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A role for state legislatures
by Dr Nicholas Cole (npcole)
Cite as: Dr Nicholas Cole, ‘A role for state legislatures’ in N. P. Cole, Grace Mallon and Kat Howarth, The Creation of the Electoral College, Quill Project at Pembroke College (Oxford, 2016), item 63.
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
If state legislatures were not to have a role in choosing the executive magistrate, perhaps they would be less suspicious of the consolidation of power if they were able to remove him. The threshold suggested here is a relatively low one compared with the security with which the President was ultimately imbued.
This proposal would have allowed the President to be removed by a majority vote in at least half of all state legislatures, and for any cause whatsoever (rather than the final, 'high crimes and misdemeanours') ---- though many details are unspecified. Over what time-scale would such requests have to be made, for example?
While the proposal did not find favour with the Convention, it is illustrative of the ways in which delegates were negotiating the balance of power between the state and national government.
Associated event
Approved for publication
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