Comparing this established mode of choosing the Pr. with that which was adopted on the 19th. of July, recollecting the immediate reconsideration of that mode, and the deliberate adoption of the mode of choosing wh. is provided by the Constitution, it is reasonable to infer, that the power to direct the manner in which Electors may be chosen, does not give to the Legislature of each State, the power by which they themselves may make such appointment of the Electors.
Again the Constitution provides that Representatives shall be chosen by the People; Senators by the Legislature of each State and Electors in such manner as the Legislature of each State may direct. The Legislature may direct that Electors may be chosen by the people, by a genl. ticket in each State, or by districts; they may authorize the persons qualified to vote for the most numerous branch of the State Legislature, to vote for the Electors; or they may confine the choice to free-holders, as is the case in Virginia; or they may direct that the people shall in the several States, by ballot, or vivâ voce, choose Electors, with power to appoint the Electors of the President; in this way the Senate of Maryland is appointed; and it appears by the printed Journal of the Convention, that General Hamilton proposed this very mode of choosing the Electors of the President. As the language of the Constitution on this subject differs from the language of the first Resolution, wh. gave the appointment of Electors to the State Legislatures, in like manner as the Constitution gives the power to appoint Senators, it is not only reasonable, but almost necessary to give the provision of the Constitution a different interpretation, and to limit the same, so that the State Legislature may by law designate those who may appoint the Electors altho’ they themselves may not appoint them.
This course of thinking has occurred to me, I suggest it to you; the facts are correct as I state them.
ⅭⅭⅭⅩⅬⅦ. James Madison to Thomas Jefferson.[1]
An appeal from an abortive ballot in the first meeting of the Electors to a reassembling of them, a part of the several plans, has something plausible, and, in comparison with the existing arrangement, might not be inadmissible. But it is not free from material objections. It relinquishes, particularly, the policy of the Constitution in allowing as little time as possible for the Electors to be known and tampered with. And beside the opportunities for in-
- ↑ Letters and other Writings of James Madison, Ⅲ, 361.
