Centerville High
School
Centerville, South
Dakota
Teacher: Teri
Buechler
The Electoral College
By Ashley Adamson
The Electoral
College has been used for almost two centuries; it is a constitutional system for
establishing the United States President and Vice President. After the proceedings of the 2000 election in
Florida, some politicians feel we need a better system.
Unfortunately there are no flawless alternatives.
In the Electoral College, each party within a state selects a
slate of electors depending on the size of the state’s congressional delegation of
representatives plus senators. When Americans
vote for President and Vice President they are actually voting for a slate of electors who
ensure their vote to that candidate. The
electors are usually chosen at large. The
electoral vote of each state is cast as a unit; therefore, the victorious presidential and
vice presidential nominees in each state win the state’s entire electoral vote. The candidates elected are those who receive a
majority of the total electoral vote in the United States.
Although some people believe their vote does not really count, they need to look at
the big picture.
In the absence of a majority of electoral votes for president,
the House of Representatives proceeds quickly to elect by ballot from the three candidates
with the highest number of electoral votes. This
is when each citizen’s vote becomes important. Each
state has only one vote, and the state’s majority is necessary for the election. The system will work just fine, as long as there
is not a slim margin between the numbers of votes. The
reason for the delay in determining the victors of the 2000 Election was the requirement
that the election go into the House of Representatives to determine the President and into
the Senate to determine the Vice President. This
will only come into effect if the Electoral College fails to reach a majority. There have
been several proposed changes for the Electoral College; one of them being the
substitution of the Direct Popular vote.
In a direct election, the winner is the candidate with a
plurality or a majority of the popular vote. This
is made relevant because each citizen votes directly for the candidate of his or her
choice. This may sound like a good system,
but it has its pitfalls. The direct election
system is subject to certain types of fraud that are unfeasible under the Electoral
College system. Under a direct system,
majority fraud would be hard to contest, because the majority party would also be
responsible for counting the votes. The
Electoral College system allows some states to the party in power, but eliminates any
reason to run up the vote. Fraud in
today’s system would be in swing states, so it becomes even more important for the
parties to keep each other in check.
Another pitfall to the direct election proposal is that it would
allow for a minority vote to elect a President. Under
our present system, the winning candidate has to win outright at least twice; first in the
party convention, then in the Electoral College. Direct
election makes minority rule even more likely than the process used today. The Electoral College for the most part
discourages a third party. I feel that using
a direct vote system would encourage candidates to run, simply because they can, and
America would be swamped with candidates. In
theory, well organized minorities have a very good chance to achieve the highest or
second-highest number of votes, advancing to a run off round. There are very few democracies in the industrial
world that use the direct vote system: France, Finland, and now Russia. The main reason Electoral College is used by the
United States is that it tends to be not as questionable as the direct vote. This happens for two reasons. First, only a few states will have close races,
even if the national vote is close. The
second reason is the electoral vote tends to magnify the margin of the victor.
Though the United States leaders will probably always be in
search of the perfect voting system, the Electoral College is the closest so far. Replacing the Electoral College with the direct
vote would be very unwise. Under a direct
vote system, the nation could end up electing someone who is not the favorite. We could even end up electing someone who would
lose to each of the other candidates in a head-to-head two-way race. The direct voting system could hand victory to the
least-liked candidate.
The Electoral College, when compared to the current
alternatives, is the best system for the United States.
Under a direct election system, it would be defensible to deny citizens the right
to vote for the president based on where they live. The
United States, who has been promoting democracy throughout the world, does not want the
direct vote system.
Will elections ever be fair?
Voters say another problem concerning the race is money. It seems as though campaign managers think it is a
race to spend money instead of a race to spread ideas.
Special interests have too much influence; good candidates without money or
connections to special interest groups do not have a fair chance of competing for office. I feel that politicians spend too much time
raising and spending campaign money when they should be devoting their time and energy to
the duties of public office. Other voters
feel as I do and many are taking action by presenting a campaign finance system called the
Clean Money Campaign Reform. Though our
campaign system needs reform, our voting system does not.
