Electoral college is a system of electing the president used in American electoral system. The system is based in the constitution of united states of America. The Constitution of united states of America as it was being made had several contentions that had to be compromised on. At the constitution convention, delegates considered different ways of electing the president. The first method was in allowing the congress to elect the president. Differing opinion were observed with some delegates indicating that allowing the congress to elect the president, they would be introducing conflicts within congress, corruption in the process of election or even manipulation by foreign powers.

The most deferring problem was allocating of power between the executive arm of the government and the legislative arm. This idea was dismissed and search for a compromising idea was sought. More ideas like the one where the state legislators had the power to choose the president were also fronted. Some delegates contested this idea as well on the basis that federal authority was at risk with this idea as presidents would corrupt the states legislators to disobey the federal laws. The other idea was a democratic form of elections , where the president would be voted directly by the people. This was nat received well among the delegates as it meant people would be more likely to vote for only those persons known to them and withing their states. A group of legislators came up with the compromising option of college of electors. This was to become the first electoral college design.

The electoral college design required that the state legislators were to make a selection of electors with conditions that no members of congress or any federal government employees were to elected as members of electoral college, in order to maintain the balance between the legislative arm of the government and that of executive powers. Electors from each state were to meet within their state capitals and not in a single forum to avoid issues of corruption. In order to avoid choosing of favorite candidates from within their states elector were expected to make two votes. One for their favorite candidate and the other one for someone outside their state. The results from various states would be sent to the president of the senate who would open the results and read them to the senate. The majority vote , which had to be more than half of the votes was to be the winning president. In case there were tie, the house of representative had to chose among the first five candidates who was to be the president. The first electoral college design lasted for only four elections before the 12 ^th amendments to the united states of America Constitution were introduced. The amendments required the two votes by the elector to be split in a way that the first vote was for the president while the second one was for the vice president. In case of a tie, the first three candidates would be chosen to produce the winning president.

The day of voting for the president was decided in 1845. it had to be an uniform day for all the states. Originally they took it to be the 34 day before the first Wednesday of November r only to be changed later as the Tuesday following the fist5 Monday of November in all years that could be divided by four. Other methods were tried before this method proved to be the most suitable one. Visit the essayWritingTips.org for information on why various methods could not be acceptable to all. The essayWritingTips.org is a website dedicated in offering free American history including the various amendments to the constitution of America.