Concordia High School
Concordia, Kansas
Teacher: Timothy Berger
Fair and Square: A Discussion of
Voting Methods
By Katie Jones
12th grade
There have been many methods suggested to elect the President and Vice President: elections by Congress, by lot, and by direct-vote. The system that is currently in use involves electoral votes. This system, which consists of electing the President and Vice President through electoral votes of each state’s popular vote, is called the Electoral College. The Electoral College has had its troubles throughout its practice, yet it is still in use.1 There is so much controversy over the state of Florida’s vote in the current election. Bush was at first thought to be the clear winner, but then mistakes were revealed when Al Gore asked for a re-count in Florida. Voters claim that the ballots showed favoritism and were too confusing to follow. The next President now rests in the hands of Florida’s voters. What does this have to say about the Electoral College? To better understand the issues of the election and the need for reforms, one must first look at why the Electoral College was created and have a genuine understanding of the present system.
The Electoral College was created by the framers of the Constitution. It is said that it is the middle ground between a total republic and a total democracy. The election is in the hands of both the people and the government. The United States Constitution drafters were faced with a decision on how much power should really be placed in the voters’ hands.2 Voting through Congress members was in the discussion, but this might have put too much pressure on the President when considering whether to veto certain laws and bills or not. The next option was the direct vote. This was assumed to be an unstable way of electing because of all of the voters who could be easily misled and misinformed. So, the framers compromised by allowing all qualified persons to vote for the President, and then the electors from each state vote for the Presidential candidate who won that particular state’s popular vote.3 Each state is represented with electors equaling the number of the members of Senators and House of Representatives. No matter what, each state has a minimum of three electoral votes, and this includes the District of Columbia. Between the states and D.C., there are a total of 538 electoral votes. To win an election, a candidate must gain at least 270 of those votes. Once a state declares what party won the popular vote, the electors may cast their official votes for the winning party of that state. This vote is in December.4
By indirectly voting for the President, many people feel their vote does not count. Does it? Many people do not vote because of these beliefs. Another problem to the College is the “faithless elector” problem.3 Nowhere in the Constitution or federal law does it state that an elector must vote for the winning party.4 This could mean that the undeserving candidate could win the election. There is also a possibility that, if the votes are fairly equally split among more than two parties, no one candidate would receive the 270 electoral votes required to win. A candidate could also win the popular vote but not the electoral vote, and one could also win the electoral vote but not the popular vote. According to the system, the electoral votes are distributed all or none, except for the state of Maine.5 Even if 49% of a state's population votes for a candidate, and 51% votes for the other, the candidate who won the majority gets all of the electoral votes and the other gets none.
Because of these problems and concerns, the Constitution has had more proposals for amendments to change the Electoral College than any other subject brought before it.3 This is why a direct popular vote would be the best and most fair way to elect our next President and Vice President. The most favored and desired system throughout the United States is the direct nationwide popular vote. In this system, there are no electors, no state majorities, and the election falls entirely into the hands of the common voters.6 Every citizen would feel like his or her vote counts, and they would feel like the election is finally in their hands where it belongs. This would be practical considering that people now are educated enough to make important decisions on their own.
There are other issues that concern U.S. citizens about the election process. “Funds donated by corporations, unions and individuals to political parties are known as soft money.”7 There are no limits on how much money can be donated to a political party, but there are limits on the money donated to a particular candidate, which is called hard money.7 In Bush’s proposal, he states, “I would support an effort to ban corporate soft money and labor union soft money. I believe there needs to be instant disclosure on the Internet as to who’s given to whom.”8 In another interview, Bush claims, “…we should not allow federal candidates to take money from one campaign and roll it over into another campaign. And members of the United States Congress should not be allowed to raise money from federal lobbyists during a session.”8 Implementing Bush’s proposal to ban soft money would be the fairest way for candidates to campaign. Giving each candidate an equal amount of money to spend on advertising would solve a lot of problems with the elections, as well as changing the method of elections from the Electoral College to a direct popular vote.
With all of these issues, problems and concerns, it easy for one to see that the election process greatly needs improvement. The improvement process may take a while to implement, and some may not want to wait. However, something needs to be done about the Electoral College. By eliminating the College and beginning a direct popular vote, the election process will be simpler and would encourage more people to vote and become involved in politics and government.
1 Remy, Richard C. United State Government: Democracy in Action. New York: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 1999. 221-227, 463, 478
2 “Elections.” Student Handbook. Vol. 2. 1993.
3 Wikman, Eric. The Electoral College: Then, Now and Tomorrow. 28 October 2000<http://www.ericwikman.com/eric/electoralcollege.html>
4 Levine, Erwin L. “Electoral College.” The Encyclopedic Dictionary of American Government. Third Ed. 1986.
5 Peltason, and Burns, James MacGregor. Government by the People. Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966.
6 Eberstein, William, Pritchett, Herman, Turner, Henry, and Mann, Dean. American Democracy. Harper and Row, 1967.
7 “Should Soft Money be Banned?” Speak Out.com. 2000. Speak Out 2000. 18
October 2000 <http://www.speakout.com/Issues/Briefs/1096/>
8 “Campaign Finance.” Issues 2000. 2000. Issues 2000. 18 October 2000
<http://issues2000.org>
ANSWERS TO REQUIRED READING
1. How and when did the United States elect a president and vice president of different parties? Name them and their respective parties.
Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers about a problem in the election of John Adams, a Federalist, as the President and Thomas Jefferson, a Republican, as Vice President. This happened because the Constitution states that the candidate who wins with the highest majority vote becomes the President and the one with the second highest votes becomes the Vice President. This problem of different parties must not have occurred to them, and after this election they changed the policies. Electors vote for the offices separately.
2. Describe four ways that were suggested to elect the President between 1808 and 1846.
a)By lot—the candidates
were elected by luck; their names were put into a container and drawn out, and the person
whose name was drawn became the President; b) Direct-Vote—the
actual number of individual votes; c) Chosen
by four regions on a rotation basis—during an election, one of four geographical
regions of the U.S. would come together and would choose the President; and d) Automatic
a winner-take-all plan mostly, but does not include the electors in this plan. All of a state’s votes would automatically be
awarded to the ticket that carried that state’s popular vote.
3. Name five U.S. Presidents who were elected with less than a popular vote.
John Quincy Adams, James Polk,
Zachary Taylor, James Buchanan, and Abraham Lincoln were five Presidents who were elected
with less than a popular vote.
4. Describe the winner-take-all system. Which states use this system?
In the Electoral College, a candidate would receive all of the electoral votes of a state if they won the popular vote for that state. This makes it possible for the candidate who loses the popular vote of the nation to win the electoral vote. Each state varies with the number of electoral votes. States with a lesser population and fewer representatives have fewer electoral votes, and states with a greater population and a greater number of representatives would have more electoral votes. In this system, candidates could gain many popular votes, even as close to 49% of the state’s popular votes, but not receive the majority of the votes and yet gain no electoral votes for that state at all. These electoral votes are what really determines who gains the Presidency, and not the popular, individual votes of the people. this system has been accused of being unfair to the losing President, who receive some votes from a large number of people, but gain nothing at all toward his race if the other candidate has one more vote than he/she. Surprisingly, all states with the exception of Maine use this winner-take-all system.
5. When do electors vote and when are the results known?
The electors vote on Monday following
the second Wednesday in December, and the results are then officially known on January the
6th.
6. What affect would substituting a direct popular vote for the Electoral College have on third party candidates? Why?
By substituting a direct popular vote for the Electoral College, third party candidates would increase participation for minority parties and encourage them to run for office. It might even provide the opportunity for a coalition government. It would give representation to the third party candidates, and might encourage third party candidate voters to vote for that party knowing that their vote would actually count. It would also eliminate the concern that no candidate would gain the 270 electoral votes needed to officially be the President. If this were to happen with the Electoral College, the election would fall into the hands of the House of Representatives and they would then vote for whom they would want for President. By putting the election into the House’s hands, the candidate with the least electoral votes and the least popular votes could actually win the Presidency. Substituting the direct popular vote for the Electoral College would solve this problem.
7. Give four
arguments for and against a direct vote system.
The direct voting system has both advantages and disadvantages. The positive attributes to this system are as follows: it would ensure the candidate with the greatest popular vote would win the Presidency, it would make every vote equal, it would eliminate the elector problem, it would reduce the chance of fraud, it would encourage greater participation of both the voters and the candidates and it would place the election into the hands of the people. The negative attributes to this system are that it would encourage minority parties because there would be a greater probability that two major parties would not receive a majority, it would weaken 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,, it would greatly change the structure of the federal system, it would undermine federalism because the states would lose their role in the choice of a President, candidates would concentrate their efforts in densely populated areas therefore putting the control of the election into larger cities, and Federal employees would end up tallying a national vote and all election officials would end up working for federal rather than state governments.
8. Describe the differences between the district
plan, the proportional plan and the
winner-take-all plan.
The district plan says that the votes should be aggregated by state subdivision. It also satisfies the conservatives better and our present system already occupies the middle ground. The electoral votes are allocated or distributed by districts within various states and it encourages minor party candidates, giving them a chance to get at least a few electoral votes, and would elevate local leaders at the expense of national party officials. The proportional plan, however, says that the votes should be collected by party vote by states. In this plan, a small homogenous state could yield more to a candidate than could a large diverse state. It would distort that nationwide popular vote, and it doesn’t satisfy any particular group at all. The winner-take-all plan calls for the majority vote of each state, and then electoral votes for those states decide on the winner. A candidate gets either all of the electoral votes for that state, or none at all. this plan is what is in use today, but it gives way for the candidate with less than a popular vote to actually win the electoral votes and the candidacy. The more the representatives there are for a state, the more electoral votes and the candidacy. The more the representatives there are for a state, the more electoral votes that state will receive. This system is criticized as unfair and confusing.
9. State the four points experts in 1969 agreed
should be included in an ideal plan for electing U.S. Presidents.
Experts agreed that these four points are necessary for an ideal plan; they are as follows: 1) the need for a quick decision and a clear-cut winner; 2) the victor should be the people’s 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; and, 4) 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
Crisis is
opportunity
When disaster strikes, people need someone to lean on. People get desperate and will do just about anything to pull themselves out of the crisis. What better person than a President to fall back on? Lincoln pulled the nation out of the chaos of the Civil War, the greatest disaster our nation has faced, and in return, became a great leader. By bringing the nation out of a total crisis like this, the people looked up to Lincoln and adored him for saving the nation. Anyone who can manage to solve a major problem like the Civil War can be declared, in the eyes of those he or she saved, a hero. Lincoln was a hero. In our society, the negative occurrences are the only events seen in the news, not the positives. Even if they are made public, no one really notices or cares. It doesn’t mean much to take something good and make it better, but to take something horrible and make it bearable is outstanding. This is why crisis is opportunity.