Constitutional Crisis: Colorado Dems Pass Bill To Eliminate Electoral College

[ottootto]

I've never researched any outside writings, Federalist papers etc. to asertain the Framers intent in the EC. To me the fact that the number of electors for each state equal their congress plus senate says something.

There are a lot of blues states that have liberal cities and very conservative rural districts. I've never played with the numbers but dividing the winner take all to each elector voting per their congressional districts popular vote with two votes for each state (Senate vote electors) going to the State level winner might make some interesting EC math. It satisfies both sides.

It does NOT satisfy most people who have studied it.

Dividing more states’ electoral votes by congressional district winners would magnify the worst features of the Electoral College system.

If the district approach were used nationally, it would be less fair and less accurately reflect the will of the people than the current system. In 2004, Bush won 50.7% of the popular vote, but 59% of the districts. Although Bush lost the national popular vote in 2000, he won 55% of the country's congressional districts. In 2012, the Democratic candidate would have needed to win the national popular vote by more than 7 percentage points in order to win the barest majority of congressional districts.In 2014, Democrats would have needed to win the national popular vote by a margin of about nine percentage points in order to win a majority of districts.

In 2012, for instance, when Obama garnered nearly a half million more votes in Michigan than Romney, Romney won nine of the state’s 14 congressional districts.

Nationwide, there were only maybe 35 "battleground" districts that were expected to be competitive in the 2016 presidential election. With the present deplorable 48 state-level winner-take-all system, 38+ states (including California and Texas) are ignored in presidential elections; however, 98% of the nation's congressional districts would be ignored if a district-level winner-take-all system were used nationally

The district approach would not provide incentive for presidential candidates to poll, visit, advertise, and organize in a particular state or focus the candidates' attention to issues of concern to the state.

Awarding electoral votes by congressional district could result in no candidate winning the needed majority of electoral votes. That would throw the process into Congress to decide the election, regardless of the popular vote in any district or state or throughout the country.

Because there are generally more close votes on district levels than states as whole, district elections increase the opportunity for error. The larger the voting base, the less opportunity there is for an especially close vote.

Also, a second-place candidate could still win the White House without winning the national popular vote.

The National Popular Vote bill is a way to make every person's vote equal and matter to their candidate because it guarantees that the candidate who gets the most votes among all 50 states and DC becomes President.

 

[ottootto]

You are incorrect. The ONLY difference that I proposed was changing the way each state allocates their electors (state popular vote vs state winner take all method). This method satisfies the intent of the Framers. Currently, 48 states and DC allocate electors based on winner take all. Maine and Nebraska allocate electors by congressional district. So, currently there are two different ways that states allocate their electors.

For example, let's say the Texas popular vote is 55% for the Republican candidate, and 45% for the Democratic candidate. Currently, Texas would allocate all 36 of its electors to the Republican candidate. Under my proposal, Texas would allocate 20 electors to the Republican candidate, and 16 electors to the Democratic candidate.

The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding a state's electoral votes.

In the nation’s first presidential election in 1789 and second election in 1792, the states employed a wide variety of methods for choosing presidential electors, including
● appointment of the state’s presidential electors by the Governor and his Council,
● appointment by both houses of the state legislature,
● popular election using special single-member presidential-elector districts,
● popular election using counties as presidential-elector districts,
● popular election using congressional districts,
● popular election using multi-member regional districts,
● combinations of popular election and legislative choice,
● appointment of the state’s presidential electors by the Governor and his Council combined with the state legislature, and
● statewide popular election.

There are good reasons why no state awards their electors proportionally.

Electors are people. They each have one vote. The result would be a very inexact whole number proportional system.

Every voter in every state would not be politically relevant or equal in presidential elections.

It would sharply increases the odds of no candidate getting the majority of electoral votes needed, leading to the selection of the president by the U.S. House of Representatives, regardless of the popular vote anywhere.

It would not accurately reflect the nationwide popular vote;

It would reduce the influence of any state, if not all states adopted.

