The Constitution as originally written did not require states to hold any popular election related to the position of President of the United States at all:
In South Carolina, right up until the Civil War, the manner the legislature thereof chose for appointing electors was that the legislature picked the state’s electors all by itself. The people of South Carolina (by which I mean “the white males of South Carolina”) elected the state legislature, which then chose the state’s presidential electors (and of course the state’s two U.S. Senators, which was the universal practice until the Seventeenth Amendment was passed in 1913).
The post-Civil War Fourteenth Amendment does provide that
So, you can’t hold an election for presidential electors and discriminate against law-abiding (male) citizens (over 21 years of age) without incurring the penalty of having your state’s representation proportionally reduced. But could you still just decide to not have an election for presidential electors at all, and have the state lege decide all by itself who the state will support for POTUS? (Presumably states don’t have to have elections for judges, or for state Commissioner of Agriculture; it’s just that if they do have such elections, they can’t say only people who are right-handed are allowed to vote in them.) Women’s suffrage (references to “male” citizens in the Fourteenth Amendment) and the Twenth-Sixth Amendment (voting rights for 18-year-olds and the Fourteenth Amendment’s references to citizens “twenty-one years of age”) further confuse the issue.
If every state (with more than three electors) did what Maine and Nebraska do, the electoral college would actually do a reasonable job of balancing “popular with lots of people” and “popular in lots of states.” Or better yet, assign all but one of the elector seats by D’Hondt or something, and award that one seat to the candidate who gets a plurality, period.
Though this raises a question: was there a time when some, or even most or all, states determined who the electors were to be by some way other than having them elected? If so, what happened (in those states) on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November?
There aren’t enough states that have passed it yet, but if 270 EV worth of states agree, their electors will all vote for the candidate who wins the popular vote. Much easier than a constitutional amendment, and basically ditching the system while working inside it.
Among others, it intentionally creates some balance of power between large states and small states, while still taking the larger populations into account. Kind of like having a house and a senate. This discourages candidates from focusing exclusively on the issues of a small number of large states.
The EC also discourages voter fraud – or at least, the impact of vote fraud – in non swing states. A few extra votes for either candidate in, say California or Texas, would have no impact on the EC since the margin of victory in those states is so great. But if the election is based purely on a national popular vote, a few fraudulent votes within each jurisdiction might suddenly matter a great deal.
The EC also simplifies recounts, fraud or not. For bush v gore, when only 500k votes separated them nationally, the EC allowed the recount to focus on Florida. Can you imagine the mess that would have unfolded had the same recount and legal battle ensued in every precinct across the country, looking for 500k votes?
The main purpose of the elctoral college was simple. Like today, there was an imbalance between the populations of the original 13 states; plus not all 13 signed up at once for the constitution. The framers did not want an overwhelmingly popular candidate from one state to win simply on the basis of a strong regional vote in one or two states. Also, in those days it was hard enough to arrange a day for voting - it’s not like they could have a run-off system and more votes after all the votes were tallied once the totals were taken by horse to the state capital (or Washington) a week or three later.
The electoral system meant that the winner had to be the favourite in a substantial number of states. Alternatively, the populace voted for “wise men” who chose the leader. Party politics eliminated the need for direct personal appeal of the candidate to win a state, and aprty politics eventually supplanted personal judgement on the part of the electors.
A few states apportion electors according to the popular vote, which would make for a more interesting election and give each vote more of a voice… an also make lections closer with more wrangling over recounts. The USA needs to fix how it votes before it fixes how those votes count.
The electoral college isn’t an anachronism or a problem. It’s a fundamental part of our country’s design. If you get rid of the electoral college, you have to abolish the whole concept of state’s rights – the idea of layers of local government that make most of their own laws.
With the caveat that Congress approves and I don’t think that is a given.
[QUOTE=Article I, Section 10]
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.
[/QUOTE]
The National Popular Vote Compact is a bit much, but it would help immensely if we could get them to enter into an agreement to split their votes, like ME and NE. Traditionally, this wasn’t going to happen because the large states wouldn’t want to lose the clout they had by being a large block of electoral votes to be won or lost. However, with states like CA and TX increasingly being written off as a lock by one party and unwinnable by the the other, one can imagine them deciding that they’ll split their votes to a least get to play in the election.
Article I, section 10 aside, it’s kind of hard to stop the states from looking at what the other states are doing, and deciding to do the same thing.
