ELECTORAL COLLEGE

the system by which the president and vice president of the United States are chosen. It was devised by the framers of the United States Constitution to provide a method of election that was feasible, desirable, and consistent with a republican form of government. Stephen Wayne Additional reading Lawrence D. Longley and Neal R. Peirce, The Electoral College Primer 2000 (1999), is an excellent overview of the history, operation, and biases of the electoral college system. A brief but clear description of the system is Walter Berns (ed.), After the People Vote: A Guide to the Electoral College, rev. and enlarged ed. (1992). Critical discussion appears in Judith A. Best, The Choice of the People?: Debating the Electoral College (1996); and David W. Abbott and James P. Levine, Wrong Winner: The Coming Debacle in the Electoral College (1991).