It would not improve upon the current situation in which four out of five states and four out of five voters in the United States are ignored by presidential campaigns, but instead, would create a very small set of states in which only one electoral vote is in play (while making most states politically irrelevant),

It would not make every vote equal.

It would not guarantee the Presidency to the candidate with the most popular votes in the country

The National Popular Vote bill is the way to make every person's vote equal and matter to their candidate because it guarantees the majority of Electoral College votes to the candidate who gets the most votes among all 50 states and DC.

 

[ottootto]

I've made my point. Most folks understand it. Winner take all is the proper method, but states can do whatever they want.

The current winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes is not in the U.S. Constitution. It was not debated at the Constitutional Convention. It is not mentioned in the Federalist Papers. It was not the Founders’ choice. It was used by only three states in 1789, and all three of them repealed it by 1800. It is not entitled to any special deference based on history or the historical meaning of the words in the U.S. Constitution. The actions taken by the Founding Fathers make it clear that they never gave their imprimatur to the winner-take-all method. The winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes only became predominant by 1880 -- almost a century after the U.S. Constitution was written, after the states adopted it, one-by-one

The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding a state's electoral votes.

 

[ottootto]

A popular vote for President would only serve to concentrate the campaigning to a small number of high-population crowded cities. The rest of the country would be safely ignored since effectively their votes don't matter in the election.

This is why the founding fathers wisely set-up the EC system to prevent the tyranny of the majority in the cities upon the rest of the population of the country.

Given the historical fact that 95% of the U.S. population in 1790 lived in places of less than 2,500 people, and only a few states let males, with substantial property, vote, it is unlikely that the Founding Fathers were concerned about presidential candidates campaigning and being elected only by voters in big cities.

Now, voters in the biggest cities are almost exactly balanced out by rural areas in terms of population and partisan composition.

16% of the U.S. population lives outside the nation's Metropolitan Statistical Areas. Rural America has voted 60% Republican. None of the 10 most rural states matter now.

16% of the U.S. population lives in the top 100 cities. They voted 63% Democratic in 2004.

The population of the top 50 cities (going as far down as Arlington, TX) is only 15% of the population of the United States.

The rest of the U.S., in Suburbs divide almost exactly equally between Republicans and Democrats.

A successful nationwide presidential campaign of polling, organizing, ad spending, and visits, with every voter equal, would be run the way presidential candidates campaign to win the electoral votes of closely divided battleground states, such as Ohio and Florida, under the state-by-state winner-take-all methods. The big cities in those battleground states do not receive all the attention, much less control the outcome. Cleveland and Miami do not receive all the attention or control the outcome in Ohio and Florida. In the 4 states that accounted for over two-thirds of all general-election activity in the 2012 presidential election, rural areas, suburbs, exurbs, and cities all received attention—roughly in proportion to their population.

The itineraries of presidential candidates in battleground states (and their allocation of other campaign resources in battleground states, including polling, organizing, and ad spending) reflect the political reality that every gubernatorial or senatorial candidate knows. When and where every voter is equal, a campaign must be run everywhere.

With National Popular Vote, when every voter is equal, everywhere, it makes sense for presidential candidates to try and elevate their votes where they are and aren't so well liked. But, under the state-by-state winner-take-all laws, it makes no sense for a Democrat to campaign in any Red or Blue state, or for a Republican to campaign in any Red or Blue state.

The main media at the moment, TV, costs much more per impression in big cities than in smaller towns and rural area. Candidates get more bang for the buck in smaller towns and rural areas.

Because of state-by-state winner-take-all laws for Electoral College votes, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution . . .

Almost all small and medium-sized states and almost all western, southern, and northeastern states are totally ignored.

Our presidential selection system has cut out 4 of every 5 people living in America from the decision. Presidential elections shrink the “sphere” (to use Madison’s coinage) of public debate to only a few thousand swing voters in a few states.

The Cook Political Report, as of Jan. 10, 2019, believes “There are just five toss up states, representing 86 electoral votes: Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.”

