Concordia High School

Concordia, Kansas

Teacher: Timothy Berger

 

 

 

The Crutch
By Brea Prindaville
12^th grade 

 

 

The Electoral College is obsolete.  When America was a new country, in the eighteenth century, there were two major concerns surrounding presidential election.  One was that information did not travel fast or well.  The other was that people were generally ignorant.  Considering these detriments, America’s founders put a provision in the constitution.  This provision was the Electoral College.

 

The Electoral College is made up of electors.  Electors are special voters representing the party that received a majority of the popular vote.  Each state has its own electors.  The number of electors each state has is determined by combining the number of senators it has with its number of representatives.  ¹

         

 When our founders invented this, they thought that the electors would be well-informed, intelligent people with rich political backgrounds.  That way, if one candidate would hurt the country, even if the people voted for him, he could not get into office.

         

 This sounds like a good plan.  However, forty-eight states use the winner-take-all system.  Simply translated, if one candidate gets fifty-one percent of the popular vote and the other gets forty-nine percent, the candidate with fifty-one percent will get one hundred percent of that state’s electoral votes.  Thus, the candidate who wins the popular vote will not necessarily become president.  ²

         

 Another problem with the Electoral College is that electors do not necessarily have to vote for their party’s candidate.  This was the intended effect.  However, the intended effect was stated in these words in the Federalist Papers, “It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station.”  ³  The constitution does not specifically state that only capable men can be electors; anyone can do it.

         

 This means that electors can easily be bought.  Someone very strongly affiliated with one party can pretend to be connected to the opposing party.  That person can become an elector and vote for the candidate who did not win the popular vote.

         

 Although this does not seem very realistic, it is quite possible.  Twenty-four states do not require anything of an elector.  The elector can vote for whomever he chooses, deserving or otherwise.  Nineteen states mandate that electors vote for whichever candidate wins the popular vote, but there are no consequences if the elector chooses not to do so.  One state requires the elector to take an oath stating that he will vote for whichever candidate wins the popular vote, but also has no punishment.  Only six states’ electors actually face prosecution (in the form of criminal punishment or fines) if they do not vote for the candidate whose party they represent.  ⁴  Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of the Electoral College even admitted that America’s future would be, “currying favor with the electors and consequently dependant on them.”  ⁵

         

 Along with electors, one other important factor determines who will be elected president.  This is money.  Candidates who do not have millions of dollars in support have no chance at the presidency.  The many campaign-budget reforms that have been discussed lately would be a favorable change.

         

 Another beneficial change would be to basically abolish the Electoral College.  The two reasons why it was founded no longer exist; people are more educated and better informed than ever.  Americans do not need electors to watch over them any longer.

Because the Electoral College is so fallible, one would wonder why it is still in place at all.  There is only one reason.  The Electoral College, because it is run like Congress, gives more power to small states.

 

 The plan that will best remedy our current situation is a proportional-popular vote plan.  Elections will be decided by the popular vote in each state multiplied by the extra percent of the national vote that the state would have received under the Electoral College.

With this plan, there will be no chance that candidates elected president in the future were bought.  Because the people should be able to speak for themselves, there will also be no chance that whomever they decide should be our next president will not actually get to become president.  Two people have been elected president with a minority of the popular vote; a present example, Bush, may be a third.  No true democracy would have an Electoral College.

 

 Amendments to abolish the Electoral College have been brought before Congress countless times.  The only reason why they have not passed is that small states would not let them, not because the Electoral College is right, but because it gave small states more power.  By allowing small states to keep their power, a proportional-popular vote plan would pass.

The Electoral College was installed to discount the votes of unintelligent and ignorant Americans.  With our present media and education systems, it is no longer needed.  The Electoral College has become a superfluous, even detrimental relic.  It was a good crutch, but America has long since gotten over the sprain.

Footnotes

¹ Holt, Sol.  “Electoral College.”  Dictionary of American Government.  Macfadden-Bartell Corporation.  New York: 1970.  p102.

