Centerville High School

Centerville, South Dakota

Teacher: Terri Buechler

 

 

The Electoral College

By Megan Andersen

 

 

Before the election controversy in 2000, I did not pay much attention to the way the American voting system functioned.  I have always assumed that everyone’s vote was counted and the candidate with the most votes became the next president.  I now know that it is not that simple. 

           

The Electoral College should be eliminated, and we should use the direct vote system. First of all, it seems to me that the president is being elected by the electors of each state and not by the people. If a candidate were to win the popular vote but lose the electoral votes, his opponent would be elected president although the majority of the population voted for him. 

 

The electors for each state are equal to the number of U.S. Representatives plus its two senators. They are chosen by the state legislature. If no majority of electoral votes is reached, the Twelfth Amendment says that the House of Representatives choose the president from the top three candidates. To prevent a tie, the Twelfth Amendment also states that each elector would be given one vote for president and one for vice president. This amendment was made because of the election of 1800 when Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr received an equal number of electoral votes. The House of Representatives was given the deciding vote and elected Thomas Jefferson. 

 

Another problem with the Electoral College is that whoever receives the most electoral votes from the state wins all of that state’s votes. They should distribute the electoral votes to the candidates according to the percentages that they received. There are two states that do distribute their electoral votes proportionally:  Maine and Nebraska.  The way it stands now is that if candidate a wins 60% of the popular vote and candidate B wins 40%, candidate A would receive all of that states electoral votes. If that state has 10 votes, I think that candidate A should receive 6 votes and candidate B should receive 4 votes. This system would help prevent the popular vote winner from losing the election. 

 

Another disputed point with the present Electoral College system is that the electors can bolt from their states popular vote winner.  I think the majority of the population believes that the electors are required to vote for the candidate winning the popular election when, in fact, that is not the case.

           

A significant problem with the voting process that was revealed this year had to do with the methods the people used to vote.  The example of Palm Beach County in Florida shows the need for a different voting ballot.  They used a butterfly ballot that caused major confusion among the voters.  Some say that the people who were trying to vote for Gore inadvertently voted for the wrong candidate because of how the ballot was set up.  Their needs to be a similar ballot used in every county and one that will not confuse voters. 

           

Campaign finance reform was another issue that was brought up frequently in this past presidential election. I was not aware of how the presidential candidates were getting the money to fund their campaigns. I did not realize that special interest groups, such as tobacco companies, gambling interests, and liquor firms could have such an impact on political agendas. 

 

The tobacco giant Philip Morris gave $110,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee this year. Other tobacco related groups that gave money to the Republicans were UST Inc., the Smokeless Tobacco Council, the Tobacco Institute, and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. This generous act of “soft money” may have been a discreet way of getting what they want out of the Republican Party. Soft money is the unlimited donations from wealthy individuals, corporations, or labor unions to political parties.  The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee received $32,000 this year from the Tobacco Institute.   Verne, Limpet, Bernhard, McPherson & Hand, the law firm that is representing the tobacco industry, gave $25,000 to the Republicans, and $25,000 to the Democrats. 

 

Alcohol interests did not forget to give their share of excessive contributions while fighting proposals for a national drunken driving standard. The House Democrats’ committee received $50,000 from E&J Gallo Winery and $13,500 from Joseph E. Seagram & Sons. Seagram gave $70,000 in all to the Republicans and Anheuser-Busch Cos. gave $20,000 to Senate Democrats. 

 

There should be limits on the amount of money candidates can spend on their campaigns. The politicians are somewhat being “bought” by the large companies and groups that basically pay for their campaigns. Each campaign should be allowed a certain amount of funding and no longer be allowed to accept money from special interest groups. This would leave each party on a level playing field in the aspects of spending money on their campaigns.  Forcing politicians to focus more on the issues instead of being inhibited by huge corporate companies with their own interests in mind is the ingredient that would formulate an improved democracy. Peace of mind would be a reward to the responsible American voter.   

 

Required Questions

 

1.                  The United States elected a president and a vice president of different parties in the election of 1796.  It was said that the candidate with the highest number of votes should be president and the runner up, vice-president.  In 1796, John Adams, a Federalist, was elected president, and Thomas Jefferson, a Republican, was elected vice-president. 

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

3.                  Five U.S. Presidents who were elected with less than a popular vote were John Quincy Adams, J. Polk, Z.Taylor, J. Buchanan, and Abraham Lincoln. 

4.                  The winner-take-all system says that all of a state’s electoral votes would automatically be awarded to the candidate that carried that state’s popular vote.  All states but Maine use this system.

5.                  Electors vote on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December.  The results are announced in January. 

6.                  By submitting a direct popular vote for the Electoral College, third party candidates would be encouraged, and it would make it fair so each vote would count.

7.                  Four arguments for and against a direct vote system would be (for) that having this system would always ensure that the candidate with the highest popular vote would be elected president, and that it would give equal weight to each vote, (vs) state borders would be irrelevant in elections and probably federal standards of eligibility would eventually be determined to make the presidential choices uniform, and state borders would be irrelevant in elections and probably federal standards of eligibility would eventually be determined to make the presidential choices uniform. 

8.                  The differences between the district plan, the proportional plan and the winner-take-all plan are that the district plan subdivides the states so not all the power is given to the larger states, the proportional plan has party votes by state but is not always accurate in electing the popular vote winner, and winner-take-all system goes by states and discourages minority parties.

9.                  In 1969, the four points experts agreed should be included in an ideal plan for electing U.S. Presidents were: the need for quick decision and clear-cut winner, the victor should be the people’s choice, the president-elect should have a mandate to govern, and the ideal system should not undermine the two-party system.   

10.             When the Democrats claimed some votes in Florida had never been counted, they meant that the machines skipped any of the ballots that the chad had not been correctly punched.  Therefore, those votes were never counted towards the total vote.  When the Republicans claimed that these votes in Florida had been counted two or three times, they thought that the ballots with incorrect chad punching were counted by the machines and then also added to the total when being hand-counted.  I think that the Republicans were right because there is not a way to know if the machines counted all of those incorrect ballots, and they did add the hand-counted votes onto that total after the machine counting.

11.             I think that Florida and the U.S. Supreme Courts did not politicize their decisions about the hand counting in Florida.  The voting was done and the nation should have known who the 42^nd president was.  They wanted all of the confusion extinguished.  I believe they based their decision for the good of the nation.    

12.              The election in 2000 made me both ashamed and proud to be an American.  It showed that enough people cared about who would be the leader of our country to fight for what was right in their minds. But it also showed that we have some kinks in our system that need to be fixed before the next election.  We do not want something like this to happen again if it can be helped.  

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