It never seems to fail that when the men who drafted the United States Constitution are referred to in casual speech or during public debate, they are spoken of as a single, seamless, monolithic group. “The Framers did this,” it is said, and, “The Framers did that,” as if all fifty-two men who attended the Philadelphia Convention thought with one mind and spoke with one tongue. As the preceding investigation of James Madison’s Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 has by now made quite clear, however, this was emphatically not the case. On the subject of executive elections alone, the assembled delegates often disagreed quite dramatically as to the exact procedures which they believed ought to be put in place. Some were more optimistic than others. Some were more pragmatic than others. And while a consensus was ultimately cobbled together after many months of discussion, the end result could hardly be said to represent the unanimous will of the Framers of the Constitution. It was, on the contrary, simply the best they could do. They should not be chastised, of course, for having settled for less than perfection. There was no way for them to know, practically speaking, what perfection was supposed to look like, and thus no way for them to determine whose beliefs were well-founded and whose fears were overblown. But they did try. And this, in the end, is how the Framers really ought to be remembered. Not as a group of demigods who gathered together in a room in Philadelphia and then wrote out the Constitution extemporaneously as if collectively moved by some divine will. Rather, they were men of good conscience who didn’t always agree with one another but did their best to reconcile their hopes and their competing ideals with the circumstances of the moment.
Evidence in support of the primacy of this latter view – as well as of the fallibility of the Framers more generally – can be found throughout the excerpts of Madison’s Notes that have herein been examined. Consider, by way of example, the sheer breadth of proposals that were floated during the first phase of the executive election debate before the drafting of the Committee of Eleven’s proposal. Between June 1st, when the conversation commenced, and June 18th, when the first phase concluded, four or five different schemes were put forward by the likes of James Wilson, Elbridge Gerry, and Alexander Hamilton, only one of which became the basis for the debate that would follow in September. Hamilton notably avowed that elective monarchy was the model which he and his colleagues ought to adopt, and accordingly recommended that the American chief executive be chosen for a life term. Elbridge Gerry, claiming to desire parallel structures within each of the branches of the national government, suggested that the chief executive ought to be appointed by way of a majority vote of the various state executives. And James Wilson, who set off the executive election debate to begin with, ultimately settled on a system of electors chosen by way of popular elections in the various states. His original preference, he was hesitant to admit, had been for a simple popular vote, much as was the case in contemporary New York and Massachusetts. But while certain of his colleagues were not opposed to the idea in isolation, they also cautioned Wilson – and Wilson ultimately agreed – that the logistics of a popular vote rendered such a mechanism more or less impracticable under the circumstances of the present. In the end, doubtless owing in large part to the disparity of opinion thus presented, the majority of delegates ended up expressing their preliminary support for what was in many ways the default option. As favored by the likes of Roger Sherman and John Rutledge, the chief executive was for the moment to be chosen by a vote of the national legislature.
Now, consider the disparate assumptions which the various delegates must have held during this opening phase of the debate in question for them to have offered such proposals as they ultimately did. In spite of the fact that at that time most of the state executive were appointed by the relevant state assemblies – thus placing an extra layer of delegation between the American people and their designated chief executive – Elbridge Gerry nevertheless seemed to think it more important that certain interests in the state government be represented by corresponding interests in the national government than that the American head of state possess much in the way of public confidence. The people were directly represented in the lower house of Congress, he observed, and the states represented in the upper house of the same. So, why, then, shouldn’t the governors of the various states be represented in the form of the “governor” of the nation as a whole? Granting that there was a certain logic to this thought-process, it was made obvious enough that Gerry was approaching the concept of executive elections from a very different perspective than his colleagues by the adamant manner in which his proposal was rejected when came to a vote. Hamilton’s arguments in favor of elected monarchy would seem to represent the same kind of disparity of approach. Whereas the majority of his fellow delegates spoke often and forcefully over the course of the Philadelphia Convention of their profound distrust of unchecked executive power – and whereas most of them came from states that either confined executive authority within very narrow limits or vested it in a collective, council-style body – Hamilton actually thought it more sensible than not to allow a singular chief magistrate to serve in office for as long as they happened to live. Again, it wasn’t as though the arguments which he presented as justification were entirely meritless. And it is true that Hamilton did ultimately come around to support the Committee of Eleven’s proposal. But given the substance of the plan which he claimed to prefer, one might fairly be given to wonder just how much, if any, of the end results of these debates really aligned with Hamilton’s personal desires and intentions.
