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obama’s “run” for office began almost two years before he was chosen to represent the democratic party. He also selected biden as his running mate before he was confirmed as the democratic candidate..You are partically correct . prior to the the 20th centuary , vice presidents were selected by the electorial college, and were separate from the office of the President. While the electorial college votes for the vice-president ,they do not in effect select him as a candidate.

I'm not *partially* correct, I'm Constitutional correct.

The electoral college doesn't currently select the Presidential candidate either. Instead the electors are selected based on the candidate they support or pledge to vote for. That was informally true from the beginning, but under state laws it is now formally true. The electors are usually not even on the ballot by name. (Although I seem to remember their names being on the ballot in my earliest Presidential elections, 1972 and '76. Of course my state only had 5 electors, so that was not too onerous. Be kind of a bear in California, Texas or New York.

Vice President's are elected by the Electoral college. In a separate vote on separate ballots. It's under state laws that the electors are tied to a "ticket", via common electors.

The Constitution doesn't say who may run for the office, it says who is or is not eligible for the office.

The Constitution trumps current laws and practices.

While far from ideal, I can live with Biden acting as President, since that is what my reading of the Constitution says should be the case. It is *acting as*, he would not become President. He would act until a President qualified.

The Constitution doesn't even mention political parties. They have no Constitutional weight, yet they are the ones who select the candidates. Not the electoral college.

I think we should go back to the old way. Where the electors were not faceless people, often without their names even on the ballot, but were either selected by the legislature or by vote of the people, without direct regard for a candidate they might vote for. A vote for them, not for some person running for office. Sure, there would be smokey backroom deals, as if there aren't in the parties anyway. But I think a little tweaking could result in process more in keeping with the Constitution and the Presidential election amendments to it.

The current system reeks of too much democracy. Something the founders knew was dangerous.

One thing that many people seem to forget is that the founders carefully designed power relations between the different branches of government. People don't realize that originally no branch of the federal government was chosen in the same way or by the same people and that this is important. It was a puposeful part of the design. They knew that each branch of the government would have to cater to the group who elected/appointed it in order to stay in power, and the founders didn't want any one group to control all of the branches for any significant length of time. That is why each branch was chosen in a different way to ensure that it was difficult for any one group of political interests control everything. The founders decided that The House was the popularly elected house that spoke for all the voters and had to cater to the masses. The Senate was selected by state legislatures so it would be beholden to the States as political entities. Judges would be chosen by those likely to be familiar with the qualities necessary in interpreting the law, but that prevents collusion of two branches power. Hence judges are appointed by the president and confirmed by the states in the senate.

Since there was already one branch that was popularly elected, the founders had to figure out how to choose the president, but at the same time make it so that he was elected in a way that was different from the House so that two branches would not be beholden to the same interest groups, and thus collude their powers together.

The Founders wanted to make it difficult for any one group to be able to manipulate the election of the president. That is why they created the electoral college. The citizens voted for an elector whose judgment they trusted and then each elector in the college was supposed to be independent and capable of electing whomever they thought was best. Since this happened in each separate state capital, and each elector was supposed to be independent, and since no one knew who the electors were going to be until after the election (so it would be difficult to corrupt all of them before they voted for president in 18-19th century America). Because of this, it was difficult for a single interest groupo to control and influence all of the electors, meaning that the president would not have to cater to any one group. The president wouldn't be the pawn of the legislature or the courts or any one state.

We have thrown off the entire balance of power the original constitution created so that now all branches of the government except the judiciary are effectively elected by the same group in in the same way. Unsurprisingly, these branches now more frequently collude together to attack freedom in ways they're not supposed to be able to do. The Electoral College's original purpose to protect freedom by making sure the presidency wasn't elected in the same way by the same groups as the other two branches has effectively been undermined and turned into a de facto popular election. (It takes pretty extraordinary circumstances to lose the popular vote and still win the presidency even with the electoral college).

In short, we have made our Federal Republic into a Democratic Republic that acts like 5th century B.C. Athenian democracy...something that our founders feared. "Mobocracy" is not necessarily the best way to go.