Concordia High School
Concordia, Kansas
Teacher: Timothy Berger
Out With The Electoral College
By Caleb Hunber
12th grade
For generations, the American people have used the Electoral College as a means of deciding the next President of the United States as opposed to using a direct voting system. Why mess with history? This is why. The Electoral College has a major loophole in that you don’t need to win the popular vote to become President. How can the people really decide who governs them? It’s truly ludicrous. Also in the mayhem of United States politics are the ways that candidates finance their grand and over-elaborate campaigns. These methods of finance draw away our attention, as voters, from the issues and instead make us concentrate on whom has more money; there need to be some changes. We must eliminate the Electoral College in favor of a more state-involved popular vote and points system and also reform the ways our elections are financed.
Article II, Section I of the U.S. Constitution set up the Electoral
College.1 It provided that each
state would have as many electors as it had Senators and representatives.1 In those days, there was no popular vote because
travel for voters was extremely difficult.2
The electors would meet in their own states and cast votes for a president and vice
president.1 Today, electors meet
in December after the popular election, and cast their votes for the winner of the popular
election in their state.3 Out of
538 possible Electoral votes, it is required that a candidate win 270 to become president.2
This makes for interesting campaigns. Since the number of Electoral votes for a state
are determined by the state’s population, a candidate would have to focus his/her
attention on the more heavily populated states to secure a lock on the presidency.1 Wait a minute, a candidate only has to worry about
heavily populated states? This is absurd. This means that heavily populated states really
make the decision on the presidency. Under
the Electoral College system, a candidate does not have to win the popular vote to become
president.3 In the 1876 election,
Republican Rutherford B. Hayes lost the popular election, but still won the presidency by
obtaining the necessary Electoral College votes.2 This is preposterous. Also, what if the electors of each state do not
vote the way that the popular vote insists? Although
it has not been a problem in our election processes, it very well could become one.3 If a Presidential candidate does not have to win
the popular vote, are the people really deciding who will be the next President? It doesn’t seem so. In the 1992 election, Bill Clinton focused much of
his attention on California (which has 54 Electoral votes).
With the victory in California, Clinton cruised through the election.2
There are feasible solutions to this problem with the Electoral College. First of all, the Electoral College system must be abolished. From this point, the decision for electing a candidate will be made at the state level. Each state will hold an election for the sake of a popular vote. When the votes are tallied, the winner of that state’s popular vote will be assessed one point. This system will be used statewide. There will be a total of 50 points given, the minimum requirement being 26 points to win the presidency. This will eliminate the “population factor” (by “population factor” it is meant that point assessment is based on population). This would require the candidates to equally campaign in every state. There are also some disadvantages to this plan. Since the candidate would have to win 26 out of the possible 50 states, he/she could simply campaign heavily in 26 states to lock up the presidency. Another disadvantage to this solution is that the “population factor” is taken away. A candidate could win all of the most heavily populated states’ votes, but come up short when the point assessment is done.
Whether you are for the Electoral College or not, there is still the
problem with the way the Presidential Campaigns are financed. The problem that keeps coming up is with the use
of soft money. Soft money is money raised by
a political party for general purposes, not designated for a candidate.1 On June 30, 1999, Senator John McCain gave a
stirring oratory to then-President Bill Clinton dealing with the use of soft money. He stated: “Until we abolish soft money,
Americans will never have a government that works as hard for them as it does for the
special interest.”4 What
McCain was trying to say is that when the candidates accept exorbitant sums of money from
their “supporters”, they are allowing for their wealthy benefactors to have a
say in the shaping of our country. This is
wrong. In a recent debate over soft money
reform, Al Gore openly stated that he would limit the influence of special interest by
using a system of publicly financed campaigns.5
Perhaps we’re on to something. If
we the people really want to choose the President, then why don’t we use our money to
support our choice? Bill Bradley shares the
same idea.6 He believes that we
should take money from public treasuries and limit the amounts of money that come from
individuals. He also thinks that soft money
contributions to national party committees should be prohibited.6 Through these sorts of changes, we can eliminate
the role of money from our elections, and make citizen participation the goal of
elections.6
By implementing the suggestions, the Electoral College can be eliminated, and reforms can be made in campaign financing. These suggestions may seem naïve to some, but there is a strong chance they can work. We need to put more power to the people in the United States where elections are concerned, because it’s the people that make our country great!
1Remy, Richard C. United States Government: Democracy in Action. Glencoe/McGraw Hill, 1999.
