The framers of the Constitution initially planned to have Congress select the president. That was the design in the Virginia Plan introduced at the start of the 1787 Convention, and delegates voted in favor of it several times over the summer before scrapping it. How the framers planned to select the president shifted through months of argument, and the Electoral College emerged in early September as a compromise nobody had walked into Philadelphia holding.
The Original Plan: Congress Chooses the Executive
When the Convention opened in May 1787, the working assumption was legislative selection. The Virginia Plan, drafted largely by James Madison and introduced by Edmund Randolph, called for “a national Executive…to be chosen by the National Legislature” for a single seven-year term with no re-election.1National Archives. Virginia Plan (1787)
The reasoning felt straightforward to most delegates. Members of Congress would know the candidates, understand national affairs, and be well placed to judge fitness for the office. The Convention approved legislative selection on several occasions. But each time the question came back around, new doubts surfaced, and no clear alternative had the votes.
Why the Framers Turned Against Legislative Selection
Three concerns eventually pulled the delegates away from the Virginia Plan’s approach.
Executive Independence
The deepest worry was separation of powers. Madison argued on July 19 that “it is essential…that the appointment of the Executive should either be drawn from some source, or held by some tenure, that will give him a free agency with regard to the Legislature.”2Avalon Project. Madison Debates – July 19 A president who owed his job to Congress could not check congressional power. Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania put it more sharply on July 17: if the legislature elected the president, “He will be the mere creature of the Legislature.”3Teaching American History. Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 – July 17
This concern tangled with the question of term length. The Virginia Plan barred re-election precisely because legislative selection made a second term dangerous, but many delegates disliked shutting out a good president. James Wilson pointed out on July 19 that changing the selection method would also reopen re-eligibility, because a president chosen independently of Congress could safely serve again.2Avalon Project. Madison Debates – July 19
Corruption and Cabal
Morris warned that legislative selection would breed backroom dealing. It would, he said, “be the work of intrigue, of cabal, and of faction; it will be like the election of a pope by a conclave of cardinals; real merit will rarely be the title to the appointment.”3Teaching American History. Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 – July 17 He cited England in the previous century and the Netherlands, where he said “their Senates have engrossed all power,” as evidence of legislatures swallowing executive authority.
Foreign Interference
Madison worried that a congressional election would invite foreign powers to “mix their intrigues and influence with the election.” He pointed to Poland, where the election of kings had, in his words, “at all times produced the most eager interference of foreign princes, and has in fact at length slid entirely into foreign hands.” Delegates who had just fought a war for independence from a foreign monarch took that risk seriously.
The Push for a Popular Role
A minority argued from the start that the people should have a hand in choosing the president. Wilson said on the Convention’s first day of substantive debate that “at least…in theory he was for an election by the people.” On June 2, 1787, he proposed a compromise: voters would choose electors in fixed districts, and the electors would choose the president. That idea gained little traction at the time, but the structure of it survived.
Direct popular election never had the votes. Delegates like Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts feared that voters spread across a vast country would lack the information to judge candidates from distant states. The Convention kept circling back to the same impasse: legislative selection undermined the executive, and a national popular vote seemed impractical.
The Electoral College Compromise
By late August, the delegates were stuck. They handed the problem to the Committee of Eleven, also called the Committee on Postponed Matters, which reported back on September 4 with the design that became the Electoral College.4National Archives. America Votes
The mechanics answered each of the earlier objections. Each state would appoint electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” The number of electors per state would equal its total representation in Congress, meaning its House members plus its two senators, blending population weight with the Senate’s equal-state principle. Sitting members of Congress and federal officeholders were barred from serving as electors, a direct response to the corruption concern.5Library of Congress. U.S. Constitution – Article II, Section 1
Electors would meet in their own states rather than gathering in one place, which the framers believed would make them harder to bribe or pressure as a bloc. Each elector cast votes for two candidates, at least one from a different state. The candidate with the most votes, provided that total was a majority of all electors, became president; the runner-up became vice president. If no one had a majority, the House chose from the top five candidates, with each state delegation casting a single vote.6Library of Congress. U.S. Constitution – Article II Congress remained a backstop rather than the routine selector.
What the Twelfth Amendment Changed
The original process did not survive long in its first form. After the disputed election of 1800, the Twelfth Amendment was ratified in 1804. Electors now cast separate ballots for president and vice president, and if no candidate secures a majority, the House chooses from the top three rather than the top five.7Congress.gov. Twelfth Amendment
The Logic That Made the Compromise Stick
The Electoral College papered over the Convention’s core disagreements. It gave the presidency a base of popular legitimacy without a direct national vote, kept Congress out of routine selection, and gave smaller states slightly more per capita influence through the two Senate-based electors.
Alexander Hamilton defended the design in Federalist No. 68, writing that “every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption” and that the Convention had guarded against foreign meddling by refusing to make the presidency “depend on any preexisting bodies of men, who might be tampered with beforehand to prostitute their votes.” Because electors served only once and only to choose a president, they could not be cultivated over time the way a standing legislature could. Hamilton also argued that broad multistate support would be needed to win, so “talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity” might carry one state but not the office.8Avalon Project. The Federalist Papers No. 68
Even Wilson, the strongest voice for popular election, accepted the result. At the Pennsylvania ratifying convention, he called the Electoral College his “second favorite” method, “next after the one prescribed in this Constitution,” and said the president could be “justly styled the man of the people.” The framers did not treat the compromise as ideal. It was the answer they could live with after a summer that proved no perfect answer existed.