Concordia High School
Concordia, Kansas
Teacher: Timothy Berger
Direct Vote System
By Beth Parker
12th grade
In
this nation today our president is chosen through an Electoral College. This means that the people are not really the ones
choosing out president, we are choosing people to go vote for us. This method should be changed to a direct vote
system. A system in which the candidate with
the most popular votes for the entire country is the one who wins the presidency. Today’s technology allows the process to be
done quickly and simply. Using this direct
election system just makes sense. Our current
election is an excellent example of how one candidate can win the Electoral College and
another win the popular vote. Campaign
finance reform is also an issue that has been brought up during the last few months. Should there be a set limit as to how much money
one candidate can spend on campaigning or is it up to each person.
Using
the direct vote system for choosing our president, to me just makes sense. With the Electoral College the candidate who wins
is not always the winner of the popular vote. To
me that just does not seem sensible. The
person who gets the highest percentage of our citizens’ votes should be the one to
lead us. Our current election is a prime
example. As of now one candidate has more
popular votes than the other does, however the other candidate has more electoral votes
than the popular vote winner. This situation
of the popular vote winner losing often occurs in close elections. In out current system the votes of a low-populated
state have more weight than those of a high-population state. “For instance, in 1988 the combined voting
population of the seven least populous states was 3,119,000 people, with 21 electoral
votes. Florida had the same number of
electoral votes, but they had about three times as many people.”1 Using a direct election system also makes sense in
that it would go a lot faster. If we used a
direct vote system, combined with today's technology, we could know the winner with in a
day. We could use a universal ballot that is
scanned by computers and have the popular vote results right then and there. We would not have to then figure out who gets the
most Electoral College votes. In the current
system we have to then wait even longer to see how the electors vote, before we know who
truly won the election. By knowing the winner sooner, we would be able to put the
president elect into office sooner instead of waiting until January. We would shorten the amount of time that our
country is ultimately with out a president. By
using the direct vote system we would also be eliminating the problem of “faithless
electors”. Faithless electors are those
who are pledged to vote for his party’s candidate for president but nevertheless
votes for another candidate.2 By
using the direct system of electing our president we would get rid of electors all
together, eliminating ‘faithless electors’.
By using direct vote election we are providing literal vote equality: all votes
wherever cast have equal weight. Ending the
special advantages that politically competitive high-population states and low-population
states have.3
The
Electoral College worked great in the eighteenth century when it was created, but not now. One reason it worked so great was that it was
difficult to hold a nationwide campaign with the nation's population spread out, with very
little transportation or means of communication. As
a result it was hard for candidates to make their names and ideas known nationwide, so a
individual person would most likely just vote for the person closest to home.4 They also did not have political parties,
which now days helps narrow our choices down.5 One
more reason why the direct vote system should be used is the growing media. In today’s society the media has a large role
in voter turn out. When the Electoral College
first started media was not a problem so having so many votes per state worked on a
winner-takes-all basis. However in
today’s world the media follows the election so closely that they often will give a
state's votes to a certain candidate before all the ballots are in and officially counted. In effect many people do not go vote because they
assume that their vote does not matter any more.
One
campaign reform discussed this year was campaign finance reform. The issue is should there be a limit as to how
much money a candidate can spend on their campaign. I
feel that there should be a limit as to how much they spend. In the 1996 election about 2.7 billion dollars was
spent on campaigns. Clinton and Dole alone
spent $232 million. 6 Placing a limit on all spending, including soft money,
would make the races more equal for all candidates. They
would no longer be able to spend more by going through the loopholes of spending soft
money. By controlling the money spent in the
campaigns we would be able to control the amount of advertising done, and the amount of
money the candidates can spend pulling dirt up on each other. In effect keeping the campaigns a bit
“cleaner”.
For
me the issue of our nation's choice of voting system should be that of a direct vote
system. By using this system we get the
candidate who the majority of the country wants to be represented by, and we do not have
to worry about faithless electors. The
current system once worked great but is now out dated.
On the issue of campaign finance reform, there should be a limit set on all
spending, to make the race mare equal and less of a popularity contest among the rich.
Works Cited
1.
http://jceb.co.jackson.mo.us/fun_stuff/electoral_college.htm
2.
http://jceb.co.jackson.mo.us/fun_stuff/electoral_college.htm
3. Sindler,
Allan P., American Politics and Public Policy. US CQ Press, 1982.
4.
www.snag.net/wc/electoral.html#nine, Vigilance, Oct. 2000
5.
“Electoral College”, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1999-2000
6. Washington p 4W
Required Reading Questions
1. How and when did the United States elect a president and vice president of different parties? Name them and their respective parties.
The electing of presidents from two different parties occurred in the election of 1796. This was able to occur because the candidate with the most votes becomes the President and the candidate with the second highest number of votes becomes the president. The candidates who this happened with were John Adams a Federalist became the president and Thomas Jefferson a Republican became Vice-President.
2. Describe
four ways that were suggested to elect the President between 1808 and 1846.
1. Direct Vote- the people’s votes are the ones who actually choose the President
2. Electoral College- the people vote in the primary election, the winner of that election gets all of that states electoral votes. The number of each states electoral votes depends on its population.
3. Automatic Plan- the winner takes all system- all of a states votes go to that states winner of the primary election.
4. Proportional Plan- The states electoral votes are divided according to the results of the primary.
3. Name
five U. S. Presidents who were elected with less than a popular vote.
Lincoln, Nixon, Truman, John Quincy Adams
4. Describe
the winner-take-all system. Which states use this system?
5. When do electors vote and
when are the results known?
The electors vote on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. The results are known in January.
6. What affect would
substituting a direct popular vote for the Electoral College have on third party candidates? Why?
It would be a disadvantage to the third party candidates. With the Electoral College they could campaign in large states and get a large number of votes. With the direct popular vote they would have to campaign in large states and get a large number of votes. With the direct popular vote they would have to campaign all over the nation in order to make his voice known, to get the peoples votes.
7. Give four arguments for and
against a direct vote system.
For: Against:
1. political equality 1. easy to tamper
2. Winner is who the people want 2. takes away the small states advantage
3. not as time consuming 3. large number of votes to count
4. equal representation 4. gives less voice to the poor non-voters
8. Describe the differences
between the district plan, the proportional plan and the winner-take-all plan.
The district plan says that voting should be broken up by state subdivisions. Th proportional plan is where the electoral college votes are divided up by the percentage of votes each candidate received, each getting that percentage of the electoral votes. And the winner takes all system says that the candidate that gets the most popular votes gets all the electoral votes.
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 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.
4. Should not undermine the two-party system.
10. Write a paragraph
describing what is meant by one of the following:
Shrinkage Phenomenon
Americans prefer pragmatists
to ideologues
The people most likely to be
under represented
Crisis is opportunity
Under representation is a great problem in our country. Those people who are most likely to be under represented are those who either don't have an opinion or those whose opinions tend to change often on the key issues in the campaign debates. Since these people really don't care who the winner is, or what their beliefs are then they are most likely not to vote. Therefore the would not be represented in the same numbers as those who care, in the voting system. The people who are most likely to fall into this category are the poor and the minorities as long as the issues of race and social class are so poorly represented in the political campaigns. This is what is meant by the people most likely to be under represented.