The Columbus Dispatch, as of Jan. 9, 2019, believes there will be “just seven states [with 105 electoral votes, where the winner is not predictable already] to allocate. Trump will be 66 electoral votes shy of re-election and the Democratic ticket will need 41 electoral votes to win back the presidency. The seven states are Arizona (11), Florida (29), Michigan (16), New Hampshire (4), North Carolina (15), Pennsylvania (20) and Wisconsin (10).”

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in 2015 was correct when he said
"The nation as a whole is not going to elect the next president,"
“The presidential election will not be decided by all states, but rather just 12 of them.

Candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or care about the voter concerns in the dozens of states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind.

With the end of the primaries, without the National Popular Vote bill in effect, the political relevance of 70% of all Americans was finished for the presidential election.

 

[ottootto]

Technically, no. We already have states that divide up their electoral votes by district. Specifically, Maine. Even though it’s a carve out.

Maine and Nebraska state laws are not "carve outs."

There is and was no one preferred method envisioned by the Founders.

Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in Article II, Section 1
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….”
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as "plenary" and "exclusive."

States have used a variety of methods over the years. Just in Massachusetts for example:
● In 1789, Massachusetts had a two-step system in which the voters cast ballots indicating their preference for presidential elector by district, and the legislature chose from the top two vote-getters in each district (with the legislature choosing the state’s remaining two electors).
● In 1792, the voters were allowed to choose presidential electors in four multi-member regional districts (with the legislature choosing the state’s remaining two electors).
● In 1796, the voters elected presidential electors by congressional districts (with the legislature choosing only the state’s remaining two electors).
● In 1800, the legislature took back the power to pick all of the state’s presidential electors (entirely excluding the voters).
● In 1804, the voters were allowed to elect 17 presidential electors by district and two on a statewide basis.
● In 1808, the legislature decided to pick the electors itself.
● In 1812, the voters elected six presidential electors from one district, five electors from another district, four electors from another, three electors from each of two districts, and one elector from a sixth district.
● In 1816, Massachusetts again returned to state legislative choice.
● In 1820, the voters were allowed to elect 13 presidential electors by district and two on a statewide basis.
● Then, in 1824, Massachusetts adopted its 10th method of awarding electoral votes, namely the statewide winner-take-all rule that is in effect today.
● In 2010, Massachusetts enacted the National Popular Vote interstate compact. This change will go into effect when states possessing a majority of the electoral votes (270 out of 538) enact the same compact.

These changes were accomplished using the Constitution’s built-in method for changing the method of electing the President, namely section 1 of Article II. That constitutional provision gives Massachusetts (and all the other states) exclusive and plenary power to choose the manner of awarding their electoral votes.

 

[gwb-trading]

The current winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes is not in the U.S. Constitution. It was not debated at the Constitutional Convention. It is not mentioned in the Federalist Papers. It was not the Founders’ choice. It was used by only three states in 1789, and all three of them repealed it by 1800. It is not entitled to any special deference based on history or the historical meaning of the words in the U.S. Constitution. The actions taken by the Founding Fathers make it clear that they never gave their imprimatur to the winner-take-all method. The winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes only became predominant by 1880 -- almost a century after the U.S. Constitution was written, after the states adopted it, one-by-one

The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding a state's electoral votes.

And what is the source of your claims above?

Let's take a look at some historical sources including what Alexander Hamilton and the founders believed...

Why the Electoral college
https://www.historycentral.com/elections/Electoralcollgewhy.html

The Electoral College was created for two reasons. The first purpose was to create a buffer between population and the selection of a President. The second as part of the structure of the government that gave extra power to the smaller states.

The first reason that the founders created the Electoral College is hard to understand today. The founding fathers were afraid of direct election to the Presidency. They feared a tyrant could manipulate public opinion and come to power. Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers:

It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations. It was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder. This evil was not least to be dreaded in the election of a magistrate, who was to have so important an agency in the administration of the government as the President of the United States. But the precautions which have been so happily concerted in the system under consideration, promise an effectual security against this mischief.

