president. So on August 31st they created the Committee on Postponed Parts with one member from each state to solve this problem.
David Brearley of New Jersey, Chairman of the Committee on Postponed Parts
This committee recommended the Electoral College to select the president, which they had previously rejected. But instead of the electors voting together in the nation’s Capitol, where the electors could get together and make “back room deals”, they would “vote by mail” from their separate state capitals. They liked this recommendation and approved the Electoral College, with some other improvements, as the best way to select the president 10 states to 1 on September 6th. Another reason they voted for the Electoral College was that they didn’t want another long debate on how to select the president and they were tired of debating and arguing after four months and they all wanted to get back to their families, farms and businesses.
But the biggest reason the Founding Fathers chose the Electoral College was that all of the political factions got something out of the Electoral College except James Wilson
who wanted the president elected by the people.
* The states liked the Electoral College because each state could decide how to choose its own Electors.
* The large population states liked it because they would have an advantage since there were more Electors from large states than small states in the Electoral College.
* 95% of the time the convention delegates expected no single candidate to have a majority of the Electoral College since most delegates would vote for “favorite son” candidates from their own state. Then the House would choose from the top five vote-getters in the Electoral College with each state getting one equal vote.
Since there were more small states than large states in the House, the small states would have an advantage and so they liked it.
* The Southern slave states liked it because they got extra Electors since 3/5 of their slaves counted as people in the House representation even though they were treated as property and of course couldn’t vote.
* The wealthy elites, just about everyone at the Constitutional Convention, liked it because it would prevent the ignorant poor from electing a president in a popular vote from redistributing wealth from the elites to the poor (18th Century version of socialism).
* And most importantly, with the Electoral College selecting the president the president wouldn’t be beholden to Congress for his job, unlike if Congress selected the president, which had been the Founding Fathers’ 1st choice for selecting the president.
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All U.S. Citizens Should Vote. 