And then there was Wilson’s initial, hesitant endorsement of a simple popular vote. James Wilson remains, of course, the single individual to whom the existence of the American Electoral College is most directly owed. It was his idea to create a system of executive electors, after all. And though it was the Committee of Eleven which ultimately determined that the method of selection would lie with the legislatures of the various states – Wilson had proposed a scheme of district elections – one is nevertheless fairly given to doubt whether the debates which followed would have taken on the shape that they did had the delegate from Pennsylvania not set things in motion with his initial proposal. For all the credit that he is rightly owed, however, Wilson’s first preference was for a far simpler procedure. If the various branches of the national government were to be as independent of each other as possible, then Wilson believed that each of them ought to have been derived from the American people directly. That meant a popularly elected upper house of Congress, a popularly elected lower house, and a popularly elected chief executive. He was talked out of pursuing this goal in terms of the office of chief executive, as noted, but on what terms? George Mason, who asked Wilson to reformulate his plan into something more coherent which the assembled delegates could then discuss, stated that in fact he favored the core conceit of Wilson’s proposal but thought it more or less impracticable. But while this criticism was not expanded upon further – Wilson simply returned the next day, as requested, with the first iteration of the Electoral College as we known it – the fact that it was offered and accepted says a great deal about the assumptions of those involved in the debates in question.
It would seem a fair to assume, for example – based on certain comments offered in response to Wilson’s proposed system of electors – that the nature of Mason’s earlier concerns was chiefly logistical in nature. Speaking on June 2nd, Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts expressed his doubts as to the ability of the American people to choose even a group of electors for themselves. The inhabitants of the United States, he reckoned, were as yet, “Too little informed of personal characters in large districts, and liable to deceptions.” Certain assumptions were at play in this statement as well. For instance, it isn’t clear why Gerry thought that the American people could be trusted to choose state legislators and/or national legislators but would not be up to the task of selecting executive electors. Granted, Wilson’s proposed electoral districts might have ended up being substantially larger than either House districts or state assembly districts, but Gerry had no basis as yet for assuming that this would be the case. That said, it was hardly unreasonable of him to question the ability of the average American voter – as described in the relevant sections of the proposed constitution – to discern from among a potentially wide field of candidates which of them ought to serve as their chosen representative. And when applied to the prospect of a nationwide popular executive election, the soundness of Gerry’s concerns become clearer still. In the absence of any national popular media, how were the voters supposed to decide which candidate for executive office most directly spoke to their interests and priorities? How were they supposed to avoid being deceived when outside information came to them only through a small handful of vary narrow channels? As Mason earlier remarked, the idea of a popularly elected chief executive was certainly a desirable one. Indeed, one might even go so far as to say that it would have been ideal. But given the circumstances of life in the contemporary American republic, it was almost certainly also wholly unfeasible.
Bearing this fact in mind, however, James Wilson did still suggest that the United States should possess a popularly elected executive. And Wilson was not an ignorant man, or foolish, or naïve, or short-sighted. On the contrary, he tends to be regarded by historians and scholars of the American Founding as one of the most knowledgeable and intellectually adept of those who assembled in Philadelphia in the spring and summer of 1787. It might therefore be taken as a given that he was well aware of the fact that the American people were, as of the late 18th century, at something of a loss for reliable and in-depth sources of political information. In spite of the very legitimate concerns which stemmed from this condition, however – notably expressed, as aforementioned, by the likes of Elbridge Gerry – he still endeavored to propose to his colleagues that the chief executive of the United States ought to be elected by the people at large. He was talked out of it, as noted above, in part by one George Mason, and ultimately redirected his attention towards describing a system of executive electors. But the fact that he suggested popular elections at all would nonetheless seem to be exceptionally significant.
Perhaps Wilson had not considered the impact which physical distance and a lack robust transportation infrastructure would have on the ability of the average contemporary American voter to make a sound choice for national chief executive. This is entirely possible. But it is also possible – and perhaps somewhat more likely – that he simply believed the benefits of allowing the American people to select their chief executive directly outweighed the risk of their either being deceived or of pledging their vote to someone who lacked the most desirable qualifications. He did say, after all, in his opening statement on June 1st on the nature of an executive vote, that, “The object of choice in such cases must be persons whose merits have general notoriety.” It wasn’t that candidates for President should be persons whose merits have general notoriety, or that it would be nice if the people who ultimately received the votes of their countrymen were those whose merits were broadly known. It was that they must be such persons. They must have “general notoriety.” Wilson’s use of this phrase, and his emphasis on making each of the branches of the national government as independent of each other as possible, would accordingly seem to indicate that he thought popular support was at least as important – if not perhaps more important – than material qualifications in terms of the election of a purported American chief executive. Now, again, he was talked out of it. And shortly thereafter he went on to introduce the lasting innovation of state-by-state electors to the conversation at hand. But may it be remembered henceforth, whenever it is said that the Framers – as a group – intended such-and-such when they created the Electoral College, that, in point of fact, the one man who was responsible for suggesting the use of electors in the first place had initially stated his preference for a simple popular vote.
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