Posted on 02/08/2004 6:30:00 PM PST by HAL9000
In January 2001, George W. Bush was inaugurated as the 43 rd president of the United States. This was after a very close election in the Electoral College, a Supreme Court decision on vote counting in Florida, and Bush lost the popular vote by more than a half million votes. If a candidate who lost the popular vote was declared the winner in some other country in which the United States had an interest, we would appeal to the United Nations, possibly apply economic sanctions, or even use military force to show our displeasure at this frustration of the popular will. In the United States, however, such an outcome is sanctioned by the constitution. The question is, do we wish to keep an electoral system that, on occasion, violates the basic tenets of democracy, especially when it is U.S. policy to push democracy with its emphasis on fair and free elections throughout the world? Under our present method of electing a president through an Electoral College, each state is assigned a certain number of electoral votes equal to the combined total of its congressional delegation. Arkansas gets six electoral votes since it has two members of the Senate and four in the House of Representatives while California gets 54. Since this allocation of electoral votes is roughly based on population, it means that states with the largest populations will have the most clout in the Electoral College.The electoral votes of a state are cast by presidential electors selected by state political parties, and pledged in advance in most states to vote the same way the state does. Whichever party candidates for president and vice president receive the most popular votes in a state win the entire electoral vote of the state to be cast by the previously pledged electors. It takes a total of 270 electoral votes out of 538 to become president. If no one has a majority of the electoral votes, the U.S. House of Representatives selects the president from among the top three contenders with each state casting only one vote and an absolute majority of the states (26) being required to elect. In the same situation, the choice of the vice president is by the U.S. Senate with only the top two contenders being eligible for selection. It takes 51 votes to pick a vice president.
THREE TIMES A FAILURE The Electoral College has failed three times to elect a president. In 1800, the election went to the House of Representatives, and took 36 ballots to decide between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. In 1824, the House of Representatives chose John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson after Henry Clay threw his support to Adams and later became Adams’ secretary of state. In 1876, an electoral commission had to be appointed to choose between Rutherford Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden. On four occasions (1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000), the person losing the popular vote became the president of the United States. It is possible to win in the Electoral College and lose in the popular vote because of the "winnertake-all" system that gives all the electoral votes of a state to the candidate who may carry the state by only one vote. To use an extreme example, someone could become president if he or she carried the 11 most heavily populated states by the margin of one vote each and lost the rest of the country overwhelmingly.
TWO DEFECTS The two greatest defects of the Electoral College, election by the House of Representatives and winners who lose the popular vote, have the potential, from time to time, to make the United States look like a banana republic. When the election goes to the House of Representatives, each state gets one vote but the one vote is to be determined by a vote of the House delegation from that state. In the past, if the delegation was equally split between Democrats and Republicans, no vote was cast by that state. This could mean that the magic number (26) might not be reached. Even if it were, the deals and trade offs would boggle the mind. Another problem is that when the legislative branch chooses the leader of the executive branch, the country is tilting toward a parliamentary system—a clear violation of separation of powers. Still another problem is that if no vice presidential candidate receives a majority in the Electoral College, the election is transferred to the Senate which is free to choose a vice president from a party which is not the president’s party. As to becoming president after losing the popular vote, surely a basic premise of democracy is that the person with the most votes wins. It is worthy of note that many nations have copied features of the American system of government such as federalism, separation of powers and due process of law, but so far, no one has bothered to borrow the Electoral College.
Possibly the best way the avoid the lurking disasters of the Electoral College is to simply elect the president by popular vote, which is the way all other federal elections are decided as well as nearly all elections of any consequence here and abroad. This was proposed in 1983 by the co-writer of this article and 19 senatorial co-sponsors, but it is just politically impossible because of the vested interest in the present system of the states with the largest populations. Another milder constitutional proposal would be to keep the Electoral College basically as it, but add 102 electoral votes (two additional for each state and the District of Columbia) as a bonus that would be given automatically to the winner of the popular vote. This would mean 321 electoral votes are necessary to win (538 + 102 = 640). The bonus votes (102) would be added to the electoral votes of the states and the District of Columbia (538) and the candidate with the majority of the electoral votes would be president. In the highly unlikely event that the winning candidate did not receive at least 40 per cent of the total vote, a runoff between the top two could be held within a reasonable period.
CURE FOR TWO FAULTS This proposed constitutional amendment could cure the two most flagrant faults of the Electoral College—election by the House of Representatives and putting the loser of the popular vote in the White House. It has the additional benefit of abolishing the office of presidential elector and awarding the electoral vote of a state immediately to the candidate who gets the most votes in that state. Since today, presidential electors do nothing except reflect the popular will, there is no need for them. Besides since winning presidential electors technically hold office for four years, this constitutional amendment in one bold stroke could eliminate hundreds of offices and office holders. This suggested change in our electoral system keeps intact the role of the states in presidential elections but abolishes the worst weaknesses of the Electoral College. Better to act now before a constitutional crisis strikes us at some future time.
• Dr. Calvin R. Ledbetter Jr. is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock and David Pryor is former governor of Arkansas and former U.S. senator.
What bunk
Many countries generally have elections where the winner gets a plurality instead of a majority.
Anyway, their minds are numb from the waist up!
Popular rule uber alles... popular rule, aka mob rule. And let's never, ever, ever take a look at the reasons why such a complex system as we have came to be developed, given that such a system might run counter to the "popular will."
The current system is what keeps the two party system alive in the 50 states--a system which declared the winner of the popular vote the new President would give much more weight to the major population centers, as well as increasing the incentives for voter fraud. The 2000 election is a good example of how small states can count: if the vote in NH had gone the other way, Gore would have won the election.
Prior should include 1960 as another case when the person who had fewer popular votes won the election: they count Kennedy as getting 100,000 more than Nixon only by counting all the Democrat votes in Alabama as Kennedy votes, although the majority of the electors voted for Harry Byrd rather than Kennedy. It might be possible to determine from old newspapers, or from the memories of Alabamians who were old enough to follow politics at the time, what the Democrats of Alabama thought about Kennedy.
Why do these Bozo's always skip the chapter about the Floridah Supremes, usurping the Legislature, and re-writing Election law on-the-fly?
Amen to that.
The recipe for electing the president was cobbled togther in the final days of the Convention. Nobody was satisfied with it, but it was the best the combined minds of the Convention could come up with.
In December of 1829, Andrew Jackson, in his annual message to Congress, argued in favor of a constitutional amendment to elect the president by popular vote. Jackson had been burned in the 1824 election, as the article states, so it is understandable that he would want to change the presidential election process.
After the close call in 1968, several plans were brought forward. One was a revival of Jackson's 1829 suggestion of straight popular vote. The other, proposed by Republican senators Everett Dirksen of Illinois and Karl Mundt of South Dakota, suggested granting each congressional district one electoral vote and each state two electoral votes.
Both ideas continued to gather adherents in the Seventies, but then the momentum went out of the movement.
Maine and Nebraska, however, decided to follow the Dirksen-Mundt idea on their own. Both states assign electoral votes by congressional district and assign two votes to the state in general.
Puke! Fortunately the Constitution protects us from imbeciles like this. What is appalling is realizing that this complete moron may not like the Electoral College and that is fine, but doesn't understand the Constitution in the first place. And this same moron teaches... glad it is in Arkansas.
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