Selecting a President for the United States Of America primarily utilizes the Electoral College Vote system. This manner in selecting a President requires these several standards as stated by Congressional Digest’s as *to reconcile and balance differing State and Federal interests ; *give the State legislatures the authority to provide their preferred means of choosing the electors, which also included the use of popular vote, using the legislature itself, or by using any other method; * by providing the “constant two” “senatorial” or at-large electors, affording the “smaller”states such as Fiji, Micronesia,and Palau some additional leverage, so that the election process would not be totally dominated by the “bigger” more populated states;*preserve …show more content…
The electors were to be chosen by the states “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct” (Article II, Section 1). Qualifications for the office were broad: the only persons prohibited from serving as electors are senators, representatives, and persons “holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States.” However this original system did need some refinement as it proved to be unworkable. Under this system, each elector would cast two votes for two different candidates for the office of President, but no votes were casted for Vice President. Instead the candidate who received the most electoral votes was elected, provided that he receives a number of votes equal to a majority of the whole number of electors rather than the majority of the electoral votes. Nobody actually ran for Vice President instead the runner- up in the presidential contest was elected to the second office. Notwithstanding the founders’ efforts, the Electoral College system does not function exactly as they intended, however, as with so many constitutional provisions, the document prescribed only the system’s basic elements, leaving ample room for development. As the republic evolved, so did the Electoral College system, and, by the late nineteenth century, the following range of constitutional, Federal, and State legal and political elements of the contemporary system were in