Methods of Election Student Handout

Electoral College or Popular Vote?

Explanation

“The mode of appointment of the Chief Magistrate of the United States…will be answered by committing the right of making it, not to any preestablished body, but to men chosen by the people for the special purpose…should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations…”

–Federalist #68

“…Is it then become necessary, that a free people should first resign their right of suffrage into other hands besides their own, and then, secondly, that they to whom they resign it should be compelled to choose men, whose persons, characters, manners, or principles they know nothing of?… if any people are subjected to an authority which they have not thus actually chosen-even though they may have tamely submitted to it-yet it is not their legitimate government…”

–Republicus, An Anti-Federalist

“The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States…”

-Article I Section 2 of the Constitution

“…Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector…”

-Article II Section I of the Constitution

“… Shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President…”-Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution

“The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof…”

-Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution

“A number of electors of President and Vice President equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State, but in no event more than the least populous State…”

-Twenty-third Amendment to the Constitution

“…to change the current method of presidential electoral vote distribution. The two “at large “electors would be chosen from the party whose presidential candidate received the highest number of popular votes in the state. The three electors from the three congressional districts would be from the party whose presidential candidate received the highest number of popular votes on that particular congressional district”

-1991 Nebraska Legislative Bill 115