2Sung, Ellen. “Time to Reform the Electoral College?” 2000. Policy.com
July 31, 2000 <http://www.policy.com/news/dbrief/defriefarc770.asp>
3Unknown Author. “The Electoral College: Then, Now, and
Tomorrow.” Wikman.com Oct. 17, 2000
<http://www.wikman.com/eric/electoralcollege.html>
4McCain, John. “Campaign Finance Reform.” June 30, 1999
<http://www.itsyourcountry.com/speech6-30-99.htm>
5Unknown Author. “Campaign Finance: Topics in the News.” Nov. 11, 2000
<http://www.issues2000.org/News_Campaign_Finance.html>
6Bradley, Bill. “Campaign Finance Reform.” Nov. 1, 2000
<http://www.billbradley.com/bin/articly.pl?path=22079912>
Election Process Questions
How and when did the United States elect and president and vice
president of different parties? Name them and
their respective parties.
In 1787,
our Founding Fathers decided to have a compromise in how our leaders should be chosen, and
that was the Electoral College. Originally
in Article 11 Section 1:2 of the U.S. Constitution provided that the candidate with the
highest number of votes would be president, and that the runner-up would be vice
president. Alexander Hamilton later laid out
the best argument for the Electoral College in the Federalist Papers Number 68. In the election of 1796, John Adams (Federalist)
was elected president, and Thomas Jefferson (Republican) for vice president.
Describe four ways that were suggested to elect the President
between 1808 and 1846.
Election
reform proposals have been around as long as the Constitution, but few have become
amendments to the Constitution. In 1808 the
proposal to choose the President by lot first surfaced, to reoccur unsuccessfully in 1844
and 1846. Originally the candidates to be
chosen by lot were to come from retiring Senators; in later proposals the states were each
to elect a native-born candidate. In 1816 the
first direct-vote plan was proposed by Senator Abner Lacock of Pennsylvania and was
defeated 21 to 12. In 1820 the second
faithless elector deprived James Monroe of a unanimous vote in the Electoral College by
giving John Quincy Adams, a non-candidate, his only electoral vote. In 1822 it was proposed that the president be
chosen by four regions on a rotating basis. In
1826 Charles Haynes introduced the plan whereby all of a state’s electoral votes
would automatically be cast for the candidate who received the highest popular vote.
Name five U.S. Presidents who were elected with less than a
popular vote.
John
Quincy Adams, James Polk, Zachary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln, and Richard Nixon were all
elected president even though they did not receive a majority of the popular vote.
Describe the winner-take-all
system. Which states use this system?
The
winner-take-all system refers simply to the idea that if a candidate wins the popular vote
in a state, that candidate receives all the electoral votes in that state. Presently, the winner-take-all system is used in
every state except Maine.
When do electors vote, and
when are the results known?
Electors
vote on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. The results of an election are shown to the public
in January.
What effect would substituting a direct
popular vote for the Electoral College have on third party candidates? Why?
Substituting
a direct popular vote for the Electoral College would be great for third party candidates. This is so because with the Electoral College
system, only one party gets the votes for a particular state, thus excluding the other
candidates of any chance of electoral votes. The
direct vote system would all candidates to get a share of the votes in a state.
Give four arguments for and against a
direct vote system.
The
direct vote would encourage minority parties because there would be a greater probability
that two major parties would not receive a majority.
They maintained the Bayh Plan would make actual voting more important that
population and would give less voice to the poor non-voters represented by the weighted
urban vote. A candidate, if elected on
popular vote alone, could conceivably win on the votes of special interests; for example,
on the labor vote, business vote, pro-life vote, or on the law and order vote. In their 1970 book Voting for Presidents,
William Sayre and Judith Parrish claim the direct vote would weaken the power of the
states and strengthen the national government. State
borders would be irrelevant in elections and probably federal standards of eligibility
would eventually be determined to make the presidential choices uniform. Federal employees would end up tallying a national
vote and all election officials would end up working for federal rather than state
governments.
Describe the differences between the
district plan, the proportional plan and the winner-take-all plan.
Under a
proportional plan, a small homogenous state could yield more to a candidate than could a
large diverse state. A proportional plan
would not satisfy any one group, because it decreases the margin of victory. The winner-take-all plan gives all the electoral
votes of a state to the winner of the popular vote in that state. In the district plan, electoral votes are
allocated by districts within the various states, thus making it possibly for a split in
the electoral votes to the candidates.
State four point experts in 1969 agreed
should be included in an ideal plan for electing U.S. Presidents.
The
experts agreed on the following points: the need for a quick decision and clear-cut
winner, the victor should be the peoples’ choice winner of the popular vote, the
president-elect should have a mandate to govern, a legitimacy which comes from a good
margin of victory, and the ideal system should not undermine the two party system.
Write a paragraph describing what is
meant by one of the following:
Crisis is Opportunity
In
modern times, war has been a crisis for the American people. But through this crisis, there has been a huge
margin of opportunities. During times of war,
the U.S. economy booms. There has to be a
major increase in production of surplus items for the soldiers in the war, hence the
phrase Crisis is Opportunity. The crisis of
war gives the American worker an opportunity of more jobs to support the war effort.