gates did not think that the American democracy had matured enough to offer a direct vote. It was still an unstable government. Sure enough, the arguments that were made in favor of this system were presented for the future generations of America. Madison said, "with all [the direct election's] imperfections, "that he, "liked the best (Peirce 41)." After all the president is to guard the people from the legislature, therefore the people should select him. But most drafters believed that the people were generally misinformed and easily misled (Peirce 41). This system was voted down twice, but was helpful in seeing the pitfalls of the legislature deciding a president (Peirce 41). When they had seen the pitfalls of two systems, a third compromising system evolved, the electors. This third system was to have electors that could not be a member of congress vote for the president. Most of the arguments made in support of the elector system were nothing more than negative arguments of the other two systems. The elector system was voted down twice, once as the electors to be chosen by state legislatures and the other time as the electors to be chosen by direct vote. Finally it was passed under the system of letting state legislatures decide how to choose the electors (Peirce 44). Another compromise had to be made about how many electors each state would have. This was agreed upon by the electors equaling the total of the states representatives and senators ("Electoral" 256). There was no further debate on how to choose electors or the apportionment of electors. Finally they had chosen a system of electing a president. Winston Churchill later said, "the electoral college system is probably the worst possible method of choosing a president-except for all the others (Glennon 3)." States went three main routes in choosing electors: the legislative system, where state legislatures choose the electors; a district system, where electors are selected b...
