You can change your choices at any time by visiting Your Privacy Controls. 1 song was on your birthday over at Playback.Fm, and contemplate if there's some existential correlation between the song and your life. © 2020 A&E Television Networks, LLC. The system calls for the creation, every four years, of a temporary group of electors equal to the total number of representatives in Congress. Reconquista, in medieval Spain and Portugal, a series of campaigns by Christian states to recapture territory from the Muslims (Moors), who had occupied most of the Iberian Peninsula in the early 8th century. Out of those drawn-out debates came a compromise based on the idea of electoral intermediaries. Found in Children’s Activity & Novelty Books, By clicking submit, I acknowledge that I have read and agree to Penguin Random House’s, Editor's Picks: Science Fiction & Fantasy. For 32 of the United States’ first 36 years, a slave-holding Virginian occupied the White House (John Adams from Massachusetts was the exception). Columnist George Will shudders to think of what would have happened in the 1960 election if there had been no Electoral College. Did you know? With the Electoral College, for example, there’s no chance of a run-off election or a protracted national recount. Series Found in Children’s Activity & Novelty Books The What Was…? The compromise ensured that Southern states would ratify the Constitution and gave Virginia, home to more than 200,000 slaves, a quarter (12) of the total electoral votes required to win the presidency (46). The signing of the Constitution of the United States at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Beloved Book Characters for Kids of All Ages, The Ultimate Guide to Adult Coloring Books, Audiobooks Read By Your Favorite Celebrities. One group of delegates felt strongly that Congress shouldn’t have anything to do with picking the president. James Madison from Virginia—where slaves accounted for 60 percent of the population—knew that either a direct presidential election, or one with electors divvied up according to free white residents only, wouldn’t fly in the South. The Founding Fathers debated for months, with some arguing that Congress should pick the president and others insistent on a democratic popular vote. Sign up for news about books, authors, and more from Penguin Random House, Visit other sites in the Penguin Random House Network. And third, a populist president appealing directly to the people could command dangerous amounts of power. They cobbled together this plan because they couldn’t agree on anything else.”. In modern elections, the first candidate to get 270 of the 538 total electoral votes wins the White House. series is a natural extension of the New York Times Best-Selling Who Was…? All Rights Reserved. Second, they feared a headstrong “democratic mob” steering the country astray. Covering everything from revolutionary battles to natural disasters, social movements to witch trails, Penguin’s What Was? Only two U.S. elections have been decided by the House and the last one was in 1824. Find out what the No. A state of the United States is one of the 50 constituent entities that shares its sovereignty with the federal government. We are experiencing technical difficulties. But over time, all but two states (Maine and Nebraska) passed laws to give all of their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the state’s popular vote count. Not only was the creation of the Electoral College in part a political workaround for the persistence of slavery in the United States, but almost none of the Founding Fathers’ assumptions about the electoral system proved true. Any semblance of elector independence has been fully wiped out. But as soon as national political parties formed, the number of presidential candidates shrank. HuffPost is part of Verizon Media. Here the divide was between slave-owning and non-slave-owning states. This is the preferred way to select the chief executive, period,’” says Edwards. Learn more about the history and significance of the Reconquista in this article. FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. The drafters of the Constitution assumed that electors would vote according to their individual discretion, not the dictates of a state or national party. Learn more about the causes, effects, and significance of the War of 1812 in this article. But enough about them. They didn’t want another despot on their hands. “If all 68,838,219 popular votes had been poured into a single national bucket, there would have been powerful incentives to challenge the results in many of the nation’s 170,000 precincts.”. War of 1812, conflict fought between the United States and Great Britain over British violations of U.S. maritime rights. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! The Founding Fathers had to compromise when it came to devising a system to elect the president. This has led some to question why Americans use this system to elect their presidents in the first place. Among the many thorny questions debated by the delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, one of the hardest to resolve was how to elect the president. For starters, there were no political parties in 1787. First, they thought 18th-century voters lacked the resources to be fully informed about the candidates, especially in rural outposts.

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