American Presidency: The Electoral College

American Presidency
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The Electoral College
The importance of the Electoral College to the American political landscape cannot be overemphasized. Since the Constitutional Convention that was held by the United States in 1787, the Electoral College has slowly taken shape over the years to the current College as we know it today. The College has consistently proven to be a key element in the conduction of election in the USA, as evidenced by the fact that presidential candidates pay the most attention to capturing the Electoral College votes.[Edwards, George C. 2011. Why the Electoral College Is Bad for America. Yale University Press.]
Background
The Electoral College was proposed on the basis of the Virginia Plan, as espoused by the Virginia delegation. This delegation sought to establish a different mode of electing the President of the United States. The proposal sought to have the President of the United States elected by Congress, through a group of individuals appointed within the states. However, this mode proved to be unpopular, and a review resulted in the decision that the president would be elected through Congress by a number of individuals selected within the states, and equal to the number of representatives that the state has. This has been the method that has been applied in the election of the President of the United States through the years. The Electoral College has been the cornerstone of Presidential election in the USA, and has, in some instances, resulted in the election of the President and Vice President from different sides of the political divide.[Bennett, Robert W. 2006. Taming the electoral college. Stanford, Calif: Stanford Law and Politics.] [Pika, Joseph A. and John Anthony Maltese. 2014. The Politics of the Presidency, Revised 8th ed.Thousand Oaks, CA: CQ Press.]
Changes
The Electoral College has been severally revised to fine tune the process of Presidential and Vice Presidential elections. Initially, the sitting of the Electoral College resulted in every elector casting a single ballot. While this was what was actually intended, it resulted in a looming ambiguity, seeing that the ballot did not specify who was chosen as the President and the Vice President. This was especially evidenced in the elections of 1800, where Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr were involved in the confusion. The result was the election of Jefferson through a ‘tie-breaker’ vote in his favor from Alexander Hamilton. In 1803, the Twelfth Amendment was passed, prescribing the use of separate ballots for the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates. This eliminated the possibility of any further confusion during the Presidential and Vice Presidential elections in the future. In 1866, the Fourteenth Amendment was also passed. This Amendment denies the people of a state the right to vote, based on the reduction of the State’s representation in the House of Representatives.[Ibid.] [Shea, Therese. 2007. America's Electoral College: choosing the President, comparing and analyzing charts, graphs, and tables. New York: Rosen Pub. Group's PowerKids Press.]
Results
The Electoral College has been essential to the election process, and this has been manife...