  The first direct measurement of electron-neutrino quasielastic and
quasielastic-like scattering on hydrocarbon in the few-GeV region of incident
neutrino energy has been carried out using the MINERvA detector in the NuMI
beam at Fermilab. The flux-integrated differential cross sections in electron
production angle, electron energy and $Q^{2}$ are presented. The ratio of the
quasielastic, flux-integrated differential cross section in $Q^{2}$ for
$\nu_{e}$ with that of similarly-selected $\nu_{\mu}$-induced events from the
same exposure is used to probe assumptions that underpin conventional
treatments of charged-current $\nu_{e}$ interactions used by long-baseline
neutrino oscillation experiments. The data are found to be consistent with
lepton universality and are well-described by the predictions of the neutrino
event generator GENIE.
