Centerville High
School
Centerville, South
Dakota
Teacher: Teri
Buechler
The Electoral College
By Adam Carlson
The intent of
setting up the American government will never be known for sure, but it is gathered that
they preferred a republic to a democracy. In the constitutional convention the drafters
had to decide how much power they would supply the people of the United States, and how
much should be controlled by representatives. They chose to have Congress make the laws,
and congress would be selected directly by the people. But another branch of government,
the executive branch, needed a sole President and the framers had to decide how to choose
this President. They chose from three main systems: elect the President by congress, the
people, or electors.
Many debates were
made over this topic in the constitutional convention and eventually the Electoral College
system was chosen. The Electoral College system has been in place for over 200 years. I,
and other Americans, are still not sure how it works or if it is the best system. Many
Americans feel they go to the polls every four years and vote for the President and
believe in the long run that they are in control of the fate of our executive branch. Not
many believed in the direct vote system. Sure enough, the arguments that were made in
favor of this system were presented for the future generations of America.
This system was
voted down twice, but was helpful in seeing the pitfalls of the legislature deciding a
President. When they had seen the pitfalls of two systems, a third compromising system
evolved, the electors. This third system was to have electors that could not be a member
of congress vote for the President. Most of the arguments made in support of the elector
system were nothing more than negative arguments of the other two systems. The elector
system was voted down twice, once as the electors to be chosen by state legislatures and
the other time as the electors to be chosen by direct vote. It was passed under the system
of letting state legislatures decide how to choose the electors. Finally they had chosen a
system of electing a President. Winston Churchill had said, "The Electoral College
system is probably the worst possible method of choosing a president-except for all the
others."
States went three
main routes in choosing electors: the legislative system, where state legislatures choose
the electors; a district system, where electors are selected by the people of each
congressional district; and the general ticket, or a winner-take-all system, where a
popular vote was held in the entire state, and the winner took all electoral votes. The
legislative system eventually failed because of too much bargaining, promises, and
payoffs. The district system eventually lost popularity because it encourages third
parties. This left the general ticket system as the dominating system. Most all states no
longer show the electors' names on the ballot. The voter votes for either the President or
the party that they wish to hold office. This causes a problem of the unfaithful elector.
Electors are expected to ratify the people's choice by voting for candidates winning the
popular election. Electors that do not vote for what they are expected to vote for are
considered faithless or unfaithful electors. This has not traditionally been a problem in
the history of the Electoral College but it could possibly be a problem. Basically the
Electoral College system works like this today.
Every ten years the
census figures and adjusts how many representatives each state has. This number plus two,
representing the two senators, equals how many electors each state has. Also DC has 3
electors. Then each state has the right to decide how to select these electors.
Forty-eight states use the general ticket system, two states, Maine and Nebraska, use the
district system. The general ticket system follows a set pattern.
There is a direct
vote election held in each state and the winner of the vote is supposed to get all of that
state’s electoral votes. Then all of the votes are counted, and if a candidate gets
more than half the votes, he/she becomes the new President. If there is no majority, then
the election is decided by the House of Representatives. There each state is given one
vote and they vote, on the top three candidates. If no winner is declared until a majority
is reached and the speaker of the house becomes a temporary president until a majority is
reached.
As I see it, there
are three problems to the current Electoral College system. First a President can be
elected to office even if it is not what the people want. Another problem is that electors
are not punished for being unfaithful to what they have pledged. The final problem is
electing a President if no electoral majority is reached. The United States democracy has
matured to the point where the people of the US are ready to elect their officials.
Under the general
ticket system it is possible for a good strategist to ignore 78% of the nation in trying
to get his candidate elected. Also note that only 49% of the nation actually votes,
meaning the outcome of an election theoretically could represent only 12% of the nation.
Since the people of a state vote for a president, and not an elector, it should be
required for the elector to vote for whom they pledged to represent.
Required
Questions
1.) How and when did the
United State elect a president and vice president of different parties? Name them and
their respective parties. — In 1796 in which the Federalist, John Adams, won
president and Thomas Jefferson, a Republican, as vice president.
2.) Describe four ways
that were suggested to elect the President between 1808 and 1846. — By lot, direct
vote plan, regional elections, and automatic plan.
3.) Name five U.S.
Presidents who were elected with less than a popular vote. — John Q. Adams, John
Polk, Ben Harrison, Harry Truman, and Richard Nixon.
4.) Describe the
winner-take-all system. Which states use this system? —In the Automatic Plan; whoever
wins the popular vote in a state gets the electoral votes from that state, all states are
in this plan except Maine.
5.) When do electors vote
and when are the results known? — The popular votes are taken in November, the
electors vote the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, and the votes are
counted before both houses and officially announced in January.
6.) What effect would
substituting a direct popular vote for the Electoral College have on third party
candidates? Why? — A division of each state’s Electoral College votes according
to the popular vote received by each party, urban areas would loose power.
7.) Give four arguments
for and against a direct vote system. — Such a system would always ensure that the
candidate with the greatest popular vote would win office of president. That would equal
weight to every vote. The Direct Vote would weaken the power of the states and strengthen
the national government.
8.) Describe the
differences between the district plan, the proportional plan and the winner-take-all plan.
—The district plan is where two electors are chosen on a statewide popular level and
one is chosen from each of the congressional districts; under the Proportional Plan the
states would be divided according to the popular vote received by each party, and also
urban areas would loose power; the winner-take-all plan, its provides that whoever wins
the popular vote wins all of that state’s electoral votes, and has a bias toward
urban power and against minority parties.
9.) State the four points
experts in 1969 agreed should be included in an ideal plan for electing U.S. Presidents.
— (1) The need for a quick decision and clear-cut winner; (2) The victor should be
the people’s 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 two-party system.
10.)
What
did Democrats mean when they claimed some votes in Florida had never been counted, not
even once? – The democrats meant that when the voting cards went through the machine
that the machines never counted them.
11.)
Do
you think Florida and the U.S. Supreme Courts politicized their decisions? Explain. Did
you read the court decisions posted on many sites on the Internet? – No, there were
many other decisions that were never politicized, they just made them and carried them out
as they pleased. No, I did not read court decisions on the Internet.
12.)
Did
the election in 2000 make you ashamed or proud to be an American? Explain. – It did
not make me proud or ashamed really, they were dealt a voting dispute and they did all
they could in the timeliest fashion, they may have done a better job if they used a
different voting system.