The Electoral College system governing us today, as delineated in the 12th Amendment, is primarily the result of congressional deliberations in 1803, which revised the original system adopted at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. To the Founders, the goal of the first electoral system was to elect presidents who were consensus choices, rising above the fray of squabbling political factions. Each elector was required to cast two votes for president, each for a different candidate and the two candidates coming from different states. The assumption was that nationally acceptable second-choice candidates often would prevail over disparate “favorite son” candidates from each state. [...]
The Federalists—with Senator Uriah Tracy of Connecticut most conspicuously leading the way—defended the 1787 Electoral College system, clinging to the idea that it allowed a minority party to block a majority party’s presidential candidate. If the minority electors found the majority candidate objectionable, all they had to do was cast their two votes for their own presidential candidate and the vice-presidential candidate of the majority party, and the majority party’s vice-presidential candidate would almost certainly end up with more votes than the majority party’s presidential candidate. The Federalists contended that this minority veto was more consistent with the consensus-seeking goal of the 1787 Electoral College. [...]
The primary reason was a major transformation in the methods that states use for appointing their Electoral College members. Before the 12th Amendment, most often a state’s legislature voted directly for Electoral College electors, which was consistent with the principle of majority rule. When states let citizens vote for the electors, they took steps to make sure that the chosen electors still represented the majority of the state’s voters, as well. For example, Massachusetts and New Hampshire experimented with different forms of runoffs in the event that an elector did not receive a majority of votes from the citizenry. Some states used districts to vote for presidential electors, rather than have all the voters of the state vote for all the state’s electors. This method permitted a regionally based minority party within the state to win at least some of the state’s electors, but presumably the majority party within the state overall would control a majority of the state’s Electoral College votes.[...]
There are many methods states can use to comply with this principle. They could have a regular runoff between the top-two candidates, held in late November, if no candidate received a majority in the initial popular vote. Alternatively, states could hold a preliminary vote—perhaps on the Tuesday after Labor Day—to clear the field of third-party and independent candidates, so that only the top two finalists appear on the November ballot. (This option would function similarly to the “top two” system that California and Washington state currently use for nonpresidential elections.) Or, states could adopt the kind of “instant runoff voting” procedure that Maine recently employed successfully for its congressional elections: Voters can rank their preferences among multiple candidates, so that a computer can tally which of the top two finalists receives a majority once all lower-ranked candidates are eliminated.
