Third, some small-state delegates opposed popular election because they feared that larger states, with their greater voting power, would dominate. Yet these same delegates also objected to the Electoral College, insisting it too gave excessive power to the large states. Their concerns were addressed by stipulating that should no candidate receive a majority of the electoral vote, the selection would devolve on the House of Representatives, with each state casting a single vote.

What is striking about the convention’s debate on popular election of the president is that its opponents did not claim it would encourage majority tyranny. Doubtless the delegates were aware of the danger of such a tyranny—Madison first presented his famous discussion of “majority faction” at the convention—but no delegate objected to popular election on that basis, and Madison himself supported popular election of the president.

Mistake Number 3: Similarly, some defenders of the Electoral College have argued that the delegates who favored the Electoral College opposed popular election of the president.

Given the current debate on presidential selection, this might seem obvious, but the deliberations at the convention were much more fluid. James Wilson of Pennsylvania first proposed popular election of the president, but when his motion failed, he immediately raised the possibility of a mediated popular election: electors chosen by the people who would select the executive. All the other leading advocates of popular election—Morris, Madison, and Alexander Hamilton—also supported the Electoral College, primarily as an alternative to congressional selection. In defending the Electoral College, Madison and Hamilton emphasized its popular character. Madison in “Federalist No. 39” noted that “the President is indirectly derived from the choice of the people,” and Hamilton in “Federalist No. 68” concurred: “The sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided,” and reelection should depend on “the people themselves.”

Mistake Number 4: Many people also believe that the Electoral College was designed to preserve federalism and states’ rights.

The Constitution was, in James Madison’s words, “in strictness neither a national nor a federal Constitution, but a composition of both.” It empowered state legislatures to determine how the presidential electors were to be chosen, and if the Electoral College failed to select a president, the House of Representatives would, with each state casting a single vote. However, the debates during the Constitutional Convention make clear that the Electoral College was not intended to protect the states or enhance the influence of state governments and state perspectives.

The convention delegates sought to safeguard the independence of the national executive from state governments. They overwhelmingly rejected proposals that the executive be selected by state legislatures or by state governors. They also rejected a proposal that the president be removable upon request by a majority of state legislatures and did not even consider the New Jersey Plan’s provision that the president “be recalled by Congress when requested by the majority of executive of the states.” This was hardly surprising. Most delegates were sharply critical of state legislatures and wanted to ensure that the president had the independence necessary to oppose their schemes. Madison summarized the prevailing sentiment: “The President is to act for the people, not the States.”