Concordia
High School
Concordia,
Kansas
Teacher:
Timothy Berger
It’s
Time To Get Rid of the Electoral College
By
Matt Bartz
12th grade
William
Gossett, the American Bar Association president in 1968, said, “The electoral college
method of electing a president of the United States is archaic, undemocratic, complex,
ambiguous, indirect, and dangerous.”1
These statements are true. The
Electoral College system is highly controversial, over the years there has been more than
100 attempts in Congress to alter or abolish the system.2 Picture a
presidential candidate, who has had a long primary and a grueling race for the Presidency,
failing to win the Electoral College, but winning a majority of the popular vote. It has
happened before and could easily happen again. The Electoral College does not represent
the U.S. population and is set up to guarantee that no third party candidate can win. As a nation, we should do away with the Electoral
College system and replace it with a winner take all, direct vote system.
The
Electoral College does not always represent the direct popular vote of the people. There
are 538 electors in the Electoral College. Each
state gets one elector for each representative and senator it has. Under this system, a presidential candidate needs
270 votes to win. The biggest concern with
the Electoral College is the possibility of electing a minority president. This means that a candidate could win without the
absolute majority of the popular votes. It
could easily happen this year. As it stands
now, Al Gore leads the total popular vote, but could lose the electoral vote to George
Bush if Bush carries Florida. This happens
because of the way the Electoral College is set up. A candidate could win a large state
such as California by less than 1% of the popular vote and take all of the 54 electoral
votes.2 The presidential election
is primarily based on winning key states such as California (54), Texas (32), New York
(33), Florida (25), Pennsylvania (23), and Illinois (22).
Therefore most presidential candidates campaign in these “battleground”
states. Nearly all campaign money, energy,
and the candidates’ messages for how they plan to govern are pitched to swing voters
in these states. Kansas (6) and other states
with few electoral votes don’t get to see the candidates for themselves. Consequently, voter turnout increased sharply by
10-15% in the “battleground” states, but went down in the rest of the nation.3
Another
reason for rejecting the Electoral College system is the risk of “faithless
elector.” A “faithless
elector” is one who is pledged to vote for his party’s candidate for president
but nevertheless votes of another candidate.”4 There were 7 “faithless electors” in the
twentieth century. Most recently in 1988 when
a Democrat Elector from West Virginia cast his votes for Lloyd Benson for president and
Micheal Dukakis for vice president instead of the other way around.4
The
Electoral College system is unfair to third-party candidates. According to Devvy Kidd, “Only Republicans
and Democrats are electors for the Electoral College...in the 1992 and 1996 presidential
elections, I could not find a single third party elector in any of the 50 states.”2 In the 1992 election, Bill Clinton came away with
the presidency. He won 370 electoral votes
and had 44,908,254 popular votes. All was
fair, but when taking a look at the rest of the electoral and popular vote may amaze you.
Presidential
Election Results 1996 2
Candidate
Popular Vote
Electoral Vote
Bill
Clinton
44,908,254
370
George
Bush Sr. 39,102,343
168
Ross
Perot
19,741,065
0
Not
that Mr. Perot gaining some electoral votes would have won him the presidency, but it is
not fair for him to receive so much of the popular vote and not a single electoral vote.
“For years we’ve all heard the polls say X number of people will vote for a
third party presidential candidate, yet come election night, only the two major new world
order parties seem to be able to win the presidential election.”2 Third party voters “run scared” on
election night and end up voting for a Republican or Democratic candidate because they
feel that otherwise their vote would be wasted. The Electoral College makes it nearly
impossible for a third party candidate to win the election.
Another
hotly debated subject in U.S. government is soft money.
“Money that is outside the federal regulatory framework, but raised and spent
in a manner suggesting possible intent to affect federal elections, is known as soft
money.”5 Soft money
contributions are being illegally used to coordinate federal campaigns when they are
intended to be used for voter registration and get-out-to-vote efforts. Soft money donors are rewarded by the party they
donate to. One source says, “President
Clinton used the occasion of his 50th birthday to raise money for the
Democrats...Individuals who came to help him celebrate chipped in for a generous birthday
present of $10 million.”5 Soft
money is scandleless. Both Republican Presidential Candidate George Bush and Democratic
Presidential Candidate Al Gore have vowed that if elected they will ban soft money.
