AFTER 220 YEARS of faithful service, our Constitution needs repair. We mark the anniversary of the Philadelphia Convention on May 25, the date in 1787 when 29 delegates first met to write the Constitution. Yet Americans still do not elect their presidents.
As schoolchildren learn, Americans vote for presidential electors, who are allocated according to how many senators and representatives a state has. The electors, pledged to support specific candidates, then vote for president.
How did we get this clumsy, indirect system?
To put it bluntly, most of the men who wrote the Constitution disdained popular elections. The people "are turbulent and changing," Alexander Hamilton warned, and "seldom judge or determine right." George Mason of Virginia compared popular elections to asking a blind man to judge colors, giving the decision to "those who know least." Also, the delegates feared the logistics of a nationwide canvass in an era when George Washington needed five days to travel from Mount Vernon to Philadelphia.
The alternatives they considered now seem wacky. Some delegates proposed electing regional presidents for New England, the middle states and the South. Others wanted Congress to choose the president, though that might make him the "cringing dependent of powerful men." What if, a delegate asked, 15 congressmen were selected by lot to convene immediately to select the president -- before they could be bribed?
The convention accepted the elector system as the best of a bad range of choices, setting only two standards for electors: They cannot hold federal office, and state legislatures direct how they are chosen.
The delegates expected wise electors to reduce the field of contenders to five candidates, allowing the House of Representatives to pick the president. Mason predicted that the House would do so "nineteen out of twenty" times.
The system broke down early. The 1800 election produced a grinding stalemate in the House between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. The experience spurred adoption of the 12th Amendment, which requires separate candidates for president and vice president.
After that, more changes came through the growth of political parties and through state laws.
States now provide for electors who are "pledged" to party candidates. Except in Maine and Nebraska, which award electoral votes on a proportional basis, the winner of the popular vote gets all of a state's electoral votes.
