A brief history of the Electoral College shows how far the process of selecting the president of the United States has changed from the vision of the Framers of the U.S. Constitution and the practices of the early years of the republic. It would also help us better appreciate its purpose.
The Electoral College was inspired by the College of Cardinals, which elects the Catholic pope. Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence, is credited with its creation. He had authored a distinctive provision in Maryland’s first constitution in 1776 that established a body of popularly elected electors who selected the state’s senators.
In 1787, the Constitutional Convention adapted a provision based on Maryland’s as the basis of the constitutional method for selecting the president. A key difference between the two under the constitutional principle of federalism is that the electors do not meet as a whole body, but separately in each state and the District of Columbia, out of respect for state sovereignty. The words “Electoral College” do not appear in the Constitution as a name for this institution, as the presidential elections are the collective work of 51 individual bodies.
Because of current practices for selecting the president, those who recognize that electoral votes are more than a kind of point-scoring system that evens out the weight of the states often think that the presidential and vice presidential electors (the members of what popularly became known as the Electoral College) check the people, which, in practice, has become true. However, the history of their office reveals the electors were intended more as representative of the people and the states...
Read more at:
http://thefederalist.com/2016/11/08/dont-actually-vote-president-curious-facts-electoral-college/
