Free Presidential Lottery by James A. Michener

this seemed the best, since the President was to act for the people, and not the states.
    Opponents of a direct popular vote were relentless in their attack on the plan, pointing out the defects which made it suspect in that age. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, who in the end would refuse to sign the completed Constitution and would campaign against its ratification because it did not square with his ideas of theoretical republicanism nor provide sufficient safeguards against democracy, argued, “The people are uninformed and would be misled by a few designing men.” Popular voting, he said, was radically vicious.
    When the convention finally voted on the plan, the count was 2 to 9 against, with only Pennsylvania and Delaware in favor.
    The proposal that elicited most support was one calling for Congress to elect the President. So many delegates and states considered this the only practical plan that it was generally supposed to prevail, and in four separate votes it did; it also appeared in the provisional draft of final recommendations and was about as close to being finally adopted as a proposal could have been without becoming an official part of the Constitution.
    Reasons adduced in favor were obvious: most of the states chose their governors by this system; the Congress, being “the depository of the supreme will of the society,” ought naturally to appoint the executive, who would then be accountable to it; and the dangers of a popular vote of the people would be avoided.
    Why did a plan so popular and so logical at that time finally fail when at one vote it passed unanimously, at another, 8 to 2, and again 7 to 4? It seems in retrospect that protracted debate, and especially the attacks by Gouverneur Morris and James Wilson, laid bare every weakness until in the end all saw that a President chosen by the Congress would perforce have to become subservient to Congress. One by one the defenders of such election drifted away and in the end a Committee of Eleven was appointed to arrange a compromise, but a last-ditch effort was made to force Congressional election onto the convention. This time it failed 2 to 8 and the concept was dead.
    The Committee of Eleven was an able group representing all shades of political opinion in the convention, and it worked four days without interruption seeking a solution to theimpasse. It decided early not to return either to direct popular election or to choice by Congress. The alternative that was finally chosen seems to have been voiced first by James Wilson, who had concluded, when his plan of direct voting was defeated, that intermediary electors might be the solution. At any rate, the committee reported to the floor the plan under which we operate today. The compromise was five-fold, as outlined earlier: electoral vote, not popular; two votes for senators; one for each representative; winner must have a majority; inconclusive elections to the House.
    It was a brilliant compromise; not only was it the solution to the convention impasse, later it would also aid conspicuously in obtaining from the states the ratification votes necessary to put the Constitution into operation. It was thus the rock of decision, the keystone without which all else would have been impossible, and it is enshrined in the success our nation has had in the difficult task of keeping a federal union of equals together and functioning. Technically the plan had many faults, as we shall see; philosophically it was impeccable.
    In the public discussion of the proposed Constitution, and in the
Federalist Papers
which played so strong a role in winning support, there was surprisingly little discussion of the compromise method for electing a President. The Founding Fathers were well satisfied with themselves and felt that they had produced a system which would last indefinitely. It is true that in the final debates within the convention itself Madison had warned that election in the House carried certain built-in