Free Presidential Lottery by James A. Michener Page B

by which the House voted for President, although it did allow a choice to be made from the three top candidates instead of two, as before.
    Starting in 1796 three parallel lines of accidental development determined the character of our election system, and not one was a result of either constitutional amendment or Congressional law. The vital processes I now speak of were the result of custom. When occasionally they were reinforced by state law, the statutes were of the most diverse nature.
    Election of the electors.
Both the Constitution and the Twelfth Amendment leave the method of selecting electors to the judgment of the various states, and we have seen how varied that can be. At the start most states gave their legislatures the job of designating electors, but custom forced the rapid decline of this tradition. In 1800 ten states out of sixteenused that method; in 1824, six out of twenty-four; and by 1832 the practice had practically vanished, only South Carolina clinging to this concept through the election of 1860. (When Colorado was admitted to the union in 1876 she allowed her legislature to pick her electors, as did Florida in that same year, but these were curiosities to be quickly abandoned.) Custom had dictated a significant change in the system.
    Observe that insofar as the Constitution is concerned, any state is free to distribute its electors among the various parties as it wishes; in the early elections, if a given state wanted to split its electoral vote between Federalists and Republican-Democrats it was free to do so, and many did. For example, in 1800 the Pennsylvania legislature designated eight electors for Jefferson and seven for Adams. As we shall see shortly, the concept that all of a state’s electoral votes must go to the candidate who wins a bare plurality of the popular vote is a later innovation without constitutional sponsorship.
    Also, in the early years those few states which did elect their electors often used the district plan, rather than choosing the entire ticket at large. Of the five states that elected in 1800, two did so at large, three by district; in 1824 it was twelve at large, five by district; and in 1836, twenty-five at large, none by district. However, as late as 1892 the Democrats in Michigan, tired of seeing that state’s 14 electoral votes go automatically to the Republicans, forced through a measure which provided for district election, which produced the results they sought, Republicans 9 to Democrats 5; but the state quickly saw that by thus splitting its vote it wasputting itself at a disadvantage compared to states which did not, and the experiment ended.
    Electors bound to vote as their state voted.
The custom developed in the late years of the eighteenth century, was ironbound by 1804 and has been recognized in various state laws, as we saw in the opening chapter. At this date, in only sixteen states and the District of Columbia does election law make it clear that the elector is expected to vote as his state voted. To cite only two such laws:
Connecticut General Statutes
, 1967 revision: “Each such elector shall cast his ballots for the candidates under whose name he ran on the official election ballot.”
Nevada Revised Statutes
, 1965: “The Presidential electors shall vote only for the nominees for President and Vice-President of the party that prevailed in this State in the preceding general election.” The nebulous value of such law has been demonstrated earlier.
    Winner-take-all distribution of electoral votes.
This is the most radical development within our electoral system and one that the framers of the Constitution seem not to have anticipated. Although there was much stated fear of domination by large states, the delegates did not foresee by what a relatively simple tactic this was to come about. Originally it was intended that the prudent electors of a state with five votes might divide 3 to 2 or even 2–2–1. When the votes of these separate