Vice President of The United States - Origin

Origin

The creation of the office of Vice President was a direct consequence of the Electoral College. Delegates to the Philadelphia Convention gave each state a number of presidential electors equal to that state's combined share of House and Senate seats. Yet the delegates were worried that each elector would only favor his own state's favorite son candidate, resulting in deadlocked elections that would produce no winners. To counter this presumed difficulty, the delegates gave each presidential elector two votes, required at least one of those votes be for a candidate from outside the elector's state, and mandated that the winner of the election obtain an absolute majority with respect to the total number of electors. With these rules in place, the delegates hoped each electors' second vote would go to a statesman of national character.

However, fearing electors might throw away their second vote to bolster their favorite son's chance of winning, the Philadelphia delegates specified that the runner-up in the election would become Vice President. Creating this new office imposed a political cost on discarded votes, and thus required electors staidly cast their second ballots.