(See All of the Federalist 68)

Hamilton and the other founders believed that the electors would be able to insure that only a qualified person becomes President. They believed that with the Electoral College no one would be able to manipulate the citizenry. It would act as check on an electorate that might be duped. Hamilton and the other founders did not trust the population to make the right choice. The founders also believed that the Electoral College had the advantage of being a group that met only once and thus could not be manipulated over time by foreign governments or others.

The electoral college is also part of compromises made at the convention to satisfy the small states. Under the system of the Electoral College each state had the same number of electoral votes as they have representative in Congress, thus no state could have less then 3. The result of this system is that in this election the state of Wyoming cast about 210,000 votes, and thus each elector represented 70,000 votes, while in California approximately 9,700,000 votes were cast for 54 votes, thus representing 179,000 votes per electorate. Obviously this creates an unfair advantage to voters in the small states whose votes actually count more then those people living in medium and large states.

 

[gwb-trading]

Given the historical fact that 95% of the U.S. population in 1790 lived in places of less than 2,500 people, and only a few states let males, with substantial property, vote, it is unlikely that the Founding Fathers were concerned about presidential candidates campaigning and being elected only by voters in big cities.

Now, voters in the biggest cities are almost exactly balanced out by rural areas in terms of population and partisan composition.

16% of the U.S. population lives outside the nation's Metropolitan Statistical Areas. Rural America has voted 60% Republican. None of the 10 most rural states matter now.

16% of the U.S. population lives in the top 100 cities. They voted 63% Democratic in 2004.

The population of the top 50 cities (going as far down as Arlington, TX) is only 15% of the population of the United States.

The rest of the U.S., in Suburbs divide almost exactly equally between Republicans and Democrats.

A successful nationwide presidential campaign of polling, organizing, ad spending, and visits, with every voter equal, would be run the way presidential candidates campaign to win the electoral votes of closely divided battleground states, such as Ohio and Florida, under the state-by-state winner-take-all methods. The big cities in those battleground states do not receive all the attention, much less control the outcome. Cleveland and Miami do not receive all the attention or control the outcome in Ohio and Florida. In the 4 states that accounted for over two-thirds of all general-election activity in the 2012 presidential election, rural areas, suburbs, exurbs, and cities all received attention—roughly in proportion to their population.

The itineraries of presidential candidates in battleground states (and their allocation of other campaign resources in battleground states, including polling, organizing, and ad spending) reflect the political reality that every gubernatorial or senatorial candidate knows. When and where every voter is equal, a campaign must be run everywhere.

With National Popular Vote, when every voter is equal, everywhere, it makes sense for presidential candidates to try and elevate their votes where they are and aren't so well liked. But, under the state-by-state winner-take-all laws, it makes no sense for a Democrat to campaign in any Red or Blue state, or for a Republican to campaign in any Red or Blue state.

The main media at the moment, TV, costs much more per impression in big cities than in smaller towns and rural area. Candidates get more bang for the buck in smaller towns and rural areas.

Because of state-by-state winner-take-all laws for Electoral College votes, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution . . .

Almost all small and medium-sized states and almost all western, southern, and northeastern states are totally ignored.

Our presidential selection system has cut out 4 of every 5 people living in America from the decision. Presidential elections shrink the “sphere” (to use Madison’s coinage) of public debate to only a few thousand swing voters in a few states.

The Cook Political Report, as of Jan. 10, 2019, believes “There are just five toss up states, representing 86 electoral votes: Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.”

The Columbus Dispatch, as of Jan. 9, 2019, believes there will be “just seven states [with 105 electoral votes, where the winner is not predictable already] to allocate. Trump will be 66 electoral votes shy of re-election and the Democratic ticket will need 41 electoral votes to win back the presidency. The seven states are Arizona (11), Florida (29), Michigan (16), New Hampshire (4), North Carolina (15), Pennsylvania (20) and Wisconsin (10).”