Again, the electoral college actually makes both of these worse, not better. If you want to swing an election through fraud, you only need to flip a handful of votes in one or two swing states, not the much larger number you’d need nationwide. And the only way to make the probability of a recount being needed non-negligible is to break up the country into smaller units: A national recount would be 50 times more trouble than a recount of a single state, but it’s also much more than 50 times less likely.
One could also, meanwhile, argue that it doesn’t strike the proper balance between states’ rights and citizens’ rights, because the proper balance between those is to ignore states’ rights entirely and give the power entirely to the people. But that argument is one for GD, not GQ.
I don’t necessarily have an issue with the electoral college system as a means of election (meaning X state gets Y number of votes, etc). I do, however, find it rather insane that the actual election comes down to the chosen electors casting their ballots how they are supposed to. While it hasn’t ever been an issue, there is certainly the possibility of an issue happening at some point or another, especially if you have an extremely close election in the EC. Just a one elector flip can send the election to someone else (If Obama had won 270-268, and one elector flipped to make it a tie, the vote would have gone to the house, and then very likely to Romney).
While faithless electors are rare, they’re not unheard of. I would be in support of an amendment that eliminated the actual electors, making the electoral college vote basically the certified state assignment of electoral votes as per state laws. So, Ohio’s vote goes for Obama…the certified result of an Ohio Obama victory = 18 electoral votes cast for Obama, by law.
Keeps all the positives of the EC without any possible way to have a rogue individual completely modify the will of the people.
If all states split their electoral votes by Congressional district like ME and NE do, then jerrymandering after the census would only become more important. Take a look at how OH, VA, and PA would have voted this year for example.
In Tennessee, it also says “Electors For” whichever candidate you voted for…however, I had LOTS of people when helping at the polls say “BUT I want to vote for so in so, why isn’t he listed?” Well, he was but as “The Electors for”…tthe average person is just confused about the Electoral College and it’s why of making sure each state has a fair stake in the proceedings.
The simplest thing (and takes care of the extra 2 electors for senators) is to use the state-wide vote percentages to allocate shares of elector votes, rather than electors by congressional districts.
I don’t disagree, but it’s largely a theoretical concern.
Electors are party officials, and their role is largely ceremonial. In New York, for example, the Democratic electors include Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. These are the key members of the party.
You’re not responding to the point I made. If you don’t care enough to be informed about the process, by all means that’s your right. But you made the claim that the ballot was misleading, because it simply listed Obama’s and Biden’s names. What I’m pointing out is that, if the voter knows how the system works, there’s nothing misleading about that at all. Your statement, “There are a whole very big lot of people who think they are, in fact, voting for the actual candidate(s)” only applies to people who willfully don’t know how the system works.
I don’t know if you meant to imply that, because of that, the ballot writers ought to have some obligation to make it clear on the ballot what the presidential vote actually means, but I’m saying that they don’t. The obligation is on the voter to inform himself about how the voting process works. If a voter decides (for whatever reasons, in your case apparently because you don’t care) to be ignorant of the process, any misconceptions are entirely his own doing.
No, there was one in Minnesota in 2004.
The Democratic ticket of Kerry/Edwards won the popular vote, so John Kerry should have received Minnesota’s 10 electoral votes. He only got 9, 1 was voted for his VP candidate, John Edwards*. This was because of a reason mentioned by Expano above: “long-standing” party service – meaning electors are often elderly.
In this case, an elderly Democratic elector got confused and cast his vote for the Democratic VP candidate rather than the Presidential one. (Electors cast separate votes for both the President and the Vice-President.) The mistake was noticed immediately, but the Secretary of State (a Republican) refused to allow the elector to correct his vote. Not an intentionally ‘faithless’ elector, but the same result: Kerry got 1 less Elector vote than he should have. (Minnesota has since changed the process by which Electoral votes are cast.)
Not quite accurate. They are chosen by the political parties in each state, but by different methods. In Minnesota, they are elected by party delegates at party conventions. So not by “party bosses”, unless you call a few thousand elected party delegates all “bosses”.
*That’s probably a winning trivia item. Never nominated for President, but got 1 electoral vote. If he goes to prison after the current trial, will he be the only person to have won Presidential Electoral votes to serve time in prison? (Eugene V. Debs ran for President while in prison, but never got any electoral votes.)
Didn’t Aaron Burr end up in prison? Plus, of course, Spiro Agnew, though he doesn’t count as he only got VP votes.
Apropos this line of questioning, who was the only man to serve as President or Vice President who never received even a single electoral vote? (It’s not the answer 5that first comes to mind.)
Just as another data point: On my ballot it stated very clearly "… Electors " then the party name and then listed the electors out in the same size type as the Electors line.