title: David Copperfield

text: The imponderable power of the sea is almost always associated with death: it took Emily's father; will take Ham and Steerforth, and in general is tied to David's "unrest" associated with his Yarmouth experiences. In the end nothing remains but Steerforth's body cast-up as "flotsam and jetsam, that symbolises the moral emptiness of David's adoration. The violent storm in Yarmouth coincides with the moment when the conflicts reached a critical threshold, when it is as if angry Nature called for a final resolution; as Kearney noted, "The rest of the novel is something of an anti-climax after the storm chapter." Referring to the climactic storm scene in "David Copperfield", the last in any Dickens novel, Kearney remarked that "The symbolism of sea, sky and storm is successfully integrated to achieve what amounts to a mystical dimension in the novel, and this mystical dimension is, on the whole, more acceptable than the ones found elsewhere in Dickens".


title: David Copperfield

text: According to Daniel L Plung, four types of animal are a particularly important aspect of the way symbolism is used: song birds symbolise innocence; "lions and raptors [are] associated with the fallen but not evil"; dogs, other than Jip, are associated "with the malicious and self-interested"; while snakes and eel represent evil. A typical example of the way that animal symbolism is used is found in the following sentence: " 'the influence of the Murdstones upon me [David] was like the fascination of two snakes on a wretched young bird" '. When David describes Steerforth as "brave as a lion" this is a clue to Steerforth's moral weakness and foreshadows subsequent events.


title: David Copperfield

text: Flowers symbolise innocence, for example, David is called "Daisy" by Steerforth, because he is naive and pure, while Dora constantly paints bouquets, and when Heep was removed from Wickfield House, flowers return to the living room. Mr Dick's kite, represents how much he is both outside and above society, immune to its hierarchical social system. Furthermore, it flies among the innocent birds, and just as this toy soothes and gives joy to him, Mr Dick heals the wounds and restore peace where the others without exception have failed.


title: David Copperfield

text: Dreams are also an important part of the novel's underlying symbolic structure, and are "used as a transitional device to bind [its] parts together" with twelve chapters ending "with a dream or reverie". In the early dark period of David's life his dreams "are invariably ugly", but in later chapters they are more mixed, with some reflecting "fanciful hopes" that are never realised, while others are nightmares which foreshadow "actual problems".


title: David Copperfield

text: In addition physical beauty, in the form of Clara, is emblematic of moral good, while the ugliness of Uriah Heep, Mr Creakle and Mr Murdstone underlines their villainy. While David, the story's hero, has benefited from her love and suffered from the violence of the others.


title: David Copperfield

text: Dickens, in preparation for this novel, went to Norwich, Lowestoft, and Yarmouth where the Peggotty family resides, but he stayed there for only five hours, on 9 January 1849. He assured his friends, that his descriptions were based on his own memories, brief as were his local experiences. However, looking to the work of K. J. Fielding reveals that the dialect of this town was taken from a book written by a local author, Major Edward Moor published in 1823. There, Dickens found "a beein" (a house), "fisherate" (officiate), "dodman" (snail), "clickesen" (gossip), and "winnicking" (tears) from "winnick" (to cry) and so on.


title: David Copperfield

text: Many view this novel as Dickens's masterpiece, beginning with his friend and first biographer John Forster, who writes: "Dickens never stood so high in reputation as at the completion of Copperfield", and the author himself calls it "his favourite child". It is true, he says, that "underneath the fiction lay something of the author's life", that is, an experience of self-writing. It is therefore not surprising that the book is often placed in the category of autobiographical works. From a strictly literary point of view, however, it goes beyond this framework in the richness of its themes and the originality of its writing.


title: David Copperfield

text: Situated in the middle of Dickens's career, it represents, according to Paul Davis, a turning point in his work, the point of separation between the novels of youth and those of maturity. In 1850, Dickens was 38 years old and had twenty more to live, which he filled with other masterpieces, often denser, sometimes darker, that addressed most of the political, social and personal issues he faced.


title: David Copperfield

text: Dickens welcomed the publication of his work with intense emotion, and he continued to experience this until the end of his life. When he went through a period of personal difficulty and frustration in the 1850s, he returned to "David Copperfield" as to a dear friend who resembled him: "Why," he wrote to Forster, "Why is it, as with poor David, a sense comes always crashing on me now, when I fall into low spirits, as of one happiness I have missed in life, and one friend and companion I have never made?” When Dickens begins writing "Great Expectations", which was also written in the first person, he reread "David Copperfield" and confided his feelings to Forster: "was affected by it to a degree you would hardly believe". Criticism has not always been even-handed, though over time the high importance of this novel has been recognised.


title: David Copperfield

text: Although Dickens became a Victorian celebrity his readership was mainly the middle classes, including the so-called skilled workers, according to the French critic Fabrice Bensimon, because ordinary people could not afford it. Issues I to V of the serial version reached 25,000 copies in two years, modest sales compared to 32,000 "Dombey and Son" and 35,000 "Bleak House", but Dickens was nevertheless happy: "Everyone is cheering David on", he writes to Mrs Watson, and, according to Forster, his reputation was at the top.


title: David Copperfield

text: The first reviews were mixed, but the great contemporaries of Dickens showed their approval: Thackeray found the novel "freshly and simply simple"; John Ruskin, in his "Modern Painters", was of the opinion that the scene of the storm surpasses Turner's evocations of the sea; more soberly, Matthew Arnold declared it "rich in merits"; and, in his autobiographical book "A Small Boy and Others", Henry James evokes the memory of "treasure so hoarded in the dusty chamber of youth".


title: David Copperfield

text: After Dickens's death, "David Copperfield" rose to the forefront of the writer's works, both through sales, for example, in "Household Words" in 1872 where sales reached 83,000, and the praise of critics. In 1871, Scottish novelist and poet Margaret Oliphant described it as "the culmination of Dickens's early comic fiction"; However, in the late nineteenth-century Dickens's critical reputation suffered a decline, though he continued to have many readers. This began when Henry James in 1865 "relegated Dickens to the second division of literature on the grounds that he could not 'see beneath the surface of things'". Then in 1872, two years after Dickens's death, George Henry Lewes wondered how to "reconcile [Dickens's] immense popularity with the 'critical contempt' which he attracted". However, Dickens was defended by the novelist George Gissing in 1898 in "Charles Dickens: A Critical Study". G. K. Chesterton published an important defence of Dickens in his book "Charles Dickens" in 1906, where he describes him as this “most English of our great writers”. Dickens's literary reputation grew in the 1940s and 1950s because of essays by George Orwell and Edmund Wilson (both published in 1940), and Humphrey House's "The Dickens World" (1941). However, in 1948, F. R. Leavis in "The Great Tradition", contentiously, excluded Dickens from his canon, characterising him as a "popular entertainer" without "mature standards and interests".


title: David Copperfield

text: Dickens's reputation, however, continued to grow and K. J. Fielding (1965) and Geoffrey Thurley (1976) identify what they call "David Copperfield"'s "centrality", and Q. D. Leavis in 1970, looked at the images he draws of marriage, of women, and of moral simplicity. In their 1970 publication "Dickens the Novelist", F. R. and Q. D. Leavis called Dickens "one of the greatest of creative writers", and F. R. Leavis had changed his mind about Dickens since his 1948 work, no longer finding the popularity of the novels with readers as a barrier to their seriousness or profundity. In 1968 Sylvère Monod, after having finely analyzed the structure and style of the novel, describe it as "the triumph of the art of Dickens", which analysis was shared by Paul B. Davis. The central themes are explored by Richard Dunne in 1981, including the autobiographical dimension, the narrator-hero characterization process, memory and forgetting, and finally the privileged status of the novel in the interconnection between similar works of Dickens. Q. D. Leavis compares "Copperfield" to Tolstoy's "War and Peace" and looks at adult-child relationships in both novels. According to writer Paul B. Davis, Q. D. Leavis excels at dissecting David's relationship with Dora. Gwendolyn Needham in an essay, published in 1954, analyzes the novel as a bildungsroman, as did Jerome H. Buckley twenty years later. In 1987 Alexander Welsh devoted several chapters to show that "Copperfield" is the culmination of Dickens's autobiographical attempts to explore himself as a novelist in the middle of his career. Finally, J. B. Priestley was particularly interested in Mr Micawber and concludes that "With the one exception of Falstaff, he is the greatest comic figure in English literature".


title: David Copperfield

text: In 2015, the BBC Culture section polled book critics outside the UK about novels by British authors; they ranked "David Copperfield" eighth on the list of the 100 Greatest British Novels. The characters and their varied places in society in the novel evoked reviewer comments, for example, the novel is "populated by some of the most vivid characters ever created,” “David himself, Steerforth, Peggotty, Mr Dick – and it climbs up and down and off the class ladder.", remarked by critic Maureen Corrigan and echoed by Wendy Lesser.


