The following is a guest post by Barbara Bavis and Robert
Brammer, both legal reference librarians in the Public Services
Division of the Law Library of Congress. The 2012 Presidential
election is projected to be close, and attention has turned to
whether the Electoral College may diverge from the popular vote
in shaping the outcome of an election. Should this come to pass,
we will once again have a national debate as to whether the
Electoral College should be maintained, scrapped, or amended.
But what exactly is the Electoral College system and who
established it? The concept of the “Electoral College”—although
not specifically mentioned by name—appears in Article II,
Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, representing the Founding
Fathers’ effort to create a mechanism by which the states select
the President and Vice President of the United States. Section 1
creates a select group of representatives known as “electors,”
determined by state. The number of electoral votes awarded to
each state is dependent upon