The Grand Convention - Sixty Ballots

No question defeated the Constitutional Convention like the question of how to choose a president. Across the summer of 1787 the delegates balloted on it some 60 times — popular election crushed 9 states to 1 after George Mason compared it to referring “a trial of colours to a blind man”; election by Congress condemned by Gouverneur Morris as “the election of a pope by a conclave of cardinals”; electors adopted in July and unwound 5 days later; a motion for a president serving for life that d...