The Electoral College system is not in the best interest of our nation for electing the President and Vice-President. As it is right now, when voting in a presidential election, you are not voting for the president, you are voting for people to vote for the president. This system is undemocratic. In 1888, Grover Cleveland outpolled Benjamin Harrison in the popular vote, but lost the Electoral College vote 233 to 168.6 Obviously, the public was denied their candidate of choice.
Harry
Singer Foundation, “The Election Process” – 2000. www.singerfoundation.org
2Media
Bypass Magazine, “Why a Third Party Presidential Candidate Can’t Get
Elected” – March 2000.
3Alternet,
“Scrap the Electoral College” – 2000.
www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10089
4Jackson
County Election Board, “The Electoral College” – 2000.
www.jceb.co.jackson.mo.us/fun_stuff/electoral_college.htm
5The
Center For Responsive Politics, “Soft and Hard Money in Contemporary Elections: What
Fedaral Law Does and Does Not Regulate” – 2000.
www.opensecrets.org/parties/s97-91.htm
6League
of Women Voters, “Testimony of Becky Cain” - 1997
http://www.house.gov/judiciary/222313.htm
7Salina
Journal, “Should Electoral College stay or should it go?” – November 20,
2000 Robert Tanner, The Associated Press
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.
Article
11 Section 1:2 of the U.S. Constitution provided that the candidate with the highest
number of votes should be president and the runner-up, vice-president.
1796 - President John
Adams, Federalist
Vice-President Thomas Jefferson, Republican
2.
Describe four ways that were suggested to elect the President between 1808 and 1846.
1. In
1808, 1844, and 1846 the proposal to chose the president by lot surfaced. It reoccurred in 1844 and 1846, all were
unsuccessful.
2. In
1816 the first direct-vote plan was proposed by Senator Abner Lacock of Pennsylvania. It was defeated 21 to 12.
3. In
1822 it was proposed that the president be chosen by four regions on a rotating basis.
4. In
1826 Representative Charles Haynes of Georgia first introduced the automatic plan whereby
all of a state’s electoral votes would be automatically cast for the candidate who
received the highest popular vote.
3.
Name five U.S. Presidents who were elected with less than the popular vote.
1824
John Quincy Adams
37 percent
1844
J. Polk
49.6 percent
1848
Z. Taylor
47.3 percent
1856
J. Buchanan
45.6 percent
1860
A. Lincoln
39.8 percent
4.
Describe the winner-take-all system. Which states use this system?
If
A gets 40 percent of all the votes, B gets 35 percent, and C gets 25 percent, then A will
end up with everything and 60 percent of the voters are disenfranchised. All states use the winner-take-all system except
Maine.
5.
When do the electors vote and when are the results known?
According
to Article II Section 1:3 of the Constitution, “The Congress may determine the time
of choosing the electors, and the day on which they shall give their votes; the day shall
be the same throughout the United States.” That day has been set on the first Monday
after the second Wednesday in December. The
votes are counted before the Houses and results are officially announced in January.
6. What affect would substituting a direct popular
vote for the Electoral College have on the third party candidates? Why?
The
direct vote would encourage minority parties because there would be a greater probability
that the two major parties would not receive a majority.
7.
Give four arguments for and against a direct vote system.
For
Direct Vote
1. Would
insure that the candidate with the greatest popular vote would win the office of
president.
2. It
would give equal weight to every vote.
3. It
would do away with the faithless elector problem.
4. It
would reduce the chance of fraud.
Against
Direct Vote
1. Direct
vote would weaken the power of the states and give more strength to the national
government.
2. State
borders would be irrelevant in elections.
3. Federal
standards of eligibility would eventually be determined to make the presidential choices
uniform.
4. Federal
employees would end up tallying a national
vote and all election officials would end up working for federal rather that state
governments.
8.
Describe the differences between the district plan, the proportional plan and the
winner-take-all plan.
In
the district plan tow electors are chosen on a statewide popular level and one is chosen
from each states congressional districts. The
proportional plan calls for a division of each state’s Electoral College votes
according to popular vote received by each party.
In the winner-take-all system whichever candidate receives the majority of the
popular vote gets all of that states 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 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.
4. The
ideal system should not undermine the two-party system.
10.
Write a paragraph describing what is meant by one of the following:
Americans prefer pragmatists to ideologues
The
American voter shuns ideologues in favor of pragmatists.
The voter’s concern is not whether a proposal is consistent or right, but if
the proposal works. As a presidential
candidate you must earn popularity by your appeal to moderates and your association with
the ideas that work. Americans have the
tendency to overlook just about anything as long as it works.