Embed Jump To
Download Jump To Label (click on the image to download)
Or Embed Jump To Inside Your Webpage
<a href="https://www.quillproject.net/fetch/m72"><img src="https://www.quillproject.net/getJumpToImage/m72" alt="Quill - Jump To Icon (m72)" style="width: 110px; height: 59px;"></a>
To see the full record of a committee, click on the corresponding committee on the map below.
A summary of the difficulties presented by the creation of the executive
by Dr Nicholas Cole (npcole)
Cite as: Dr Nicholas Cole, ‘A summary of the difficulties presented by the creation of the executive’ in N. P. Cole, Grace Mallon and Kat Howarth, The Creation of the Electoral College, Quill Project at Pembroke College (Oxford, 2016), item 72.
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
The views expressed in these speeches capture the range of opinions and the difficulties of resolving them. On the one hand, some members of the Convention favoured popular election, whereas some feared it; some favoured a choice by legislative bodies or the national legislature, but the mode of election had implications for their view on the length of term and the question of re-eligability. Members of the Convention considered the effects of different arrangements upon the behaviour of those in office, but their conclusions were supported by little more than competing speculations and assertions.
That said, the role of the office was now becoming more sharply expressed by some as a guardian of the people. This was not a new view of the role of a chief magistrate. It had had its fullest expression in revolutionary writing in the 1774 pamphlet by Jefferson, 'A Summary View of the Rights of British America'.[1] There is a clear statement by Morris of two principles that would inform the eventual shape of the executive and its understanding in the early republic. The one was that the veto powers of the executive were meant to protect the people against an encroachment of their liberties by the legislative branch; the other was that a republic the size of the United States required a 'vigorous' executive---such vigour implied both relatively extensive powers and independence from the legislature it was supposed to be controlling.
[1] https://www.wdl.org/en/item/117/
Associated event
Approved for publication
None