Required Questions
1. The United States
elected a President and Vice president of different parties in 1796. This occurred because John Adams, a Federalist,
had the highest number of votes and became president.
However, Thomas Jefferson, a Republican, was the runner-up and therefore became
vice president.
2. Four ways were
suggested to elect the President between 1808 and 1846.
The first was by lot. Candidates were to be chosen by lot from retiring
Senators; later- on each state was to elect a native-son. The next suggestion was in 1816;
it was the direct-vote plan that stated the
popular vote to be aggregated by the entire nation. The
third suggestion was regional election. This proposed that four regions, on a rotating
basis, choose the President. The last suggestion in 1826 was the automatic plan.
This was a winner take all plan in which all of the state’s electoral votes
would automatically go to the candidate with the highest popular vote.
3. Five United States
Presidents who were elected with less than a popular vote include: John Polk, Abraham
Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy.
4. The winner-take-all
system is included in the automatic plan. In
this system, all of the state’s votes would automatically be awarded to winner of the
state’s popular vote. Every state except
Maine uses the winner-take-all system.
5. Electors vote on the
same day throughout the United States. This
day is the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. In January, after the votes are counted, the
results are officially announced.
6. The affect of
substituting the direct popular vote for the Electoral College on a third party would be
an advantage. If two parties are favored and
their majority is split, then a third party would have a better chance of taking the
popular vote.
7. Two arguments that
aid the direct vote plan are 1) the candidate with the greatest popular vote is ensured to
win the office 2) equal weight is given to every vote. Two arguments against the direct
vote plan are 1)-minority parties are encouraged 2) it would weaken the power of
individual states and strengthen the national government.
8. There are several differences between the
district plan, the proportional plan, and the winner-take-all plan. One difference is the way the popular votes are
aggregated. In the direct plan, they use
state subdivision. The district plan
separates states from the national government, because the state’s districts each get
their own electoral vote. This plan reflects the popular vote more closely. In the proportional plan, popular votes are
aggregated by party vote by states. Therefore,
the state’s votes are proportioned according to the popular vote. The winner-take-all
system works as an entire nation. State votes
are automatically cast for the winner of the state’s popular vote.
9. Experts, in 1969, for
electing United States Presidents, stated four ideal points for the plan. The first was the need for a quick decision and
clear-cut winner. The second point was that
the victor should be the people’s choice winner of the most popular votes. The third point was the president-elect should
have a mandate to govern, a legitimacy which comes from a good margin of victory. The final point was that the ideal system should
not undermine the two-party system.
10. In Florida,
democrat’s claimed, “Some votes in Florida had never been counted; not even
once.” This was stated for two important
reasons. Overseas citizen’s votes were
entitled to be counted due to the closeness of this race, however, not all votes were. The democrats’ claim also insinuated that
there were other democratic ballets that were not being tallied; this in turn preceded the
recount in Florida. Republicans’ claimed
these votes in Florida had been counted two or three times.
Their reasoning was the democratic poll should have been lower and the republican
poll should have been higher. Assuming that
the votes were counted multiple times, republicans wanted to deduct democratic votes. I personally did not visit Florida; therefore, I
have no clue what took place in the tally rooms. I
believe some votes were not counted. I think
this because of the stress put on the overseas votes not being tallied. I also believe, with all of the chaos and turmoil,
it would be hard to separate to counted votes from the uncounted, especially if there was
any intentional false counts.
11. Yes, I think Florida
and the United States Supreme Courts greatly politicized their decisions due to the
liability they faced. They had to be able to
justify everything they did, and that was the reason the count lasted so long. The media also played a huge roll in creating the
perspective Americans acquired concerning the actions in Florida. I read many of the court decisions posted on the
Internet, and I have come to the conclusion that decisions were made after hours and days
of wearying debates.
12. I was certainly not
proud of the 2000 election. After learning of
the mockery and ridiculing other countries placed on the American election process, I was
ashamed. The idea that the United States has
the best government for its people today, contradicts the fact that we are using the same
system used in the days of the Pony Express.