title: David Copperfield

text: "David Copperfield" has pleased many writers. Charlotte Brontë, for example, commented in 1849 in a letter to the reader of her publisher: "I have read "David Copperfield"; it seems to me very good—admirable in some parts. You said it had affinity to "Jane Eyre": it has—now and then—only what an advantage has Dickens in his varied knowledge of men and things!" Tolstoy, for his part, considered it "the best work of the best English novelist" and, according to F. R. Leavis and Q. D. Leavis, was inspired by David and Dora's love story to have Prince Andrew marry Princess Lise in "War and Peace". Henry James remembered being moved to tears, while listening to the novel, hidden under a table, read aloud in the family circle. Dostoevsky enthusiastically cultivated the novel in a prison camp in Siberia. Franz Kafka wrote in his diary in 1917, that the first chapter of his novel "Amerika" was inspired by "David Copperfield". James Joyce parodied it in "Ulysses". Virginia Woolf, who was not very fond of Dickens, states that "David Copperfield", along with "Robinson Crusoe", Grimm's fairy tales, Scott's "Waverley" and "Pickwick's Posthumous Papers", "are not books, but stories communicated by word of mouth in those tender years when fact and fiction merge, and thus belong to the memories and myths of life, and not to its esthetic experience." Woolf also noted in a letter to Hugh Walpole in 1936, that she is re-reading it for the sixth time: "I'd forgotten how magnificent it is." It also seems that the novel was Sigmund Freud's favourite; and Somerset Maugham sees it as a "great" work, although his hero seems to him rather weak, unworthy even of its author, while Mr Micawber never disappoints: "The most remarkable of them is, of course, Mr Micawber. He never fails you."


title: David Copperfield

text: As is the custom for a regular serialised publication for a wide audience, "David Copperfield", like Dickens's earlier novels, was from the beginning a "story in pictures" whose many engravings are part of the novel and how the story is related.


title: David Copperfield

text: Phiz drew the original, the first two illustrations associated with "David Copperfield": on the wrapper for the serial publication, for which he engraved the silhouette of a baby staring at a globe, probably referring to the working title ("The Copperfield Survey of the World as it Rolled"), and the frontispiece (later used in the published books), and the title page. The green wrapper is shown at the top of this article. Phiz drew the images around the central baby-over-the-globe with no information on the characters who would appear in the novel. He knew only that it would be a bildungsroman. The images begin at the bottom, on the left side of the tree that has leaves on the left, and is dead on the right. A woman holds a baby on her lap. The images continue clockwise, marking events of a life, but with no reference to any specific event or specific character of the novel.


title: David Copperfield

text: When each issue was written, Phiz then worked with Dickens on the illustrations. "In the monthly plates, Phiz would have to translate the memories of the protagonist-narrator into a third-person objective or dramatic point of view." Some of his illustrations contain details that are not in the text, but illuminate a character or situation, "forming part of [...] of what the novel is". Dickens accepted and even encouraged these additional, sometimes subtle indications, which, commenting on the event, say more than the narrator says in print. The latter intends to stay behind, just like the author who, thus, hides behind the illustrator.


title: David Copperfield

text: Dickens was particularly scrupulous about illustrations; he scrutinised the smallest details and sometimes demanded modifications, for example to replace for a very particular episode the coat that David wears by "a little jacket". The illustration of the meeting between David and Aunt Betsey was particularly delicate, and Phiz had to do it several times, the ultimate choice being that of Dickens. Once the desired result was obtained, Dickens does not hide his satisfaction: the illustrations are "capital", he writes to Phiz, and especially that which depicts Mr Micawber in chapter 16, "uncommonly characteristic".


title: David Copperfield

text: One puzzling mismatch between the text and accompanying illustrations is that of the Peggotty family's boat-house "cottage" on the Yarmouth sands (pictured). It is clear from the text that the author envisaged the house as an upright boat, whereas the illustrator depicted it as an upturned hull resting on the beach with holes cut for the doors and windows. Interior illustrations of the cottage also show it as a room with curved ceiling beams implying an upturned hull. Although Dickens seemed to have had the opportunity to correct this discrepancy he never did, suggesting that he was happy with the illustrator's depiction.


title: David Copperfield

text: Some of these works are fullsize paintings rather than illustrations included in editions of the novels. Kyd painted watercolours. Frank Reynolds provided the illustrations for a 1911 edition of David Copperfield.


title: David Copperfield

text: Although the reputation of Dickens with literary critics went through a decline and a much later rise after he died, his popularity with readers followed a different pattern after his death. Around 1900, his novels, including "David Copperfield", began an increase in popularity, and the 40-year copyrights expired for all but his latest novels, opening the door to other publishers in the UK; by 1910 all of them had expired. This created the opportunity for new illustrators in new editions of the novels, as both Fred Barnard (Household Edition) and Frank Reynolds (1911 edition of "David Copperfield") provided, for example; their styles were different from that of Phiz who provided the illustrations for the first publications of the novel in 1850 and during the author's life. As the books were read by so many (one publisher, Chapman & Hall, sold 2 million copies of Dickens's works in the period 1900–1906), the characters became more popular for use outside the novels, in jigsaw puzzles and postcards. Uriah Heep and Mr Micawber were popular figures for illustrations. As World War I approached, the illustrations on postcards and the novels, abridged or full length, continued in popularity in the UK and among the soldiers and sailors abroad.


title: David Copperfield

text: Like "Dombey and Son", "David Copperfield" was not the subject of a specific contract; it followed the agreement of 1 June 1844, which was still valid. In that contract, the publishing house Bradbury and Evans received a quarter of the receipts from what Dickens wrote for the next eight years. This did not prevent the novelist from criticizing his publisher, or providing an incomplete number, just "to see exactly where I am" and for his illustrator Phiz to have "some material to work on".


title: David Copperfield

text: The 1850 book, published by Bradbury and Evans, was dedicated to the honorable Mr and Mrs Richard Watson, from Rockingham, Northamptonshire, aristocratic friends met on a trip to Switzerland five years ago. A brief preface was written in 1850 by the author, already entrusted to Forster after he finished his manuscript, with the promise that a new work will follow. This text was also used for the 1859 edition, the Cheap Edition. The ultimate version of 1867, also called the Charles Dickens edition, included another preface by the author with the statement that "David Copperfield" is the favourite work of the author.


title: David Copperfield

text: Three volumes were published by Tauchnitz in 1849–50, in English, for distribution outside Great Britain in Europe. During Dickens's lifetime, many other editions were released, and many since he died. According to Paul Schlicke, the most reliable edition is the 1981 edition from Clarendon Press with an introduction and notes by Nina Burgis; it serves as a reference for later editions, including those of Collins, Penguin Books and Wordsworth Classics.


title: David Copperfield

text: While it was being published, "David Copperfield" was the object, according to Philip Bolton's survey, of six initial dramatisations, followed by a further twenty when the public's interest was at its peak in the 1850s. The first adaptation, "Born with a Caul" by George Almar, was staged while the serial issues were not yet completed, with some changes from Dickens's plot, having Steerforth live and marry Emily, and inventing a character to kill Mr Murdstone. The most spectacular dramatisation, however, were those of Dickens himself. Although he waited more than ten years to prepare a version for his public readings, it soon became one of his favourite performances, especially the storm scene, which he kept for the finale, "the most sublime moment in all the readings".


title: David Copperfield

text: "Letters", cited by recipient and date in the References, are found in the Pilgrim edition, published in 12 volumes, from 1965 to 2003.


title: Astigmatism

text: Astigmatism is a type of refractive error due to rotational asymmetry in the eye's refractive power. This results in distorted or blurred vision at any distance. Other symptoms can include eyestrain, headaches, and trouble driving at night. Astigmatism often occurs at birth and can change or develop later in life. If it occurs in early life and is left untreated, it may result in amblyopia.


title: Astigmatism

text: The cause of astigmatism is unclear; however, it is believed to be partly related to genetic factors. The underlying mechanism involves an irregular curvature of the cornea and protective reaction changes in the lens of the eye, called lens astigmatism, that has the same mechanism as spasm of accomodation. Diagnosis is by an eye examination called autorefractor keratometry (objective, allows to see lens and cornea components of astigmatism) and subjective refraction, but subjective methods are almost always inaccurate, if lens astigmatism is not fully removed first with a week of eye drops.


title: Astigmatism

text: Three treatment options are available: glasses, contact lenses, and surgery. Glasses are the simplest. Contact lenses can provide a wider field of vision and less artifacts than even double aspheric lenses. Refractive surgery permanently changes the shape of the eye and thereby cures astigmatism.


title: Astigmatism

text: In Europe and Asia, astigmatism affects between 30 and 60% of adults. People of all ages can be affected by astigmatism. Astigmatism was first reported by Thomas Young in 1801.


title: Astigmatism

text: Although astigmatism may be asymptomatic, higher degrees of astigmatism may cause symptoms such as blurred vision, double vision, squinting, eye strain, fatigue, or headaches. Some research has pointed to the link between astigmatism and higher prevalence of migraine headaches.


title: Astigmatism

text: The cause of congenital astigmatism is unclear, however it is believed to be partly related to genetic factors. Genetics, based on twin studies, appear to play only a small role in astigmatism as of 2007.


