Centerville High School

Centerville, South Dakota

Teacher: Terri Buechler

 

 

The Electoral College

By Abby Pingrey

 

 

I am undecided about my opinion. I believe there are many advantages and disadvantages to the Electoral College System and how it runs. Many people do not understand the concept of the electoral vote, and in order to appreciate the reasons for the Electoral College it is essential to understand its historical context and the problem that the Founding Fathers were trying to solve.

           

People do not understand that we have to work as a team, meeting in the middle to fulfill the needs of everybody. In the beginning we had 13 distinct states whose sizes varied. They all were jealous of their rights and powers. Since British political thinkers still had an influence on the people, Americans thought that political parties were downright evil. Some believed, “The office should seek the man, the man should not seek the office.” They thought campaigning for public office was fake and unreal. But choosing a President without political parties, without national campaigns, and without upsetting the carefully designed balance between the Presidency and the congress leaves us with one question. Who would win?

           

They came up with a few different kinds of methods for picking the president. One idea was to have the President be chosen by the Congress. It failed, however, because some felt making such a choice would be too divisive and leave too many hard feelings in the congress.

           

Another idea was to have state legislatures choose the President. This idea was also rejected out of fears that the state legislatures might permit them to erode federal authority and undermine the whole idea of a federation.

           

Direct popular vote was also considered. Simply put your vote counts, therefore, everybody had a say in it. This too was rejected for the fact that people feared that without sufficient information about candidates outside their state, people would naturally vote from their own state region.

           

“Committee of Eleven” was finally discovered, which was an indirect election. The structures of the Electoral College and the Centurial Assembly system of the Roman Republic are similar in many ways. Adult male citizens of Rome were divided into groups of 100 according to their wealth. Each group of 100 were entitled to cast only one vote either in favor or against proposals submitted to them by Roman Senate. In the Electoral College system the states serve as the 100 people, and obviously not by wealth in our situation. The number of votes per state is determined by the size of each state’s congressional delegation.

           

From the beginning to this day the manner of choosing state electors was left to each state’s legislature. Some used direct-vote plan, some did it on their own.

           

There are many pros and cons of the Electoral College System. Arguments against the Electoral College are generally among these four arguments. (1) The possibility of electing a minority president (2) the risk of so-called “faithless” electors (3) the possible role of Electoral College in depressing voter turnout, and (4) its failure to accurately reflect the national popular will.

           

The possibility of electing a minority president means that one without the absolute majority of popular votes might win. Why would this be a big problem when there are other ways to end up with the same ending stages? The minority president could be elected if the country were so deeply divided politically that three or more presidential candidates split the electoral votes among them so no one obtained the necessary majority. Another way would be if a third party or candidate drew enough votes form the top two that no one received over 50% of the national popular vote.

           

The risk of so-called “faithless” electors means that a person (the faithless elector) who is pledged to vote for his party’s candidate for president votes for a different candidate.

           

The possible role of Electoral College in depressing voter turnout is more dramatic than others. The argument explains that since each state is entitles to a set number of electoral votes regardless if its voter turnout; there is no incentive in the states to encourage voter participation.

           

Failure to accurately reflect the national popular vote is that the distribution of Electoral votes in the college tends to over represent people in rural states.

           

Arguments for the electoral college are normally defended on the grounds that (1) contributes to the cohesiveness of the country by requiring a distribution of popular support to be elected president (2) enhances the status of minority interests (3) contributes to the political stability of the nation by encouraging a two-party system, and (4) maintains a federal system of government and representation.

           

It contributes to the cohesiveness of the country by requiring a distribution of popular support to be elected president because of the Electoral College that the Presidential nominees are inclined to select Vice Presidential running mates form a region other than their own.

           

It may enhance the status of minority groups by encouraging a two-party system. There can be no doubt that the Electoral College has encouraged and helps to maintain a two-party system in the United States.

           

It contributes to the political stability of the nation by encouraging a two-party system and keeps it going not only in a one party system but a two party system.

           

It maintains a federal system of government and representation and the reasoning is that a formal federal structure, important political powers are reserved to the component states.