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in 2015 was correct when he said
"The nation as a whole is not going to elect the next president,"
“The presidential election will not be decided by all states, but rather just 12 of them.

Candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or care about the voter concerns in the dozens of states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind.

With the end of the primaries, without the National Popular Vote bill in effect, the political relevance of 70% of all Americans was finished for the presidential election.

So what is your source for the above information --- which does not align with information from the U.S. Census Bureau.

 

[gwb-trading]

Preventing "The Tyranny of the Majority"
https://www.heritage.org/conservatism/commentary/preventing-the-tyranny-the-majority

• People often refer to the United States as a democracy, but technically speaking, that’s not true. It’s a republic.
• The Founders were determined to forestall the inherent dangers of what James Madison called “the tyranny of the majority.”
• In short, the Founders were looking out for the people in “flyover country” long before there were airplanes to fly over them.

People often refer to the United States as a democracy, but technically speaking, that’s not true. It’s a republic.

Big deal, you say? If you care about your rights, it is. The Founding Fathers knew their history well, so they knew better than to establish the U.S. as a democracy.

In a democracy, of course, the majority rules. That’s all well and good for the majority, but what about the minority? Don’t they have rights that deserve respect?

Get exclusive insider information from Heritage experts delivered straight to your inbox each week.

Of course they do. Which is why a democracy won’t cut it. As the saying goes, a democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner.

The Founders were determined to forestall the inherent dangers of what James Madison called “the tyranny of the majority.” So they constructed something more lasting: a republic. Something with checks and balances. A system of government carefully balanced to safeguard the rights of both the majority and the minority.

That led, most notably, to the bicameral structure of our legislative branch. We have a House of Representatives, where the number of members is greater for more populous states (which obviously favors those states), and the Senate, where every state from Rhode Island and Alaska to California and New York have exactly two representatives (which keeps less-populated states from being steamrolled).

Being a republic, we also don’t pick our president through a direct, majority-take-all vote. We have an Electoral College. And a lot of liberals don’t like that.

Their attacks on the College are nothing new, but the defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016 renewed their fury. After all, as they never tire of pointing out, Mrs. Clinton captured more of the popular vote than Donald Trump did. They see the Electoral College as an impediment to their political victories, therefore it’s got to go.

The latest attack comes via new lawsuits filed in federal courts in four states (Massachusetts, California, South Carolina and Texas). “Under the winner-take-all system, U.S. citizens have been denied their constitutional right to an equal vote in presidential elections,” said David Boies, an attorney who represented former Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 election.


I doubt Mr. Boies and his fellow attorneys are really ignorant of why we have an Electoral College. But it’s important that the rest of us know.

“The Electoral College is a very carefully considered structure the Framers of the Constitution set up to balance the competing interests of large and small states,” writes Hans von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission. “It prevents candidates from wining an election by focusing only on high-population urban centers (the big cities), ignoring smaller states and the more rural areas of the country — the places that progressives and media elites consider flyover country.”

Most people who watch the election returns know that a candidate must secure 270 electoral votes to win. That’s because there are 538 votes altogether. As the website for the National Archives notes, “Your state’s entitled allotment of electors equals the number of members in its Congressional delegation: one for each member in the House of Representatives plus two for your Senators.”

In short, the Founders were looking out for the people in “flyover country” long before there were airplanes to fly over them.

Were it not for the Electoral College, presidential candidates could act as if many Americans don’t even exist. They could simply campaign in a small handful of states with big populations. Who would care what the people in Iowa think? Or Wyoming? Or any number of other states with smaller populations?

The people in “flyover country” don’t get enough attention as it is, but without the Electoral College, they’d be completely at the mercy of the majority.

And let’s face it — that’s often not a great place to be. As the Austrian political philosopher Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn dryly observed in his book “Leftism,” the crucifixion of Jesus was “a democratic event.”

