2
CHIAFALO v. WASHINGTON
Opinion of the Court
than the presidential candidate who won his State’s popular vote. We hold that a State may do so.
I
Our Constitution’s method of picking Presidents emerged
from an eleventh-hour compromise. The issue, one delegate
to the Convention remarked, was “the most difficult of all
[that] we have had to decide.” 2 Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, p. 501 (M. Farrand rev. 1966) (Farrand).
Despite long debate and many votes, the delegates could not
reach an agreement. See generally N. Peirce & L. Longley,
The People’s President 19–22 (rev. 1981). In the dying days
of summer, they referred the matter to the so-called Committee of Eleven to devise a solution. The Committee returned with a proposal for the Electoral College. Just two
days later, the delegates accepted the recommendation with
but a few tweaks. James Madison later wrote to a friend
that the “difficulty of finding an unexceptionable [selection]
process” was “deeply felt by the Convention.” Letter to G.
Hay (Aug. 23, 1823), in 3 Farrand 458. Because “the final
arrangement of it took place in the latter stage of the Session,” Madison continued, “it was not exempt from a degree
of the hurrying influence produced by fatigue and impatience in all such Bodies: tho’ the degree was much less than
usually prevails in them.” Ibid. Whether less or not, the
delegates soon finished their work and departed for home.
The provision they approved about presidential electors
is fairly slim. Article II, §1, cl. 2 says:
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors,
equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person
holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United
States, shall be appointed an Elector.”