title: Astigmatism

text: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have been used to investigate the genetic foundation of astigmatism. Although no conclusive result has been shown, various candidates have been identified. In a study conducted in 2011 on various Asian populations, variants in the PDGFRA gene on chromosome 4q12 were identified to be associated with corneal astigmatism. A follow-up study in 2013 on the European population, however, found no variant significantly associated with corneal astigmatism at the genome-wide level (single-nucleotide polymorphism rs7677751 at PDGFRA). Facing the inconsistency, a study by Shah and colleagues in 2018 included both populations with Asian and Northern European ancestry. They successfully replicated the previously identified genome-wide significant locus for corneal astigmatism near the PDGFRA gene, with a further success of identifying three novel candidate genes: CLDN7, ACP2, and TNFAIP8L3. Other GWAS studies also provided inconclusive results: Lopes and colleagues identified a susceptibility locus with lead single nucleotide polymorphism rs3771395 on chromosome 2p13.3 in the VAX2 gene (VAX2 plays an important role in the development of the dorsoventral axis of the eye); Li and associates, however, found no consistent or strong genetic signals for refractive astigmatism while suggesting a possibility of widespread genetic co-susceptibility for spherical and astigmatic refractive errors. They also found that the TOX gene region previously identified for spherical equivalent refractive error was the second most strongly associated region. Another recent follow-up study again had identified four novel loci for corneal astigmatism, with two also being novel loci for astigmatism: ZC3H11B (associated with axial length), NPLOC4 (associated with myopia), LINC00340 (associated with spherical equivalent refractive error) and HERC2 (associated with eye color).


title: Astigmatism

text: Astigmatism may also occur following a cataract surgery or a corneal injury. Contraction of the scar due to wound or cataract extraction causes astigmatism due to flattening of the cornea in one direction. In keratoconus, progressive thinning and steepening of the cornea cause irregular astigmatism.


title: Astigmatism

text: In with-the-rule astigmatism, the eye has too much "plus" cylinder in the horizontal axis relative to the vertical axis (i.e., the eye is too "steep" along the vertical meridian relative to the horizontal meridian). Vertical beams of light focus in front (anterior) to horizontal beams of light, in the eye. This problem may be corrected using spectacles which have a "minus" cylinder placed on this horizontal axis. The effect of this will be that when a vertical beam of light in the distance travels towards the eye, the "minus" cylinder (which is placed with its axis lying horizontally – meaning in line with the patient's horizontal meridian relative to the excessively steep vertical meridian) will cause this vertical beam of light to slightly "diverge", or "spread out vertically", before it reaches the eye. This compensates for the fact that the patient's eye converges light more powerfully in the vertical meridian than the horizontal meridian. Hopefully, after this, the eye will focus all light on the same location at the retina, and the patient's vision will be less blurred.


title: Astigmatism

text: In against-the-rule astigmatism, a plus cylinder is added in the horizontal axis (or a minus cylinder in the vertical axis).


title: Astigmatism

text: Axis is always recorded as an angle in degrees, between 0 and 180 degrees in a counter-clockwise direction. Both 0 and 180 degrees lie on a horizontal line at the level of the center of the pupil, and as seen by an observer, 0 lies on the right of both the eyes.


title: Astigmatism

text: Irregular astigmatism, which is often associated with prior ocular surgery or trauma, is also a common naturally occurring condition. The two steep hemimeridians of the cornea, 180° apart in regular astigmatism, may be separated by less than 180° in irregular astigmatism (called "nonorthogonal" irregular astigmatism); and/or the two steep hemimeridians may be asymmetrically steep—that is, one may be significantly steeper than the other (called "asymmetric" irregular astigmatism). Irregular astigmatism is quantified by a vector calculation called topographic disparity.


title: Astigmatism

text: Astigmatism, whether it is regular or irregular, is caused by some combination of external (corneal surface) and internal (posterior corneal surface, human lens, fluids, retina, and eye-brain interface) optical properties. In some people, the external optics may have the greater influence, and in other people, the internal optics may predominate. Importantly, the axes and magnitudes of external and internal astigmatism do not necessarily coincide, but it is the combination of the two that by definition determines the overall optics of the eye. The overall optics of the eye are typically expressed by a person's refraction; the contribution of the external (anterior corneal) astigmatism is measured through the use of techniques such as keratometry and corneal topography. One method analyzes vectors for planning refractive surgery such that the surgery is apportioned optimally between both the refractive and topographic components.


title: Astigmatism

text: A number of tests are used during eye examinations to determine the presence of astigmatism and to quantify its amount and axis. A Snellen chart or other eye charts may initially reveal reduced visual acuity. A keratometer may be used to measure the curvature of the steepest and flattest meridians in the cornea's front surface. Corneal topography may also be used to obtain a more accurate representation of the cornea's shape. An autorefractor or retinoscopy may provide an objective estimate of the eye's refractive error and the use of Jackson cross cylinders in a phoropter or trial frame may be used to subjectively refine those measurements. An alternative technique with the phoropter requires the use of a "clock dial" or "sunburst" chart to determine the astigmatic axis and power. A keratometer may also be used to estimate astigmatism by finding the difference in power between the two primary meridians of the cornea. Javal's rule can then be used to compute the estimate of astigmatism.


title: Astigmatism

text: A method of astigmatism analysis by Alpins may be used to determine both how much surgical change of the cornea is needed and after surgery to determine how close treatment was to the goal.


title: Astigmatism

text: Another rarely used refraction technique involves the use of a stenopaeic slit (a thin slit aperture) where the refraction is determined in specific meridians – this technique is particularly useful in cases where the patient has a high degree of astigmatism or in refracting patients with irregular astigmatism.


title: Astigmatism

text: There are three primary types of astigmatism: myopic astigmatism, hyperopic astigmatism, and mixed astigmatism. Cases can be classified further, such as regular or irregular and lenticular or corneal.


title: Astigmatism

text: Astigmatism may be corrected with eyeglasses, contact lenses, or refractive surgery. Glasses are the simplest and safest, although contact lenses can provide a wider field of vision. Refractive surgery can eliminate the need to wear corrective lenses altogether by permanently changing the shape of the eye but, like all elective surgery, comes with both greater risk and expense than the non-invasive options. Various considerations involving eye health, refractive status, and lifestyle determine whether one option may be better than another. In those with keratoconus, certain contact lenses often enable patients to achieve better visual acuity than eyeglasses. Once only available in a rigid, gas-permeable form, toric lenses are now also available as soft lenses.


title: Astigmatism

text: In older people, astigmatism can also be corrected during cataract surgery. This can either be done by inserting a toric intraocular lens or by performing special incisions (limbal relaxing incisions). Toric intraocular lenses probably provide a better outcome with respect to astigmatism in these cases than limbal relaxing incisions.


title: Astigmatism

text: Toric intraocular lenses can additionally be used in patients with complex ophthalmic history, such as previous ophthalmic surgery. In such complex cases, toric intraocular lenses seems to be as effective as in non-complex cases for correction of concurrent corneal astigmatism.


title: Astigmatism

text: According to an American study, nearly three in ten children (28.4%) between the ages of five and seventeen have astigmatism. A Brazilian study published in 2005 found that 34% of the students in one city were astigmatic. Regarding the prevalence in adults, a recent study in Bangladesh found that nearly 1 in 3 (32.4%) of those over the age of 30 had astigmatism.


title: Astigmatism

text: A Polish study published in 2005 revealed "with-the-rule astigmatism" may lead to the onset of myopia.


title: Astigmatism

text: As a student, Thomas Young discovered that he had problems with one eye in 1793. In the following years he did research on his vision problems. He presented his findings in a Bakerian Lecture in 1801.


title: Astigmatism

text: Independent from Young, George Biddell Airy discovered the phenomenon of astigmatism on his own eye. Airy presented his observations on his own eye in February 1825 at the Cambridge Philosophical Society. Airy produced lenses to correct his vision problems by 1825, while other sources put this into 1827 when Airy obtained cylindrical lenses from an optician from Ipswich. The name for the condition was given by William Whewell.


title: Astigmatism

text: By the 1860s astigmatism was a well established concept in ophthalmology, and chapters in books described the discovery of astigmatism.


title: Astigmatism

text: In 1849, Irish English physicist and mathematician George Stokes invented Stokes lens to detect astigmatism. In 1887 American ophthalmologist Edward Jackson revised the Stokes lens concept and made a cross cylinder lens to refine power and axis of astigmatism. In 1907 Jackson described determination of the axis of a correcting cylinder in astigmatism using a cross cylinder.


title: United States Electoral College

text: The United States Electoral College is the group of presidential electors required by the Constitution to form every four years for the sole purpose of appointing the president and vice president. Each state and the District of Columbia pursuant to the methods described by its legislature, equal in number to its congressional delegation (representatives and senators). Federal office holders, including senators and representatives, cannot be electors. Of the current 538 electors, an absolute majority of 270 or more "electoral votes" is required to elect the president and vice president. If no candidate achieves an absolute majority there, a contingent election is held by the United States House of Representatives to elect the president, and by the United States Senate to elect the vice president.