What the wolves want matters, but so does what the sheep wants. The Electoral College ensures that no one winds up on the menu.

 

[gwb-trading]

The Electoral College
https://uselectionatlas.org/INFORMATION/INFORMATION/electcollege_history.php
by William C. Kimberling, Deputy Director FEC National Clearinghouse on Election Administration

In order to appreciate the reasons for the Electoral College, it is essential to understand its historical context and the problem that the Founding Fathers were trying to solve. They faced the difficult question of how to elect a president in a nation that:

• was composed of thirteen large and small States jealous of their own rights and powers and suspicious of any central national government
  
• contained only 4,000,000 people spread up and down a thousand miles of Atlantic seaboard barely connected by transportation or communication (so that national campaigns were impractical even if they had been thought desirable)
  
• believed, under the influence of such British political thinkers as Henry St. John Bolingbroke, that political parties were mischievous if not downright evil, and
  
• felt that gentlemen should not campaign for public office (The saying was "The office should seek the man, the man should not seek the office.").

How, then, to choose a president without political parties, without national campaigns, and without upsetting the carefully designed balance between the presidency and the Congress on one hand and between the States and the federal government on the other?

Origins of the Electoral College
The Constitutional Convention considered several possible methods of selecting a president.

One idea was to have the Congress choose the president. This idea was rejected, however, because some felt that making such a choice would be too divisive an issue and leave too many hard feelings in the Congress. Others felt that such a procedure would invite unseemly political bargaining, corruption, and perhaps even interference from foreign powers. Still others felt that such an arrangement would upset the balance of power between the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.

A second idea was to have the State legislatures select the president. This idea, too, was rejected out of fears that a president so beholden to the State legislatures might permit them to erode federal authority and thus undermine the whole idea of a federation.

A third idea was to have the president elected by a direct popular vote. Direct election was rejected not because the Framers of the Constitution doubted public intelligence but rather because they feared that without sufficient information about candidates from outside their State, people would naturally vote for a "favorite son" from their own State or region. At worst, no president would emerge with a popular majority sufficient to govern the whole country. At best, the choice of president would always be decided by the largest, most populous States with little regard for the smaller ones.

Finally, a so-called "Committee of Eleven" in the Constitutional Convention proposed an indirect election of the president through a College of Electors.

The function of the College of Electors in choosing the president can be likened to that in the Roman Catholic Church of the College of Cardinals selecting the Pope. The original idea was for the most knowledgeable and informed individuals from each State to select the president based solely on merit and without regard to State of origin or political party.

The structure of the Electoral College can be traced to the Centurial Assembly system of the Roman Republic. Under that system, the adult male citizens of Rome were divided, according to their wealth, into groups of 100 (called Centuries). Each group of 100 was entitled to cast only one vote either in favor or against proposals submitted to them by the Roman Senate. In the Electoral College system, the States serve as the Centurial groups (though they are not, of course, based on wealth), and the number of votes per State is determined by the size of each State's Congressional delegation. Still, the two systems are similar in design and share many of the same advantages and disadvantages.

The similarities between the Electoral College and classical institutions are not accidental. Many of the Founding Fathers were well schooled in ancient history and its lessons.

The First Design
In the first design of the Electoral College (described in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution):

• Each State was allocated a number of Electors equal to the number of its U.S. Senators (always 2) plus the number of its U.S. Representative (which may change each decade according to the size of each State's population as determined in the decennial census). This arrangement built upon an earlier compromise in the design of the Congress itself and thus satisfied both large and small States.
  
• The manner of choosing the Electors was left to the individual State legislatures, thereby pacifying States suspicious of a central national government.
  
• Members of Congress and employees of the federal government were specifically prohibited from serving as an Elector in order to maintain the balance between the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.
  
• Each State's Electors were required to meet in their respective States rather than all together in one great meeting. This arrangement, it was thought, would prevent bribery, corruption, secret dealing, and foreign influence.
  
