m foreign powers, and an upset in the balance of powers. Another idea was to have the State legislature choose the president. However, this idea was also rejected for similar reasons. A third idea that was taken under consideration was a procedure that involved the election of the president by a direct popular vote. This idea was rejected because the members of the convention felt that the people did not have enough information about candidates outside their state. Therefore, they would choose for the most popular person in their state and no candidate would ever receive a majority of votes enough to become president. After rejecting all ideas, the convention finally decided on a method of indirect election of the president through the Electoral College.After choosing the Electoral College as the method of selecting the president, the Framers described it in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution. In this new procedure, the process of choosing the electors was left to the states, in order eliminate the States suspicion of the federal government and members of Congress and employees of the government were not allowed to serve as Electors. In order to prevent bribery and secret dealings, Electors from each state were required to meet in their own states rather than all together in one large meeting. Also, the Framers tried to prevent the possibility of no majority by requiring that each Elector vote for two candidates, one of which had to be from outside their state. The person with the majority would become president, while the runner up would become vice president. If there was no majority the election would be turned over to the House and they would select the president.The first design lasted four elections but was changed after the presidential election of 1800. In this election, political parties began to build up and two candidates, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr of the same party, received equal amounts of votes. ...
