quote:
The election of 1824 is most famous for the "corrupt bargain," a deal in the House of Representatives that gave John Quincy Adams the presidency despite his winning fewer popular and electoral votes than Andrew Jackson. But 1824 was also significant for another reason: it was the first election in which the majority of states used a statewide winner-take-all voting method for choosing their presidential electors.
It is a system that now seems like a fundamental part of the American democracy. Presidential candidates compete to win states, which is how they get votes in the Electoral College. The U.S. Constitution does not mandate that system, however. Instead, it is left up to the states to determine how they select their representatives in the Electoral College. For the first 13 presidential elections, spanning the first four decades of the history of the United States, states experimented with many different electoral systems.
The shift to statewide winner-take-all was not done for idealistic reasons. Rather, it was the product of partisan pragmatism, as state leaders wanted to maximize support for their preferred candidate. Once some states made this calculation, others had to follow, to avoid hurting their side. James Madison's 1823 letter to George Hay, described in my earlier post, explains that few of the constitutional framers anticipated electors being chosen based on winner-take-all rules.

quote:
1824: The tipping point election for presidential electoral systems, as twice as many states used the winner-take-all statewide method as used the state legislature method. The defeated Andrew Jackson joined James Madison's pleas for a constitutional amendment requiring a uniform district election system, but to no avail. In every U.S. presidential election since, the statewide method has been predominant.

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So basically, winner-take-all revolved around states wanting to squash the minority voice and influence the election to their side as much as possible. It makes zero sense in terms of a fair and balanced means of electing a president. James Madison was right, there should have been a constitutional amendment to make a uniform district voting process for president. What we have now is an abortion of what was intended.

ETA: And before the down votes rain down, the winner take all method has probably actually hurt Republicans far worse than Democrats, where centralized voting blocks control the outcome for the entire state.

This post was edited on 12/3/16 at 1:05 pm