title: United States Electoral College

text: The states and the District of Columbia hold a statewide or districtwide popular vote on Election Day in November to choose electors based upon how they have pledged to vote for president and vice president, with some state laws proscribing faithless electors. All states except Maine and Nebraska use a party block voting, or general ticket method, to choose their electors, meaning all their electors go to one winning ticket. Maine and Nebraska choose one elector per congressional district and two electors for the ticket with the highest statewide vote. The electors meet and vote in December and the inauguration of the president and vice president takes place in January.


title: United States Electoral College

text: The suitability of the Electoral College system is a matter of ongoing debate. Supporters argue that it requires presidential candidates to have broad appeal across the country in order to win, while critics argue that it is not representative of the popular will of the nation when viewed without regard to the states.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Its implementation by the states may leave it open to criticism; winner-take-all systems, especially in populous states, may not align with the principle of "one person, one vote". Almost 10% of presidential elections under the system have not elected the winners of the nationwide popular vote.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Critics argue that the Electoral College system is less democratic than a direct popular vote and that the College violates the democratic principle of "one person, one vote."


title: United States Electoral College

text: Thus, a president may be elected who did not win the national popular vote, as occurred in 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016. Critics object to the inequity that due to the distribution of electors, individual citizens in states with smaller populations have "proportionately more" voting power than those in larger states. This is because the number of electors each state appoints is equal to the size of its congressional delegation, each state is entitled to at least three regardless of population, and the apportionment of the statutorily fixed number of the rest is only roughly proportional. In addition, faithless electors may not vote in accord with their pledge. Further objection is that instead of spending equally on each voter in the nation, candidates focus their campaigns on just a few swing states.


title: United States Electoral College

text: of the United States Constitution directs each state to appoint a quantity of electors equal to that state's congressional delegation (members of the House of Representatives plus two Senators). The same clause empowers each state legislature to determine the manner by which that state's electors are chosen but prohibits federal office holders from being named electors. Following the national presidential election day on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, each state, and the federal district, selects its electors according to its laws. After a popular election, the states identify and record their appointed electors in a "Certificate of Ascertainment", and those appointed electors then meet in their respective jurisdictions and produce a "Certificate of Vote" for their candidate; both certificates are then sent to Congress to be opened and counted.


title: United States Electoral College

text: In 48 of the 50 states, state laws mandate that the winner of the plurality of the statewide popular vote receive all of that state's electoral votes. In Maine and Nebraska, two electoral votes are assigned in this manner, while the remaining electoral votes are allocated based on the plurality of votes in each of their congressional districts. The federal district, Washington, D.C., allocates its 3 electoral votes to the winner of its single district election. States generally require electors to pledge to vote for that state's winning ticket; to prevent electors from being faithless electors, most states have adopted various laws to enforce the electors’ pledge.


title: United States Electoral College

text: The electors of each state meet in their respective state capital on the first Monday after the second Wednesday of December to cast their votes. The results are sent to and counted by the Congress, where they are tabulated in the first week of January before a joint meeting of the Senate and the House of Representatives, presided over by the current vice president, as president of the Senate. Should a majority of votes not be cast for a candidate, a contingent election takes place: the House holds a presidential election session, where one vote is cast by each of the fifty states; the Senate is responsible for electing the vice president, with each senator having one vote. The elected president and vice president are inaugurated on January 20.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Since 1964, there have been 538 electors. States select 535 of the electors, this number matches the aggregate total of their congressional delegations. The additional three electors come from the Twenty-third Amendment, ratified in 1961, providing that the district established pursuant to as the seat of the federal government (namely, Washington, D.C.) is entitled to the same number of electors as the least populous state. In practice, that results in Washington D.C. being entitled to 3 electors.


title: United States Electoral College

text: The Constitutional Convention in 1787 used the Virginia Plan as the basis for discussions, as the Virginia proposal was the first. The Virginia Plan called for Congress to elect the president. Delegates from a majority of states agreed to this mode of election. After being debated, however, delegates came to oppose nomination by Congress for the reason that it could violate the separation of powers. James Wilson then made a motion for electors for the purpose of choosing the president.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Later in the convention, a committee formed to work out various details including the mode of election of the president, including final recommendations for the electors, a group of people apportioned among the states in the same numbers as their representatives in Congress (the formula for which had been resolved in lengthy debates resulting in the Connecticut Compromise and Three-Fifths Compromise), but chosen by each state "in such manner as its Legislature may direct". Committee member Gouverneur Morris explained the reasons for the change; among others, there were fears of "intrigue" if the president were chosen by a small group of men who met together regularly, as well as concerns for the independence of the president if he were elected by Congress.


title: United States Electoral College

text: However, once the Electoral College had been decided on, several delegates (Mason, Butler, Morris, Wilson, and Madison) openly recognized its ability to protect the election process from cabal, corruption, intrigue, and faction. Some delegates, including James Wilson and James Madison, preferred popular election of the executive. Madison acknowledged that while a popular vote would be ideal, it would be difficult to get consensus on the proposal given the prevalence of slavery in the South:


title: United States Electoral College

text: The Convention approved the Committee's Electoral College proposal, with minor modifications, on September 6, 1787. Delegates from states with smaller populations or limited land area, such as Connecticut, New Jersey, and Maryland, generally favored the Electoral College with some consideration for states. At the compromise providing for a runoff among the top five candidates, the small states supposed that the House of Representatives, with each state delegation casting one vote, would decide most elections.


title: United States Electoral College

text: In "The Federalist Papers", James Madison explained his views on the selection of the president and the Constitution. In Federalist No. 39, Madison argued that the Constitution was designed to be a mixture of state-based and population-based government. Congress would have two houses: the state-based Senate and the population-based House of Representatives. Meanwhile, the president would be elected by a mixture of the two modes.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 68, published on March 12, 1788, laid out what he believed were the key advantages to the Electoral College. The electors come directly from the people and them alone, for that purpose only, and for that time only. This avoided a party-run legislature or a permanent body that could be influenced by foreign interests before each election. Hamilton explained that the election was to take place among all the states, so no corruption in any state could taint "the great body of the people" in their selection. The choice was to be made by a majority of the Electoral College, as majority rule is critical to the principles of republican government. Hamilton argued that electors meeting in the state capitals were able to have information unavailable to the general public, in a time before telecommunications. Hamilton also argued that since no federal officeholder could be an elector, none of the electors would be beholden to any presidential candidate.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Another consideration was that the decision would be made without "tumult and disorder", as it would be a broad-based one made simultaneously in various locales where the decision makers could deliberate reasonably, not in one place where decision makers could be threatened or intimidated. If the Electoral College did not achieve a decisive majority, then the House of Representatives was to choose the president from among the top five candidates, ensuring selection of a presiding officer administering the laws would have both ability and good character. Hamilton was also concerned about somebody unqualified but with a talent for "low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity" attaining high office.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Additionally, in the Federalist No. 10, James Madison argued against "an interested and overbearing majority" and the "mischiefs of faction" in an electoral system. He defined a faction as "a number of citizens whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community." A republican government (i.e., representative democracy, as opposed to direct democracy) combined with the principles of federalism (with distribution of voter rights and separation of government powers), would countervail against factions. Madison further postulated in the Federalist No.10 that the greater the population and expanse of the Republic, the more difficulty factions would face in organizing due to such issues as sectionalism.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Although the United States Constitution refers to "Electors" and "electors", neither the phrase "Electoral College" nor any other name is used to describe the electors collectively. It was not until the early 19th century that the name "Electoral College" came into general usage as the collective designation for the electors selected to cast votes for president and vice president. The phrase was first written into federal law in 1845, and today the term appears in , in the section heading and in the text as "college of electors".


title: United States Electoral College

text: of the Constitution provided the original plan by which the electors voted for president. Under the original plan, each elector cast two votes for president; electors did not vote for vice president. Whoever received a majority of votes from the electors would become president, with the person receiving the second most votes becoming vice president.


title: United States Electoral College

text: The original plan of the Electoral College was based upon several assumptions and anticipations of the Framers of the Constitution:


title: United States Electoral College

text: "The function of the College of Electors in choosing the president can be likened to that in the Roman Catholic Church of the College of Cardinals selecting the Pope. The original idea was for the most knowledgeable and informed individuals from each State to select the president based solely on merit and without regard to State of origin or political party."


title: United States Electoral College

text: According to Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, in a dissenting opinion, the original intention of the framers was that the electors would not feel bound to support any particular candidate, but would vote their conscience, free of external pressure.


title: United States Electoral College

text: "No one faithful to our history can deny that the plan originally contemplated, what is implicit in its text, that electors would be free agents, to exercise an independent and nonpartisan judgment as to the men best qualified for the Nation's highest offices."


title: United States Electoral College

text: 'It was desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided. This end will be answered by committing the right of making it, not to any pre-established body, but to men chosen by the people for the special purpose, and at the particular conjuncture... It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.'


title: United States Electoral College

text: Dr. Philip J. VanFossen of Purdue University explains that the original purpose of the electors was not to reflect the will of the citizens, but rather to "serve as a check on a public who might be easily misled."


