September 6, 1787: The Electoral College Completed

Part of the National Park Service's day-by-day account of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, September 1787.

"If the present moment be lost it is hard to say what may be our fate."
— James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, on the risk that the Constitution might not be adopted

In the Convention: Thursday, September 6, 1787

The plan on the table

• The president and vice president would be chosen by an Electoral College.
• Each state would have as many electors as it had senators and representatives — at least three, since the smallest states had one representative and two senators.
• Electors would be chosen "in such manner as its Legislature may direct."
• Each elector would cast two votes, for different candidates, at most one from the elector's own state.
• The candidate with the most votes would be president, if backed by a majority of electors; the runner-up would be vice president.
• With no majority, the Senate would choose among the top five.

Having found every other method wanting, the delegates seemed to be settling on this as the least objectionable. The sticking point was the last step: most feared no one would win a majority in most elections, so the Senate — thought by many the more corruptible house — would routinely choose, and perhaps control, the president.

Working it out

• Gerry (Massachusetts) proposed that when a president seeking re-election failed to win a majority, the whole Congress would choose, making him less dependent on the Senate. King (Massachusetts), Williamson (North Carolina) and Gouverneur Morris (Pennsylvania) liked it; Read (Delaware) and Sherman (Connecticut) did not — Sherman said it would favour the large states with their big House delegations, and he would rather give each state's delegation one vote.
• Wilson (Pennsylvania) still called the Electoral College "a valuable improvement," but was close to withdrawing his support for the whole Constitution over the Senate's power: the president would need it to be elected and re-elected, to appoint officers and judges, and to make treaties. He would be "not the man of the people, as he ought to be; but the minion of the Senate. He cannot even appoint a tide-waiter without the Senate." Morris, usually Wilson's ally, thought these fears overblown.
• Hamilton (New York) liked Gerry's idea but would rather drop the majority requirement altogether.

After a series of votes on parts of the plan, and on the four-year term, the Convention voted 8–3 (Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina against) to require a majority of electors to avoid a contingent election. Williamson proposed that both houses, not just the Senate, settle deadlocks. Sherman now went further: let the House of Representatives alone choose — with each state's delegation casting one vote. Mason agreed, and it passed 10–1, Delaware against.

The Convention had finally solved, to its own satisfaction, the riddle of an Electoral College that balanced large and small states and kept the president independent of Congress.

In short

• The Convention completed the Electoral College.
• If no candidate won a majority of electors, the House would choose the president, one vote per state.

The delegates' day

• Langdon (New Hampshire) and Sherman rode along the Schuylkill with Jacob Hiltzheimer in William Rush's carriage.
• McHenry (Maryland) asked Gouverneur Morris, Fitzsimons (Pennsylvania) and Gorham about adding a power to build piers to protect shipping in winter; one of them — Morris or Gorham — thought it could be done under the words "provide for the common defence and general welfare," which shocked McHenry.
• Madison wrote in cipher to Jefferson, then U.S. minister in France, outlining the plan — reasoning that the Convention would be over before the letter reached Paris — and lamenting that, if adopted, it would neither achieve its national aim nor prevent the local mischiefs that bred disgust with the state governments. He described "universal anxiety" inside and outside the Convention: those outside did not know the plan, and those inside did not know how the public would receive it.

Philadelphia today

• Pennsylvania's Supreme Executive Council ordered its treasury to give the doorkeeper 40 pounds for firewood for the Council and the Secretary's office.

Sources

• National Park Service, Independence National Historical Park, "September 6, 1787: The Electoral College Completed," from The Constitutional Convention: A Day by Day Account for September 1787. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/constitutionalconvention-september6.htm
• The original spells the Pennsylvania delegate's name "Fitzsimmons"; elsewhere in the series it is Fitzsimons.
• The original's portrait of Madison is a 2002 painting in the collection of the U.S. House of Representatives and is not reproduced here.
• Quotations are from the records and letters of 1787; the rest is rewritten in hubnx's own words.