² NARA (National Archives and Records Administration).  Electoral College FAQ’s.  August 25, 2000.  November 6, 2000.  http://www.nara.gov/fedreg/elctcoll/faq.html

³ Thomas.  The Federalist Papers.  May 20, 1996.  November 6, 2000.  http://lcweb2.loc.gov/const/fed/fed_68.html

⁴ Berg-Andersson, Richard E.  The Green Papers.  2000.  November 6, 2000.  http://www.thegreenpapers.com/

⁵ Coates, Robert Eyler Sr.  Thomas Jefferson on Politics and Government.  2000.

 

 

Electoral College Questions

 

1)  How and when did the United States elect a president and vice president of different parties?  Name them and their respective parties.

 

          In 1796, John Adams, a Federalist, was elected president, and Thomas Jefferson, a Republican, was elected vice president.  These two offices were voted for separately.

 

 

2)  Describe four ways that were suggested to elect the president between 1808 and 1846.

 

          Four ways suggested to elect the president were for congress to choose, for state governments to choose, for the people to choose, or for electoral colleges to choose.

 

 

3)  Name five U.S. presidents who were elected with less than a popular vote.

 

          John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Richard Nixon were elected with less than a popular vote.

 

 

4)  Describe the winner-take-all system.  Which states use this system?

 

          The winner-take-all system gives all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate for whom the majority of the population voted for…so someone with 51% popular vote gets 100% of the state’s electoral votes.  All states but Maine use this system.

 

 

5)  When do electors vote and when are the results known?

 

          Electors vote on the 1st Monday after the 2nd Wednesday in December.  Results are known in January.

 

 

6)  What affect would substituting a direct popular vote for the Electoral College have on third-party candidates?  Why?

 

          With the electoral colleges, third-party candidates can get some of the electoral votes, so they are encouraged.  If there were no electoral colleges, then candidates with more than 40% vote could win, and if there was a tie, candidates from the top two parties would run, thus leaving out third-party candidates.

 

 

7)  Give four arguments for and against a direct vote system.

 

Direct vote systems are good because the people are more fairly represented.  The electors can’t vote for the wrong candidate.  A majority by a narrow margin can’t speak for the whole state.  Presidents who didn’t receive the most popular votes couldn’t get elected.  The people are now educated and can make the choice themselves…the electoral colleges were designed because people were ignorant at the time that the constitution was written.

Electoral colleges are good for a variety of reasons.  They have worked up until now.  Some of our greatest presidents (Lincoln, Kennedy) won because of them.  They give small states more equal influence than they would normally have.  They are a compromise between many policies, so everyone is happy.

 

 

8)  Describe the differences between the district plan, the proportional plan, and the winner-take-all plan.

 

          The district plan is that each state is divided into districts, and each district gets an elector.  The proportional plan is that the votes that the electors from different parties get are divided up in proportion to the popular votes of the state.  The winner-take-all plan is that whichever candidate had the majority of votes gets all of the electoral votes.

 

 

9)  State four points experts in 1969 agreed should be included in an ideal plan for electing U.S. presidents.

 

          The points were the need for a quick decision and clear-cut winner, that the victor should be the people’s choice winner of the most popular votes, that the president-elect should have a mandate to govern, and that the ideal system 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, and crisis is opportunity.

 

The Shrinkage Phenomenon is a description of the shrinkage in stature that every candidate experiences when running for president.  Candidates for president must give up dignity and privacy when running.   They are insulted constantly.  Thus their pride and confidence suffer.

Americans prefer pragmatists to ideologues because they prefer a plan that works to a plan based on principle.  Americans want self-gain, not morals.  President Roosevelt’s New Deal is an example of a plan that worked wonders but went against principles.

There are many groups of people likely to be under-represented.  People who are not students are under-represented because students are forced to pay attention to elections.  However, after graduation, the percentage of the population voting increases with age.  The unemployed have other things to worry about and are generally less informed, so they are under-represented.  People who lack opinions (as if they should be represented) don’t bother to vote.

Most candidates don’t like to lead during a catastrophe.  However, crisis is opportunity.  The greatest leaders are formed when people are called upon to do great leading.  Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War is one example of a leader formed by crisis.

November 6, 2000.  http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/

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