title: United States Electoral College

text: Dr. Randall Calvert, the Eagleton Professor of Public Affairs and Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis, stated, "At the framing the more important consideration was that electors, expected to be more knowledgeable and responsible, would actually do the choosing."


title: United States Electoral College

text: In spite of Hamilton's assertion that electors were to be chosen by mass election, initially, state legislatures chose the electors in most of the states. States progressively changed to selection by popular election. In 1824, there were six states in which electors were still legislatively appointed. By 1832, only South Carolina had not transitioned. Since 1864, electors in every state have been chosen based on a popular election held on Election Day. The popular election for electors means the president and vice president are in effect chosen through indirect election by the citizens.


title: United States Electoral College

text: The framers of the Constitution did not anticipate political parties. Indeed George Washington's Farewell Address in 1796 included an urgent appeal to avert such parties. Neither did the framers anticipate candidates "running" for president. Within just a few years of the ratification of the Constitution, however, both phenomena became permanent features of the political landscape of the United States.


title: United States Electoral College

text: The emergence of political parties and nationally coordinated election campaigns soon complicated matters in the elections of 1796 and 1800. In 1796, Federalist Party candidate Charles Cotesworth Pinckney won the presidential election. Finishing in second place was Democratic-Republican Party candidate Thomas Jefferson, the Federalists' opponent, who became the vice president. This resulted in the president and vice president being of different political parties.


title: United States Electoral College

text: In 1800, the Democratic-Republican Party again nominated Jefferson for president and also again nominated Aaron Burr for vice president. After the electors voted, Jefferson and Burr were tied with one another with 73 electoral votes each. Since ballots did not distinguish between votes for president and votes for vice president, every ballot cast for Burr technically counted as a vote for him to become president, despite Jefferson clearly being his party's first choice. Lacking a clear winner by constitutional standards, the election had to be decided by the House of Representatives pursuant to the Constitution's contingency election provision.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Having already lost the presidential contest, Federalist Party representatives in the lame duck House session seized upon the opportunity to embarrass their opposition by attempting to elect Burr over Jefferson. The House deadlocked for 35 ballots as neither candidate received the necessary majority vote of the state delegations in the House (The votes of nine states were needed for a conclusive election.). On the 36th ballot, Delaware's lone Representative, James A. Bayard, made it known that he intended to break the impasse for fear that failure to do so could endanger the future of the Union. Bayard and other Federalists from South Carolina, Maryland, and Vermont abstained, breaking the deadlock and giving Jefferson a majority.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Responding to the problems from those elections, Congress proposed on December 9, 1803, and three-fourths of the states ratified by June 15, 1804, the Twelfth Amendment. Starting with the 1804 election, the amendment requires electors to cast separate ballots for president and vice president, replacing the system outlined in Article II, Section 1, Clause 3.


title: United States Electoral College

text: The Founding Fathers intended that each elector would be elected by the citizens of a district, and that elector was to be free to "analyze" and "deliberate" regarding who is best suited to be president.


title: United States Electoral College

text: In Federalist No. 68 Alexander Hamilton described the Founding Fathers' view of how electors would be chosen:


title: United States Electoral College

text: However, when electors were pledged to vote for a specific candidate, the slate of electors chosen by the state were no longer free agents, independent thinkers, or deliberative representatives. They became, as Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote, "voluntary party lackeys and intellectual non-entities." According to Hamilton, writing in 1788, the selection of the president should be "made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station [of president]." Hamilton stated that the electors were to "analyze" the list of potential presidents and select the best one. He also used the term "deliberate." In a 2020 opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court, the Court additionally cited John Jay's view that the electors' choices would reflect “discretion and discernment.”


title: United States Electoral College

text: Reflecting on this original intention, a U.S. Senate report in 1826 critiqued the evolution of the system:


title: United States Electoral College

text: It was the intention of the Constitution that these electors should be an independent body of men, chosen by the people from among themselves, on account of their superior discernment, virtue, and information; and that this select body should be left to make the election "according to their own will", without the slightest control from the body of the people. That this intention has failed of its object in every election, is a fact of such universal notoriety that no one can dispute it. Electors, therefore, have not answered the design of their institution. They are not the independent body and superior characters which they were intended to be. They are not left to the exercise of their own judgment: on the contrary, they give their vote, or bind themselves to give it, according to the will of their constituents. They have degenerated into mere agents, in a case which requires no agency, and where the agent must be useless...


title: United States Electoral College

text: In 1833, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story detailed how badly from the framers' intention the Electoral Process had been "subverted":


title: United States Electoral College

text: "In no respect have the views of the framers of the constitution been so completely frustrated as relates to the independence of the electors in the electoral colleges. It is notorious, that the electors are now chosen wholly with reference to particular candidates, and are silently pledged to vote for them. Nay, upon some occasions the electors publicly pledge themselves to vote for a particular person; and thus, in effect, the whole foundation of the system, so elaborately constructed, is subverted.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Story observed that if an elector does what the framers of the Constitution expected him to do, he would be considered immoral:


title: United States Electoral College

text: So, that nothing is left to the electors after their choice, but to register votes, which are already pledged; and an exercise of an independent judgment would be treated, as a political usurpation, dishonorable to the individual, and a fraud upon his constituents.


title: United States Electoral College

text: According to Hamilton and Madison, they intended that this would take place district by district. The district plan was last carried out in Michigan in 1892. For example, in Massachusetts in 1820, the rule stated "the people shall vote by ballot, on which shall be designated who is voted for as an Elector for the district." In other words, the name of a candidate for president was "not" on the ballot. Instead, citizens voted for their local elector.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Some state leaders began to adopt the strategy that the favorite partisan presidential candidate among the people in their state would have a much better chance if all of the electors selected by their state were sure to vote the same way—a "general ticket" of electors pledged to a party candidate. Once one state took that strategy, the others felt compelled to follow suit in order to compete for the strongest influence on the election.


title: United States Electoral College

text: When James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, two of the most important architects of the Electoral College, saw this strategy being taken by some states, they protested strongly. Madison said that when the Constitution was written, all of its authors assumed individual electors would be elected in their districts, and it was inconceivable that a "general ticket" of electors dictated by a state would supplant the concept. Madison wrote to George Hay:


title: United States Electoral College

text: Each state government was free to have its own plan for selecting its electors, and the Constitution does not explicitly require states to popularly elect their electors. However, Federalist#68, insofar as it reflects the intent of the founders, states that Electors will be "selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass," and with regard to choosing Electors, "they [the framers] have referred it in the first instance to an immediate act of the people of America." Several methods for selecting electors are described below.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Madison and Hamilton were so upset by the trend to "general tickets" that they advocated a constitutional amendment to prevent anything other than the district plan. Hamilton drafted an amendment to the Constitution mandating the district plan for selecting electors. However, Hamilton's untimely death in a duel with Aaron Burr in 1804 prevented him from advancing his proposed reforms any further. "[T]he election of Presidential Electors by districts, is an amendment very proper to be brought forward," Madison told George Hay in 1823. Madison also drafted a constitutional amendment that would insure the original "district" plan of the framers. Jefferson agreed with Hamilton and Madison saying, "all agree that an election by districts would be the best." Jefferson explained to Madison's correspondent why he was doubtful of the amendment being ratified: "the states are now so numerous that I despair of ever seeing another amendment of the constitution."


title: United States Electoral College

text: In 1789, the at-large popular vote, the winner-take-all method, began with Pennsylvania and Maryland. Massachusetts, Virginia and Delaware used a district plan by popular vote, and state legislatures chose in the five other states participating in the election (Connecticut, Georgia, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and South Carolina). New York, North Carolina and Rhode Island did not participate in the election. New York's legislature deadlocked and abstained; North Carolina and Rhode Island had not yet ratified the Constitution.


title: United States Electoral College

text: By 1800, Virginia and Rhode Island voted at large; Kentucky, Maryland, and North Carolina voted popularly by district; and eleven states voted by state legislature. Beginning in 1804 there was a definite trend towards the winner-take-all system for statewide popular vote.


title: United States Electoral College

text: By 1832, only South Carolina legislatively chose its electors, and it abandoned the method after 1860. Maryland was the only state using a district plan, and from 1836 district plans fell out of use until the 20th century, though Michigan used a district plan for 1892 only. States using popular vote by district have included ten states from all regions of the country.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Since 1836, statewide winner-take-all popular voting for electors has been the almost universal practice. Currently, Maine (since 1972) and Nebraska (since 1996) use the district plan, with two at-large electors assigned to support the winner of the statewide popular vote.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Since the mid-19th century, when all electors have been popularly chosen, the Electoral College has elected the candidate who received the most (though not necessarily a majority) popular votes nationwide, except in four elections: 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016. In 1824, when there were six states in which electors were legislatively appointed, rather than popularly elected, the true national popular vote is uncertain. The electors in 1824 failed to select a winning candidate, so the matter was decided by the House of Representatives.


