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Alternative modes of election
by Dr Nicholas Cole (npcole)
Cite as: Dr Nicholas Cole, ‘Alternative modes of election’ in N. P. Cole, Grace Mallon and Kat Howarth, The Creation of the Electoral College, Quill Project at Pembroke College (Oxford, 2017), item 184.
The Creation of the Electoral College
(To read a specific commentary item, please click on its link.)
- The choice of the president in the national legislature
- Election by the people and the merits of election by Congress
- The 'chimerical' nature of election by the people
- The first idea of an electoral college
- A role for state legislatures
- Independence via ineligibility
- An accountable executive
- Concerns of the Committee of the Whole
- An equal voice for all states?
- A democratic magistrate
- The merits of popular election debated
- The problem of forbidding re-election
- A President for life?
- A summary of the difficulties presented by the creation of the executive
- The electoral college proposed for a second time
- The electoral college agreed to
- Election by National Legislature reinstated
- An element of chance
- Alternative modes of election
- The President to be chosen by the State Governors
- Madison's comment on various modes of election
- Committee of detail report
- The idea of an electoral college reintroduced
- The electoral college as a tool for the Separation of Powers
- Limitations of the Electoral College
- Ineligibility and the Electoral College
- Qualifications for Electors
- A role for the House of Representatives instead
- The final iteration of the electoral college
Commentary
Elseworth's proposal here suggests two alternative modes of election. The default would have been to allow the National Legislature to choose the president, but that in the special case that the president was eligible re-election, the choice would have been thrown instead to electors in the states. Elseworth's explanation for this suggestion is recorded as being that "By this means a deserving Magistrate may be reelected without making him dependent on the Legislature."
The assumption here is that a president seeking re-election needed to be defended from the legislature, who might be trusted to choose a president in the first place, but which could not be trusted not to threaten a president with replacement. It is, perhaps, therefore assumed that electors in the states could be better trusted to vote to maintain a president in office, even if they were not the most suitable or expedient body to choose him in the first place. Likewise, a president who showed insufficient independence from the legislature might, presumably, be removed by these electors.
As with other proposals that were not pursued, many practical details remain unclear, and without a great deal of further work the safeguards intended here seem unworkable. Would the second mode of election have been triggered even if a serving president refused to stand again? Could a president resign before the end of his term, hoping that the legislature would reselect him without the need for the second process? As a means either of preserving the independence of the president on the one hand or of ensuring that the president had clear authority on the other, this proposal seems deficient.
What it does show, however, is a concern not with a theory of representation as such but with a much more practical set of concerns: how might a worthy president be chosen who would enjoy a meaningful degree of independence?
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npcole