           

The fact that the Electoral College was originally designed to solve one set of problems but today serves to solve an entirely different set of problems is a tribute to the genius of the Founding Fathers and to the durability of the American federal system. Overall I would pick the Electoral College for the fact that we have used it this long and we’ve made it this far.

 

 

Required Questions

 

 

1.                  In 1796 the United States elected a president and vice president of different parties. John Adams, a federalist, had the highest number of votes and became president, and Thomas Jefferson, a republican became vice president.

2.                  Four ways that were suggested to elect the President between 1808 and 1846 were by lot, the direct-vote plan, regional electoral, and the automatic plan. By lot the candidate were to come from retiring Senators; in later proposals the states were each to elect a native-son candidate. The Direct-Vote Plan is simply your vote counts. Say if I voted for Bush, then my vote counts for Bush. The regional electoral was proposed that the president be chosen on a rotating basis. The last way was the automatic, which the state goes with the popular vote.

3.                  George Bush, Abraham Lincoln, Harry Truman, John Buchanan, and Robert Hays were all among the United States Presidents who were elected with less than a popular vote.

4.                  The winner-takes-all system is when all of the states votes automatically be awarded to the person that carried that state’s popular vote. Every state in the United States uses this winner-takes-all system except Maine.

5.                  The electors vote the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. The votes are counted before both Houses and the results are officially announced in January.

6.                  The affect of substituting a direct popular vote for the Electoral College would be a benefit on the third party. If the other two were close and then the bulk is split so the third party would end up with the most votes.

7.                  Two arguments for the direct-vote plan would be that the system would always ensure that the candidate with the greatest popular vote would win the office of president and that it would give equal weight to every vote, pretty much saying that every vote counts. Two arguments against the direct-vote plan would be that it would weaken the power of the states and strengthen the national government, and they thought that the direct vote would encourage minority parties because there would be a greater probability that two major parties would not receive a majority.

8.                  There are several differences between the district plan, the proportional plan and the winner-take-all plan. In the district plan they would like to instead have the districts vote instead of the states. Now we have the 52 states vote and they have the winner of the voting take all the electoral votes. Instead of dealing with the 52 states we would be looking at over 400 district votes.  In the proportional plan they would like to split half way in which they would give 2 of the electoral votes to the winner and 1 of the votes to the loser. That way 2/3 of the people’s votes count.  Now our election is based on the winner-takes-all plan. The winner of the whole state gets all of the 3 electoral votes and the loser is left with nothing. Basically in the winner-takes-all plan not everybody’s votes counts.

   

 9. The four points that the state agreed on in 1969 about electing U.S. presidents were that (1) the need for a quick decision and clear-cut winner; (2) the victor should be the peoples’ choice winner of the most popular votes; (3) the president-elect should have a mandate to govern, a legitimacy which comes from a good margin of victory; and (4) the    ideal system should not undermine the who-party system.

 

10. “Florida had never been counted; not even once” was stated by the fuming democrats. It merely means that the democrats thought the intention of the republicans was to swindle them by not counting all the democratic votes. On the other hand, the republicans thought that the democrats were counting their votes more than once and actually they concluded that they were counting them 2 or three times. I personally don’t know whom to believe. I did not attend the Florida hearing but I am willing to listen to everyone’s point of view. I don’t think there is a right answer but I do think there was some cheating involved, that is on both ends.

 

11. I do believe that Florida and the U.S. Supreme Courts politicized their decisions based on their essential jobs and the weight they had on them from the press and today’s society.  I watched numerous broadcasts on T.V. and I concluded that this last election was very irritating to a large number of people. There was a lot of confusion in twined in this previous election.

 

12. Honestly I don’t really know to be ashamed or be proud to be an American. Yeah, there are a lot of ways that I am very pleased to be an American and I can say that I am more proud than ashamed but there have been a few moments that I have put my head down. But two biggest lines are “cheater’s never prosper” and “If you do not take the time to have a part in it, you do not have a right to be negative towards it.” I believe what happened came about for a reason. I just hope that if some one did cheat than they have their conscious to listen to and feel bad. Most of all I am proud to be an American for the fact that our country has served a lot of amazing people and we have had many situations we have done well in and ended up the hero’s. I do not think that this past election would change my mind.

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