title: United States Electoral College

text: After the initial estimates agreed to in the original Constitution, Congressional and Electoral College reapportionment was made according to a decennial census to reflect population changes, modified by counting three-fifths of slaves. On this basis after the first census, the Electoral College still gave the free men of slave-owning states (but never slaves) extra power (Electors) based on a count of these disenfranchised people, in the choice of the U.S. president.


title: United States Electoral College

text: At the Constitutional Convention, the College composition, in theory, amounted to 49 votes for northern states (in the process of abolishing slavery) and 42 for slave-holding states (including Delaware). In the event, the first (i.e. 1788) presidential election lacked votes and electors for unratified Rhode Island (3) and North Carolina (7) and for New York (8) which reported too late; the Northern majority was 38 to 35. For the next two decades, the three-fifths clause led to electors of free-soil Northern states numbering 8% and 11% more than Southern states. The latter had, in the compromise, relinquished counting two-fifths of their slaves and, after 1810, were outnumbered by 15.4% to 23.2%.


title: United States Electoral College

text: While House members for Southern states were boosted by an average of , a free-soil majority in the College maintained over this early republic and Antebellum period. Scholars further conclude that the three-fifths clause had low impact on sectional proportions and factional strength, until denying the North a pronounced supermajority, as to the Northern, federal initiative to abolish slavery. The seats that the South gained from such "slave bonus" were quite evenly distributed between the parties. In the First Party System (1795–1823), the Jefferson Republicans gained 1.1 percent more adherents from the slave bonus, while the Federalists lost the same proportion. At the Second Party System (1823–1837) the emerging Jacksonians gained just 0.7% more seats, versus the opposition loss of 1.6%.


title: United States Electoral College

text: The first "Jeffersonian" and "Jacksonian" victories were of great importance as they ushered in sustained party majorities of several Congresses and presidential party eras.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Besides the Constitution prohibiting Congress from regulating foreign or domestic slave trade before 1808 and a duty on states to return escaped "persons held to service", legal scholar Akhil Reed Amar argues that the College was originally advocated by slaveholders as a bulwark to prop up slavery. In the Congressional apportionment provided in the text of the Constitution with its Three-Fifths Compromise estimate, "Virginia emerged as the big winner [with] more than a quarter of the [votes] needed to win an election in the first round [for Washington's first presidential election in 1788]." Following the 1790 census, the most populous state in the 1790 Census was Virginia, with 39.1% slaves, or 292,315 counted three-fifths, to yield a calculated number of 175,389 for congressional apportionment. "The "free" state of Pennsylvania had 10% more free persons than Virginia but got 20% fewer electoral votes." Pennsylvania split eight to seven for Jefferson, favoring Jefferson with a majority of 53% in a state with 0.1% slave population. Historian Eric Foner agrees the Constitution's Three-Fifths Compromise gave protection to slavery.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Supporters of the College have provided many counterarguments to the charges that it defended slavery. Abraham Lincoln, the president who helped abolish slavery, won a College majority in 1860 despite winning 39.8% of citizen's votes. This, however, was a clear plurality of a popular vote divided among four main candidates.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Benner notes that Jefferson's first margin of victory would have been wider had the entire slave population been counted on a "per capita" basis. He also notes that some of the most vociferous critics of a national popular vote at the constitutional convention were delegates from free states, including Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, who declared that such a system would lead to a "great evil of cabal and corruption," and Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, who called a national popular vote "radically vicious". Delegates Oliver Ellsworth and Roger Sherman of Connecticut, a state which had adopted a gradual emancipation law three years earlier, also criticized a national popular vote. Of like view was Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, a member of Adams' Federalist Party, presidential candidate in 1800. He hailed from South Carolina and was a slaveholder. In 1824, Andrew Jackson, a slaveholder from Tennessee, was similarly defeated by John Quincy Adams, a strong critic of slavery.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment requires a state's representation in the House of Representatives to be reduced if the state denies the right to vote to any male citizen aged 21 or older, unless on the basis of "participation in rebellion, or other crime". The reduction is to be proportionate to such people denied a vote. This amendment refers to "the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States" (among other elections). It is the only part of the Constitution currently alluding to electors being selected by popular vote.


title: United States Electoral College

text: On May 8, 1866, during a debate on the Fourteenth Amendment, Thaddeus Stevens, the leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, delivered a speech on the amendment's intent. Regarding Section 2, he said:


title: United States Electoral College

text: of the Constitution authorizes Congress to fix the day on which the electors shall vote, which must be the same day throughout the United States. And both and the Twelfth Amendment that replaced it specifies that "the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted."


title: United States Electoral College

text: In 1887, Congress passed the Electoral Count Act, now codified in Title 3, Chapter 1 of the United States Code, establishing specific procedures for the counting of the electoral votes. The law was passed in response to the disputed 1876 presidential election, in which several states submitted competing slates of electors. Among its provisions, the law established deadlines that the states must meet when selecting their electors, resolving disputes, and when they must cast their electoral votes.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Since 1936, the date fixed by Congress for the meeting of the Electoral College is "on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December next following their appointment".


title: United States Electoral College

text: Article II, Section 1, Clause 2, disqualifies all elected and appointed federal officials from being electors. The Office of the Federal Register is charged with administering the Electoral College.


title: United States Electoral College

text: After the vote, each state sends to Congress a certified record of their electoral votes, called the Certificate of Vote. These certificates are opened during a joint session of Congress, held on January 6 unless another date is specified by law, and read aloud by the incumbent vice president, acting in his capacity as "president of the Senate". If any person receives an absolute majority of electoral votes, that person is declared the winner. If there is a tie, or if no candidate for either or both offices receives an absolute majority, then choice falls to Congress in a procedure known as a contingent election.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Even though the aggregate national popular vote is calculated by state officials, media organizations, and the Federal Election Commission, the people only indirectly elect the president and vice president. The president and vice president of the United States are elected by the Electoral College, which consists of 538 electors from the fifty states and Washington, D.C. Electors are selected state-by-state, as determined by the laws of each state. Since the 1824 election, the majority of states have chosen their presidential electors based on winner-take-all results in the statewide popular vote on Election Day. , Maine and Nebraska are exceptions as both use the congressional district method; Maine since 1972 and in Nebraska since 1996. In most states, the popular vote ballots list the names of the presidential and vice presidential candidates (who run on a ticket). The slate of electors that represent the winning ticket will vote for those two offices. Electors are nominated by a party and pledged to vote for their party's candidate. Many states require an elector to vote for the candidate to which the elector is pledged and, usually, the electors themselves do regardless but some "faithless electors" have voted for other candidates or refrained from voting.


title: United States Electoral College

text: A candidate must receive an absolute majority of electoral votes (currently 270) to win the presidency or the vice presidency. If no candidate receives a majority in the election for president or vice president, the election is determined via a contingency procedure established by the Twelfth Amendment. In such a situation, the House chooses one of the top three presidential electoral vote winners as the president, while the Senate chooses one of the top two vice presidential electoral vote winners as vice president.


title: United States Electoral College

text: A state's number of electors equals the number of representatives plus two electors for the senators the state has in the United States Congress. The number of representatives per state is apportioned based on their respective populations, determined every ten years by the United States Census.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Under the Twenty-third Amendment, Washington, D.C., is allocated as many electors as it would have if it were a state but no more electors than the least populous state. Because the least populous state (Wyoming, according to the 2020 census) has three electors, D.C. cannot have more than three electors. Even if D.C. were a state, its population would entitle it to only three electors. Based on its population per electoral vote, D.C. has the third highest per capita Electoral College representation, after Wyoming and Vermont.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Currently, there are 538 electors, based on 435 representatives, 100 senators from the fifty states and three electors from Washington, D.C. The six states with the most electors are California (54), Texas (40), Florida (30), New York (28), Illinois (19), and Pennsylvania (19). The District of Columbia and the six least populous states—Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming—have three electors each.


title: United States Electoral College

text: The custom of allowing recognized political parties to select a slate of prospective electors developed early. In contemporary practice, each presidential-vice presidential ticket has an associated slate of potential electors. Then on Election Day, the voters select a ticket and thereby select the associated electors.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Candidates for elector are nominated by state chapters of nationally oriented political parties in the months prior to Election Day. In some states, the electors are nominated by voters in primaries the same way other presidential candidates are nominated. In some states, such as Oklahoma, Virginia, and North Carolina, electors are nominated in party conventions. In Pennsylvania, the campaign committee of each candidate names their respective electoral college candidates (an attempt to discourage faithless electors). Varying by state, electors may also be elected by state legislatures or appointed by the parties themselves.


title: United States Electoral College

text: of the Constitution requires each state legislature to determine how electors for the state are to be chosen, but it disqualifies any person holding a federal office, either elected or appointed, from being an elector. Under Section3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, any person who has sworn an oath to support the United States Constitution in order to hold either a state or federal office, and later rebelled against the United States directly or by giving assistance to those doing so, is disqualified from being an elector. However, Congress may remove this disqualification by a two-thirds vote in each House.


