Centerville High School

Centerville, South Dakota

Teacher: Teri Buechler

 

The Electoral College

                                              By Adam Bennett

 

 

In United States government, the body of electors that chooses the President and Vice President is called the Electoral College.  The electors are directed by the Constitution to vote in their respective states, and Congress is authorized to count their votes.  To win, a presidential candidate must have a majority in the Electoral College.

 

The 2000 Presidential election has generated renewed interest in the Electoral College.  Some experts have suggested that the Electoral College might not elect the presidential candidate who actually receives the most votes.  This is because 48 states award all their electoral votes to the winner, regardless of how large their margin of victory was.  Only two states, Nebraska and Maine, do not follow this “winner-take-all” practice.  They divide electoral votes proportionately.  Maine awards one electoral vote for each Congressional district and two for the candidate who wins the popular vote in that state.  This raises the possibility that a candidate could narrowly win a number of big states and get the most electoral votes and yet lose the popular vote.

 

For instance, President George W. Bush had a huge 30% lead in his home state of Texas.  That would benefit him if the president were elected by a popular vote, but it does not help in the electoral vote, since whoever received the most votes in Texas won all of that state’s 32 electoral votes.

 

Al Gore, on the other hand, had relatively narrow leads in several big states, including California.  As long as he gets more votes than Bush in California, Gore would take all of that state’s 54 electoral votes.  It does not matter whether the margin of victory was one vote or one million votes.

 

Only at the very outset did the Electoral College function as planned, and there often has been widespread dissatisfaction with it.  The main objection is that it has given the nation ten so-called minority Presidents who had a majority of votes in the Electoral College but less in the total national popular vote.

 

Three times in election history a candidate has won the popular vote but lost the election.  In 1824, Andrew Jackson won both the popular and the electoral vote.  But, no one in the four-man race won a majority of more than 50% in the Electoral College, so the House of Representatives decided the outcome.  The House picked John Quincy Adams, who had come in second in the popular and electoral votes.

 

In 1876, Samuel J. Tilden won 51% of the popular vote, while Rutherford B. Hayes captured 48%.  However, Hayes won 185 electoral votes, while Tilden got 184.  A special electoral commission picked Hayes to be president.

 

In 1888, Benjamin Harrison became president by winning 233 electoral votes, even though he received only 47.8% of the popular vote.  His opponent, Grover Cleveland, received 48.6% of the popular vote, yet received only 168 electoral votes.

 

I don’t believe this is fair to the voters of the United States.  To make everyone’s vote count, the popular vote should be used to decide the outcome of the election.  Everyone’s vote would count the same, and how could anyone argue that it was unfair.

 

In the early days, electors were most often chosen by the state legislatures, but later, popular election became the rule.  After 1832 and until the Civil War, only in South Carolina did the legislature continue to choose electors.  There is nothing in the Constitution that requires that the electors be chosen by popular vote.  Since the adoption of the Twelfth Amendment in 1804, numerous attempts have been made to alter the Electoral College and to change the method of the presidential election, but none have succeeded.

 

There are a total of 538 electors.  In December, the electors meet in each state’s capital to formally elect the president.  While electors are supposed to vote in accordance with their state’s voters, they do not always do so.  In 1988 for example, a West Virginia elector did not vote for Michael Dukakis, who had carried that state.  Instead the elector voted for Dukakis’ running mate, Texas senator Lloyd Bentsen.

 

Many people say the current system is unfair, unnecessary and should be abolished.  They claim that the Electoral College causes candidates to ignore states where the outcome is certain in favor of states where polls say the contest is close.  For example, Massachusetts is usually a Democratic win on Election Day.  Therefore, Democrats don’t need to worry about it, while Republicans can by-pass it.  However, if the Electoral College was abolished and the popular vote tally was used, each side might find it useful to campaign in Massachusetts.

 

Supporters of the Electoral College want to keep it because it forces candidates to pay attention to small states as they put together winning strategies.  In the 2000 campaign, both Gore and Bush devoted considerable attention to states with small electoral votes such as Minnesota and Wisconsin.  Polls indicated that it would be a close election in each state. I think that using the popular vote would simplify the election.

 

Required Questions

 

1.      The United Sates elected a president and vice president of different parties in 1776.  They were John Adams, who was a Federalist; and Thomas Jefferson, who was Republican.

 

2. Two ways that were suggested to elect the president between 1808 and 1846 were by lot, direct-vote, regional, and automatic plan.

 

3. Five presidents that were elected by less than a popular vote were: John Adams, Zachary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln, Grover Cleveland, and John F. Kennedy.

 

4. The winner-take-all system works so that all of the states votes automatically are awarded to the ticket that that carried the states popular vote.

 

5. The results of the electors vote are known on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December.

 

6. Substituting the direct popular vote for the Electoral College would help the third party candidates gain votes.

 

7. Two advantages to the direct vote system are that it would ensure that the candidate with the greatest popular vote would win the election, and it would give equal weight to every vote.

 

Two disadvantages are that the direct vote is that it would encourage minority parties because there would be a greater probability that two major parties would not receive a majority, and it would weaken the power of states.

 

8. There are many differences between the three types of plans:

Ä      District Plan – Each district can pick their own electoral voter

Ä       Proportional Plan – Divides the electoral votes according to how the voters vote

Ä      Winner-Take-All Plan – Whoever wins the majority of the state’s votes, wins all of that states electoral votes

 

9. Four points that experts agreed should be included in an ideal voting system were:(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 that comes from a good margin of victory (4) the ideal system should not undermine the 2-party system.

10.   The Democrats claimed that some of the Florida voters didn’t even vote because the machine didn’t count cards that weren’t punched all the way through.   The

Republicans claimed these votes in Florida had been counted two or three times because after being counted by the machine, they were hand counted several times.

 

I believe the Democratic Party because if the machine didn’t count it and you can still tell the voters intent, they should be counted by hand.

 

11.  I think Florida and the Supreme Court did politicize the decision.

 

12. The election of 2000 made me ashamed to be an American because it was a mess, it took much longer than it should have to decide on who actually won the election.

                                                                                                                             [Back]