the now accursed electoral college

Mr. Freon suggested a thread on this subject would be good after reading the following post I made about it in another thread.  Mr. Rabbit seemed interested too.  So here it is:


The founders' intent was for the voting masses to have as little to do with selection of president, vice-president, and senate as is humanly possible. They feared nothing more than popular election of those offices. When Ben Franklin was asked "Well, Doctor, what kind of government do we have?" He replied "A republic, if we can keep it." And it was internal threats he feared, one of the main ones being the voters. A wise man once said, "none of us is as dumb as all of us."



Their intent was for each state, by whatever means their legislative bodies decided but preferably not by popular vote, to select their electors. Each elector, obviously a white male of substance, would act independently of all the others from his state and vote for one candidate for president. They might confer amongst each other, but in the end there was no requirement that all electors from a state vote for the same guy. Each elector from every state would act in the best interest of the nation as a whole as much as humanly possible. They would be men of character, as uncorruptible and unbiased as is humanly possible. The candidate with the greatest number of votes would be president. Second place would be veep. In cases of a tie, which the founders anticipated would not be rare, the house would decide - each state having ONE vote. There would be no such thing as "pledged electors." The very thought gave them gas.