The Grand Convention - Sixty Ballots

No question defeated the Constitutional Convention like the question of how to choose a president. Across the summer of 1787 the delegates balloted on it some 60 times — popular election crushed 9 states to 1 after George Mason compared it to referring “a trial of colours to a blind man”; election by Congress condemned by Gouverneur Morris as “the election of a pope by a conclave of cardinals”; electors adopted in July and unwound 5 days later; a motion for a president serving for life that drew 4 states, Virginia among them; James Wilson reduced to proposing the executive be chosen by lot. Hugh Williamson told the room it was pretty certain America would someday have a king — the only question was how long it could be postponed. Then, in September, a committee chaired by the man who had once proposed erasing the state boundaries handed down a machine nobody had proposed: electors who assemble in 13 places at once, vote for 2 names, and evaporate — a conclave that cannot be corrupted because until election day it does not exist. This is the story of the electoral college, and of the accidental office its arithmetic invented: the vice presidency. Send us Fan Mail