title: United States Electoral College

text: All states currently choose presidential electors by popular vote. As of 2020, eight states name the electors on the ballot. Mostly, the "short ballot" is used; the short ballot displays the names of the candidates for president and vice president, rather than the names of prospective electors. Some states support voting for write-in candidates; those that do may require pre-registration of write-in candidacy, with designation of electors being done at that time. Since 1996, all but two states have followed the method of allocating electors by which every person named on the slate for the ticket winning the statewide popular vote are named as presidential electors. Maine and Nebraska are the only states not using this method. In those states, the winner of the popular vote in each of its congressional districts is awarded one elector, and the winner of the statewide vote is then awarded the state's remaining two electors. This method has been used in Maine since 1972 and in Nebraska since 1996. The Supreme Court previously upheld the power for a state to choose electors on the basis of congressional districts, holding that states possess plenary power to decide how electors are appointed in "McPherson v. Blacker", .


title: United States Electoral College

text: The Tuesday following the first Monday in November has been fixed as the day for holding federal elections, called the Election Day. After the election, each state prepares seven Certificates of Ascertainment, each listing the candidates for president and vice president, their pledged electors, and the total votes each candidacy received. One certificate is sent, as soon after Election Day as practicable, to the National Archivist in Washington. The Certificates of Ascertainment are mandated to carry the state seal and the signature of the governor (or mayor of D.C.).


title: United States Electoral College

text: The Electoral College never meets as one body. Electors meet in their respective state capitals (electors for the District of Columbia meet within the District) on the same day (set by Congress as the Monday after the second Wednesday in December) at which time they cast their electoral votes on separate ballots for president and vice president.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Although procedures in each state vary slightly, the electors generally follow a similar series of steps, The meeting is opened by the election certification official—often that state's secretary of state or equivalent—who reads the certificate of ascertainment. This document sets forth who was chosen to cast the electoral votes. The attendance of the electors is taken and any vacancies are noted in writing. The next step is the selection of a president or chairman of the meeting, sometimes also with a vice chairman. The electors sometimes choose a secretary, often not an elector, to take the minutes of the meeting. In many states, political officials give short speeches at this point in the proceedings.


title: United States Electoral College

text: When the time for balloting arrives, the electors choose one or two people to act as tellers. Some states provide for the placing in nomination of a candidate to receive the electoral votes (the candidate for president of the political party of the electors). Each elector submits a written ballot with the name of a candidate for president. Ballot formats vary between the states: in New Jersey for example, the electors cast ballots by checking the name of the candidate on a pre-printed card; in North Carolina, the electors write the name of the candidate on a blank card. The tellers count the ballots and announce the result. The next step is the casting of the vote for vice president, which follows a similar pattern.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Under the Electoral Count Act (updated and codified in ), each state's electors must complete six certificates of vote. Each Certificate of Vote (or "Certificate of the Vote") must be signed by all of the electors and a certificate of ascertainment must be attached to each of the certificates of vote. Each Certificate of Vote must include the names of those who received an electoral vote for either the office of president or of vice president. The electors certify the Certificates of Vote, and copies of the certificates are then sent in the following fashion:


title: United States Electoral College

text: A staff member of the President of the Senate collects the certificates of vote as they arrive and prepares them for the joint session of the Congress. The certificates are arranged—unopened—in alphabetical order and placed in two special mahogany boxes. Alabama through Missouri (including the District of Columbia) are placed in one box and Montana through Wyoming are placed in the other box. Before 1950, the Secretary of State's office oversaw the certifications, but since then the Office of Federal Register in the Archivist's office reviews them to make sure the documents sent to the archive and Congress match and that all formalities have been followed, sometimes requiring states to correct the documents.


title: United States Electoral College

text: An elector votes for each office, but at least one of these votes (president or vice president) must be cast for a person who is not a resident of the same state as that elector. A "faithless elector" is one who does not cast an electoral vote for the candidate of the party for whom that elector pledged to vote. Faithless electors are comparatively rare because electors are generally chosen among those who are already personally committed to a party and party's candidate. Thirty-three states plus the District of Columbia have laws against faithless electors, which were first enforced after the 2016 election, where ten electors voted or attempted to vote contrary to their pledges.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Faithless electors have never changed the outcome of a U.S. election for president. Altogether, 23,529 electors have taken part in the Electoral College as of the 2016 election; only 165 electors have cast votes for someone other than their party's nominee. Of that group, 71 did so because the nominee had died63 Democratic Party electors in 1872, when presidential nominee Horace Greeley died; and eight Republican Party electors in 1912, when vice presidential nominee James S. Sherman died.


title: United States Electoral College

text: While faithless electors have never changed the outcome of any presidential election, there are two occasions where the vice presidential election has been influenced by faithless electors:


title: United States Electoral College

text: Some constitutional scholars argued that state restrictions would be struck down if challenged based on Article II and the Twelfth Amendment. However, the United States Supreme Court has consistently ruled that state restrictions are allowed under the Constitution. In "Ray v. Blair", , the Court ruled in favor of state laws requiring electors to pledge to vote for the winning candidate, as well as removing electors who refuse to pledge. As stated in the ruling, electors are acting as a functionary of the state, not the federal government. In "Chiafalo v. Washington", 591 U.S. ___ (2020), and a related case, the Court held that electors must vote in accord with their state's laws. Faithless electors also may face censure from their political party, as they are usually chosen based on their perceived party loyalty.


title: United States Electoral College

text: The Twelfth Amendment mandates Congress assemble in joint session to count the electoral votes and declare the winners of the election. The session is ordinarily required to take place on January6 in the calendar year immediately following the meetings of the presidential electors. Since the Twentieth Amendment, the newly elected joint Congress declares the winner of the election; all elections before 1936 were determined by the outgoing House.


title: United States Electoral College

text: The Office of the Federal Register is charged with administering the Electoral College. The meeting is held at 1p.m. in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives. The sitting vice president is expected to preside, but in several cases the president "pro tempore" of the Senate has chaired the proceedings. The vice president and the speaker of the House sit at the podium, with the vice president sitting to the right of the speaker of the House. Senate pages bring in two mahogany boxes containing each state's certified vote and place them on tables in front of the senators and representatives. Each house appoints two tellers to count the vote (normally one member of each political party). Relevant portions of the certificate of vote are read for each state, in alphabetical order.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Members of Congress can object to any state's vote count, provided objection is presented in writing and is signed by at least one member of each house of Congress. An objection supported by at least one senator and one representative will be followed by the suspension of the joint session and by separate debates and votes in each House of Congress; after both Houses deliberate on the objection, the joint session is resumed.


title: United States Electoral College

text: A state's certificate of vote can be rejected only if both Houses of Congress vote to accept the objection via a simple majority, meaning the votes from the State in question are not counted. Individual votes can also be rejected, and are also not counted.


title: United States Electoral College

text: If there are no objections or all objections are overruled, the presiding officer simply includes a state's votes, as declared in the certificate of vote, in the official tally.


title: United States Electoral College

text: After the certificates from all states are read and the respective votes are counted, the presiding officer simply announces the final state of the vote. This announcement concludes the joint session and formalizes the recognition of the president-elect and of the vice president-elect. The senators then depart from the House chamber. The final tally is printed in the Senate and House journals.


title: United States Electoral College

text: If no candidate for president receives an absolute majority of the electoral votes (since 1964, 270 of the 538 electoral votes), then the Twelfth Amendment requires the House of Representatives to go into session immediately to choose a president. In this event, the House of Representatives is limited to choosing from among the three candidates who received the most electoral votes for president. Each state delegation votes "en bloc"—each delegation having a single vote; the District of Columbia does not get to vote. A candidate must receive an absolute majority of state delegation votes (i.e., at present, a minimum of 26 votes) in order for that candidate to become the "president-elect". Additionally, delegations from at least two thirds of all the states must be present for voting to take place. The House continues balloting until it elects a president.


title: United States Electoral College

text: The House of Representatives has been required to choose the president only twice: in 1801 under Article II, Section 1, Clause 3; and in 1825 under the Twelfth Amendment.


title: United States Electoral College

text: If no candidate for vice president receives an absolute majority of electoral votes, then the Senate must go into session to choose a vice president. The Senate is limited to choosing from the two candidates who received the most electoral votes for vice president. Normally this would mean two candidates, one less than the number of candidates available in the House vote. However, the text is written in such a way that "all" candidates with the most and second-most electoral votes are eligible for the Senate election—this number could theoretically be larger than two. The Senate votes in the normal manner in this case (i.e., ballots are individually cast by each senator, not by state delegations). However, two-thirds of the senators must be present for voting to take place.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Additionally, the Twelfth Amendment states a "majority of the whole number" of senators (currently 51 of 100) is necessary for election. Further, the language requiring an absolute majority of Senate votes precludes the sitting vice president from breaking any tie that might occur, although some academics and journalists have speculated to the contrary.


