Rockridge
High School
Taylor
Ridge, Illinois
Teacher:
Barbara Downey
Old
Things Last Longer
By Elliott Dungan
12th grade
Why does a system two hundred and fourteen years old continue working
today? Ever since the formation
of the Constitution there have been three different plans of trying to elect a
President for the people. The
Electoral College is the one that has worked through the ages.
The Electoral College should continue to be used because it is fair to
the people. However, we should reform campaign spending/collecting, and
establish fair election voting.
The first step to keeping
the Electoral College as our true voting system is distributing the Electoral
votes fairly. The way the
electoral votes are distributed now is that each state gets an elector for
each Representative and Senator that state has.
Also, we give Washington D.C. three electoral votes.
The way we determine the Representatives/Senators that represent us in
the Electoral College is by a general election on the Tuesday following the
first Monday in November. The
people in each state cast their ballots for the party slate of Electors
representing there choice for President and Vice- President.
Then on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December the
electors go to their state’s capitol and vote for their people's choice of
candidates.
Another
big step in returning control to the people is to require that all money
contributed to a campaign originate in that candidate’s district.
This would stop all overseas funding, like we had when Ex-President
Clinton had his Buddhist Temple fund-raiser in 1996.
We also need to stop the PAC (Political Action Committees) groups.
We have lawmakers who are of, by, and for the money machine.
In a free society how is it that we can get back control?
As Abraham Lincoln said, "Government of the people, by the people,
and for the people." This
idea has been thrown to the wayside, and it is now time to give the people
back their control.
The next step needed to take to help the Electoral College is to get
fair voting across the United States. Not
all the states use the same voting system. Every state except Maine and
Nebraska uses the winner-take-all which states that all the state’s votes
would automatically be awarded to the ticket that carried that state’s
popular vote. Maine uses the
district, where the district votes are divided according to popular vote.
The
final giant step that is needed to keep the Election fair and clean is to get
rid of all campaign spending/collecting.
Campaign finance reform was one of the main topics for the two thousand
elections. Brian D. Saunders of
Maryland devised seven simple steps to stop Campaign Finance
spending/collecting:
1)
All contributions must be made directly to a particular candidate.
2)
Candidates must receive three-quarters of their total contributions from the
electorate eligible to vote for the office the candidate is seeking in the
general election.
3)
Full public disclosure of all funds raised their source, amount and date
received will be provided on a quarterly basis until the last six months
before the election, at which time disclosure will be required every two
weeks.
4)
All political advertisements, materials, and literature must carry the name of
the committee, organization, corporation, or sponsoring agency.
5)
The government has no place funding elections for those seeking political
office.
6)
Ballot access must be made uniform and fair for all federal offices
7)
The Electoral College needs to be returned to a true representative process.
All
these steps are necessary to get the Election back to the people.
In 1888 Lord Bryce observed that "Great men don't become
Presidents," and he is right because we don't know how to tell great men
from con artists. How true can this statement be?
In the two thousand elections we had a lot of pragmatic ideologues.
The candidates were considered sitting in the middle of the fence. They
tilt the way that they think the people want to hear.
Over time we have had a lot of changes to our political system and
elections. It is good to find an
old system that has lasted this long.
Bibliography
Saunders,
Brian. “Simple Campaign Finance Reform.”
Online. Internet 18 Dec. 2000.
Available WWW: http://saunders4congress.com/comments/comments52.html
Windischman,
Woodrow. “Campaign, Finance, and Lobby Reform.”
Online. Internet 18 Dec. 2000 Available WWW: http://www.mindspring.com/~woodrow3/cfreform.htm
“How
the Electoral College works.” Online. Internet 8 Dec. 2000 Available
WWW: http://www.fec.gov/pages/ecworks.htm
“Campaign
for American-Home.” Online. Internet
18 Dec. 2000 Available WWW: http://www.campaignforamerica.org/
Questions
1.
How and when did the United States
elect a president and vice president of different parties?
Name them and their respective parties. The
election of 1796 was the first time that an elected vice president and
president were from different parties. Thomas Jefferson was chosen as
president and he was a Republican, while John Adams, a Federalist, won the
vice presidential race.
2.
Describe four ways that were suggested
to elect the president between 1808 and 1846. In
1808, a proposal arose to elect our president by casting lots from retiring
Senators. Later, the states were each to elect a native-son candidate. Soon
after, in 1816, Senator Abner Lacock of Pennsylvania announced his idea for a
direct-vote plan. Representative Haynes of Georgia proposed an automatic plan
in 1846. In this, a state's electoral votes would automatically be cast for
the candidate who received the highest popular vote. Finally, Representative
Lawrence of New York introduced the proportional plan in 1848. This called for
a division of each state's Electoral College votes according to the popular
vote received by each party.
3.
Name five U.S. Presidents who were
elected with less than a popular vote. John
Quincy Adams, J. Polk, Zachory Taylor, J. Buchanan, and Abraham Lincoln.
4.
Describe the winner-take-all system.
Which states use this system? Under
the winner-take-all provision, the candidate must receive the majority of
electoral votes to win. Every state but Maine uses this plan.
5.
When do electors vote and when are the
result known? They vote the
first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. In January, the votes are
counted before both Houses and the results are officially announced.
6.
What effect would substituting a direct
popular vote for the Electoral College have on third party candidates? Why? Opponents
to the direct vote plan believe it would harm our two party systems by
encouraging minority parties and make actual voting more important than
population. A race's winner could be chosen solely on special interest issues.
7.
Give four arguments for and against a
direct vote system. Advocates
of a direct voting system claim that this plan would always ensure that the
candidate with the greatest popular vote would win the presidency, give equal
weight to every vote, do away the faithless elector problem, and reduce the
chance of fraud. The opponents to the direct voting plan say that it will hurt
our two party systems, weaken states power and strengthen the national
government, eliminate the relevancy of state borders, and determine the
federal standards of eligibility to make the presidential choices uniform.
8.
Describe the differences between the
district plan, the proportional plan, and the winner-take-all plan. The
proportional plan calls for a division of each state’s Electoral College
according to the popular vote received by each party. A district plan allows
two electors chosen on a statewide popular level and one is chosen from each
of Maine’s two congressional districts. In the winner-take-all plan, the
candidate with the highest percentage of popular votes would automatically
win.
9.
State the four points experts in 1969
agreed should be included in an ideal plan for electing U.S. Presidents. The
four points the experts, who met in D.C. in 1969, agreed on are the following:
the need for a quick decision and clear-cut winner; the victor should be the
people’s choice winner of the most popular votes; the president-elect should
have a mandate to govern, a legitimacy which comes from a good margin of
victory; and the ideal system should not undermine the two-party system.
10. Write a paragraph describing what is meant by one of the following: I choose, Americans prefer pragmatists to ideologues. A candidate that is pragmatic is one who switches ideas for what the people want to hear. The people these days like pragmatists because then the people feel like their ideas are being heard and the candidates will try to meet those concerns. Many of the things that are topics of pragmatists are; environmental issues, gun rights, and abortion rights activists.