Document Type
Brief
Category
Community Contributions
Publication Date
2018
Abstract
As Prof. Akhil Amar outlines in his work, America’s Constitution: A Biography, the Philadelphia Plan and its outline of a stronger executive power inspired replication on the state level. States from Massachusetts to Georgia strengthened the power of their governors, with many granting them independent elections and a veto pen. Over time, most states replicated the Federal terms of office, and currently all but two states hold quadrennial gubernatorial elections balanced with biennial or other staggered legislative terms. Yet, even as many states replicated features of Article II, from the veto to the establishment of “supreme executive power,” nearly all failed to replicate the peculiar indirect method of electoral college election found within Article II, Section 1, Clauses 2-3 of the Constitution (later altered by the 12th Amendment), instead moving towards direct election of state governors. However, there is a notable and infamous exception to that trend: Georgia’s county unit system.
Disciplines
Election Law | Law
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
David Crockett,
The Constitution Comes to the County Unit: Georgia’s State Level Electoral College,
(2018).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/public_integrity/20