title: United States Electoral College

text: The only time the Senate chose the vice president was in 1837. In that instance, the Senate adopted an alphabetical roll call and voting aloud. The rules further stated, "[I]f a majority of the number of senators shall vote for either the said Richard M. Johnson or Francis Granger, he shall be declared by the presiding officer of the Senate constitutionally elected Vice President of the United States"; the Senate chose Johnson.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Section 3 of the Twentieth Amendment specifies that if the House of Representatives has not chosen a "president-elect" in time for the inauguration (noon EST on January 20), then the "vice president-elect" becomes acting president until the House selects a president. Section3 also specifies that Congress may statutorily provide for who will be acting president if there is neither a president-elect nor a vice president-elect in time for the inauguration. Under the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, the Speaker of the House would become acting president until either the House selects a president or the Senate selects a vice president. Neither of these situations has ever arisen.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Before the advent of the "short ballot" in the early 20th century (as described in Selection process) the most common means of electing the presidential electors was through the "general ticket". The general ticket is quite similar to the current system and is often confused with it. In the general ticket, voters cast ballots for individuals running for presidential elector (while in the short ballot, voters cast ballots for an entire slate of electors). In the general ticket, the state canvass would report the number of votes cast for each candidate for elector, a complicated process in states like New York with multiple positions to fill. Both the general ticket and the short ballot are often considered at-large or winner-takes-all voting. The short ballot was adopted by the various states at different times; it was adopted for use by North Carolina and Ohio in 1932. Alabama was still using the general ticket as late as 1960 and was one of the last states to switch to the short ballot.


title: United States Electoral College

text: The question of the extent to which state constitutions may constrain the legislature's choice of a method of choosing electors has been touched on in two U.S. Supreme Court cases. In "McPherson v. Blacker", , the Court cited Article II, Section 1, Clause2 which states that a state's electors are selected "in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct" and wrote these words "operat[e] as a limitation upon the state in respect of any attempt to circumscribe the legislative power". In "Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board", , a Florida Supreme Court decision was vacated (not reversed) based on "McPherson". On the other hand, three dissenting justices in "Bush v. Gore", , wrote: "[N]othing in Article II of the Federal Constitution frees the state legislature from the constraints in the State Constitution that created it." Extensive research on alternate methods of electoral allocation have been conducted by Collin Welke, Dylan Shearer, and Riley Wagie in 2019.


title: United States Electoral College

text: In the earliest presidential elections, state legislative choice was the most common method of choosing electors. A majority of the state legislatures selected presidential electors in both 1792 (9 of 15) and 1800 (10 of 16), and half of them did so in 1812. Even in the 1824 election, a quarter of state legislatures (6 of 24) chose electors. (In that election, Andrew Jackson lost in spite of having plurality of the popular vote and the number of electoral votes representing them because six state legislatures chose electors that overturned their voters' support.) Some state legislatures simply chose electors, while other states used a hybrid method in which state legislatures chose from a group of electors elected by popular vote. By 1828, with the rise of Jacksonian democracy, only Delaware and South Carolina used legislative choice. Delaware ended its practice the following election (1832), while South Carolina continued using the method until it seceded from the Union in December 1860. South Carolina used the popular vote for the first time in the 1868 election.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Legislative appointment was brandished as a possibility in the 2000 election. Had the recount continued, the Florida legislature was prepared to appoint the Republican slate of electors to avoid missing the federal safe-harbor deadline for choosing electors.


title: United States Electoral College

text: The Constitution gives each state legislature the power to decide how its state's electors are chosen and it can be easier and cheaper for a state legislature to simply appoint a slate of electors than to create a legislative framework for holding elections to determine the electors. As noted above, the two situations in which legislative choice has been used since the Civil War have both been because there was not enough time or money to prepare for an election. However, appointment by state legislature can have negative consequences: bicameral legislatures can deadlock more easily than the electorate. This is precisely what happened to New York in 1789 when the legislature failed to appoint any electors.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Another method used early in U.S. history was to divide the state into electoral districts. By this method, voters in each district would cast their ballots for the electors they supported and the winner in each district would become the elector. This was similar to how states are currently separated into congressional districts. However, the difference stems from the fact that every state always had two more electoral districts than congressional districts. As with congressional districts, moreover, this method is vulnerable to gerrymandering.


title: United States Electoral College

text: There are two versions of the congressional district method: one has been implemented in Maine and Nebraska; another was used in New York in 1828 and proposed for use in Virginia. Under the implemented method, one electoral vote goes per the plurality of the popular votes of each congressional district (for the U.S. House of Representatives); and two per the statewide popular vote. This may result in greater proportionality. It has often acted as the other states, as in 1992, when George H. W. Bush won all five of Nebraska's electoral votes with a clear plurality on 47% of the vote; in a truly proportional system, he would have received three and Bill Clinton and Ross Perot each would have received one.


title: United States Electoral College

text: In 2013, the Virginia proposal was tabled. Like the other congressional district methods, this would have distributed the electoral votes based on the popular vote winner within each of Virginia's 11 congressional districts; the two statewide electoral votes would be awarded based on which candidate won the most congressional districts. A similar method was used in New York in 1828: the two at large electors were elected by the electors selected in districts.


title: United States Electoral College

text: A congressional district method is more likely to arise than other alternatives to the winner-takes-whole-state method, in view of the main two parties' resistance to scrap first-past-the-post. State legislation is sufficient to use this method. Advocates of the method believe the system encourages higher voter turnout or incentivizes candidates, to visit and appeal to some states deemed safe, overall, for one party. Winner-take-all systems ignore thousands of votes; in Democratic California there are Republican districts, in Republican Texas there are Democratic districts. Because candidates have an incentive to campaign in competitive districts, with a district plan, candidates have an incentive to actively campaign in over thirty states versus about seven "swing" states. Opponents of the system, however, argue candidates might only spend time in certain battleground districts instead of the entire state and cases of gerrymandering could become exacerbated as political parties attempt to draw as many safe districts as they can.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Unlike simple congressional district comparisons, the district plan popular vote bonus in the 2008 election would have given Obama 56% of the Electoral College versus the 68% he did win; it "would have more closely approximated the percentage of the popular vote won [53%]". However, the district plan would have given Obama 49% of the Electoral College in 2012, and would have given Romney a win in the Electoral College even though Obama won the popular vote by nearly 4% (51.1–47.2) over Romney.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Of the 44 multi-district states whose 517 electoral votes are amenable to the method, only Maine (4 EV) and Nebraska (5 EV) apply it. Maine began using the congressional district method in the election of 1972. Nebraska has used the congressional district method since the election of 1992. Michigan used the system for the 1892 presidential election, and several other states used various forms of the district plan before 1840: Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Illinois, Maine, Missouri, and New York.


title: United States Electoral College

text: The congressional district method allows a state the chance to split its electoral votes between multiple candidates. Prior to 2008, neither Maine nor Nebraska had ever split their electoral votes. Nebraska split its electoral votes for the first time in 2008, giving John McCain its statewide electors and those of two congressional districts, while Barack Obama won the electoral vote of Nebraska's 2nd congressional district. Following the 2008 split, some Nebraska Republicans made efforts to discard the congressional district method and return to the winner-takes-all system. In January 2010, a bill was introduced in the Nebraska legislature to revert to a winner-take-all system; the bill died in committee in March 2011. Republicans had passed bills in 1995 and 1997 to do the same, which were vetoed by Democratic Governor Ben Nelson.


title: United States Electoral College

text: In 2010, Republicans in Pennsylvania, who controlled both houses of the legislature as well as the governorship, put forward a plan to change the state's winner-takes-all system to a congressional district method system. Pennsylvania had voted for the Democratic candidate in the five previous presidential elections, so this was seen an attempt to take away Democratic electoral votes. Democrat Barack Obama won Pennsylvania in 2008 with 55% of its vote. The district plan would have awarded him 11 of its 21 electoral votes, a 52.4% which was much closer to the popular vote percentage. The plan later lost support. Other Republicans, including Michigan state representative Pete Lund, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, have floated similar ideas.


title: United States Electoral College

text: In a proportional system, electors would be selected in proportion to the votes cast for their candidate or party, rather than being selected by the statewide plurality vote.


title: United States Electoral College

text: 21st century Polling data shows that a majority of Americans consistently favor having a direct popular vote for presidential elections. The popularity of the Electoral College has hovered between 35% and 44%.


title: United States Electoral College

text: Arguments between proponents and opponents of the current electoral system include four separate but related topics: indirect election, disproportionate voting power by some states, the winner-takes-all distribution method (as chosen by 48 of the 50 states, and the District of Columbia), and federalism. Arguments against the Electoral College in common discussion focus mostly on the allocation of the voting power among the states. Gary Bugh's research of congressional debates over proposed constitutional amendments to abolish the Electoral College reveals reform opponents have often appealed to a traditional republican version of representation, whereas reform advocates have tended to reference a more democratic view.


title: United States Electoral College

text: The elections of 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016 produced an Electoral College winner who did not receive at least a plurality of the nationwide popular vote. In 1824, there were six states in which electors were legislatively appointed, rather than popularly elected, so it is uncertain what the national popular vote would have been if all presidential electors had been popularly elected. When no presidential candidate received a majority of electoral votes in 1824, the election was decided by the House of Representatives and so could be considered distinct from the latter four elections in which all of the states had popular selection of electors. The true national popular vote was also uncertain in the 1960 election, and the plurality for the winner depends on how votes for Alabama electors are allocated.