• In order to prevent Electors from voting only for a "favorite son" of their own State, each Elector was required to cast two votes for president, at least one of which had to be for someone outside their home State. The idea, presumably, was that the winner would likely be everyone's second favorite choice.

• The electoral votes were to be sealed and transmitted from each of the States to the President of the Senate who would then open them before both houses of the Congress and read the results.
  
• The person with the most electoral votes, provided that it was an absolute majority (at least one over half of the total), became president. Whoever obtained the next greatest number of electoral votes became vice president - an office which they seem to have invented for the occasion since it had not been mentioned previously in the Constitutional Convention.
  
• In the event that no one obtained an absolute majority in the Electoral College or in the event of a tie vote, the U.S. House of Representatives, as the chamber closest to the people, would choose the president from among the top five contenders. They would do this (as a further concession to the small States) by allowing each State to cast only one vote with an absolute majority of the States being required to elect a president. The vice presidency would go to whatever remaining contender had the greatest number of electoral votes. If that, too, was tied, the U.S. Senate would break the tie by deciding between the two.

In all, this was quite an elaborate design. But it was also a very clever one when you consider that the whole operation was supposed to work without political parties and without national campaigns while maintaining the balances and satisfying the fears in play at the time. Indeed, it is probably because the Electoral College was originally designed to operate in an environment so totally different from our own that many people think it is anachronistic and fail to appreciate the new purposes it now serves. But of that, more later.

The Second Design
The first design of the Electoral College lasted through only four presidential elections. For in the meantime, political parties had emerged in the United States. The very people who had been condemning parties publicly had nevertheless been building them privately. And too, the idea of political parties had gained respectability through the persuasive writings of such political philosophers as Edmund Burke and James Madison.

One of the accidental results of the development of political parties was that in the presidential election of 1800, the Electors of the Democratic-Republican Party gave Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr (both of that party) an equal number of electoral votes. The tie was resolved by the House of Representatives in Jefferson's favor - but only after 36 tries and some serious political dealings which were considered unseemly at the time. Since this sort of bargaining over the presidency was the very thing the Electoral College was supposed to prevent, the Congress and the States hastily adopted the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution by September of 1804.

To prevent tie votes in the Electoral College which were made probable, if not inevitable, by the rise of political parties (and no doubt to facilitate the election of a president and vice president of the same party), the 12th Amendment requires that each Elector cast one vote for president and a separate vote for vice president rather than casting two votes for president with the runner-up being made vice president. The Amendment also stipulates that if no one receives an absolute majority of electoral votes for president, then the U.S. House of Representatives will select the president from among the top three contenders with each State casting only one vote and an absolute majority being required to elect. By the same token, if no one receives an absolute majority for vice president, then the U.S. Senate will select the vice president from among the top two contenders for that office. All other features of the Electoral College remained the same including the requirements that, in order to prevent Electors from voting only for "favorite sons", either the presidential or vice presidential candidate has to be from a State other than that of the Electors.

In short, political party loyalties had, by 1800, begun to cut across State loyalties thereby creating new and different problems in the selection of a president. By making seemingly slight changes, the 12th Amendment fundamentally altered the design of the Electoral College and, in one stroke, accommodated political parties as a fact of life in American presidential elections.

It is noteworthy in passing that the idea of electing the president by direct popular vote was not widely promoted as an alternative to redesigning the Electoral College. This may be because the physical and demographic circumstances of the country had not changed that much in a dozen or so years. Or it may be because the excesses of the recent French revolution (and its fairly rapid degeneration into dictatorship) had given the populists some pause to reflect on the wisdom of too direct a democracy.

The Evolution of the Electoral College
Since the 12th Amendment, there have been several federal and State statutory changes which have affected both the time and manner of choosing Presidential Electors but which have not further altered the fundamental workings of the Electoral College. There have also been a few curious incidents which its critics cite as problems but which proponents of the Electoral College view as merely its natural and intended operation.

 

[Tsing Tao]

So what is your source for the above information --- which does not align with information from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Media matters.