Electoral College
...d Cleveland, and he won by more than 425,000 votes in six southern states. However, in the rest of the country he lost by more than 300,000 votes. Today, a candidate must receive 270 of the 538 votes to win the election. In cases where no candidate wins a majority of electoral votes, the decision is thrown to the House of Representatives by virtue of the 12th amendment. The House then selects the president by majority vote with each state delegation receiving one vote to cast for the three candidates who received the most electoral votes. Here are the two elections that were decided by the House of Representatives: • 1801: Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, both Democrat-Republicans, received the same number of electoral votes, despite the fact that Burr was running as a vice presidential candidate, not for the presidency. Following 36 successive votes in the House, Jefferson was finally elected president. • 1825: As mentioned above, Andrew Jackson received a majority of the popular vote over John Quincy Adams, but neither man received a 131-vote majority of electoral votes needed at the time to claim the presidency. Adams won the House vote on the first ballot. The framer’s intent of setting up the American government will never be known for sure, but it is gathered that they preferred a republic over a democracy. In the constitutional convention the drafters had to decide how much power they would entrust with the people of the United States, and how much should be controlled by representatives. They chose to have Congress make the laws, and congress would be selected directly by the people. But another branch of government, the executive branch, needed a sole president and the framers had to decide how to choose this president. They chose from three main systems: elect the president by congress, the people, or electors. Much debate was made over this topic in the constitutional convention and eventually the Electoral College system was chosen. The Electoral College system has been in place for over 200 years and Americans are still not sure how it works or if it is the best system. Many Americans feel they go to the polls every year and vote for the president, and in the long run they are in control of the fate of our executive branch. With the 1992 election it was clear that many people have little understanding for how a president is chosen; the 1992 election came close to having no majority of electors due to Ross Perot and his third party. The Electoral College is just barely surviving and is under more and more attack all the time. Many other alternative systems will be discussed and more importantly how to come about change. Before any debate it was assumed the best system of electing the president was to have congress do it. However, if congress was to elect the president, then the president might feel an obligation to help congress get certain laws passed by not vetoing. This would put a dent in the checks and balances system. Even with this problem the system was voted for and approved on four different occasions. Not many believed in the direct vote system, but three prominent people did: James Wilson, Gouverneur Morris, and James Madison. Most delegates did not think that the American democracy had matured enough to offer a direct vote. It was still an unstable government. Sure enough, the arguments that were made in favor of this system were presented for the future generations of America. Madison said, "With all [the direct election’s] imperfections, "that he, "liked the best.” After all, the president is to guard the people from the legislature; therefore he should be selected by the people. But most drafters believed that the people were generally misinformed and easily misled. This system was voted down twice, but was helpful in seeing the pitfalls of the legislature deciding a president. When they had seen the pitfalls of two systems, a third compromising system evolved, the electors. This third system was to have electors that could not be a member of congress vote for the president. Most of the arguments made in support of the elector system were nothing more than negative arguments of the other two systems. The elector system was voted down twice, once as the electors to be chosen by state legislatures, and the other time as the electors to be chosen by direct vote. Finally it was passed under the system of letting state legislatures decide how to choose the electors. Another compromise had to be made about how many electors each state would have. This was agreed upon by the electors equaling the total of the states representatives and senators. There was no further debate on how to choose electors or the apportionment of electors. Finally they had chosen a system of electing a president. Winston Churchill later said, "The electoral college system is probably the worst possible method of choosing a president-except for all the others. States went three main routes in choosing electors: the legislative system, where state legislatures choose the electors; a district system, where electors are selected by the people of each congressional district; and the general ticket, or a winner-take-all system, where a popular vote was held in the entire state, and the winner took all electoral votes. Many have tried to reform by making a more uniform system state by state, but the constitution is very clear that it is each state’s own decision of how to choose electors. This is one right that congress definitely does not have to change. The legislative system eventually failed because of too much bargaining, promises, and payoffs. The district system eventually lost popularity because it encourages third parties. This left the general ticket system as the dominating system. However, the framers originally intended electors to be chosen by the people and then vote for what they thought was best. Most all states no longer show the electors’ names on the ballot. The voter votes for either the president or the party that they wish to hold office. This causes a problem of the unfaithful elector. Electors are expected to ratify the people’s choice by voting for candidates winning the popular election. Electors that do not vote for what they are expected to vote for are considered faithless or unfaithful electors. This has not traditionally been a problem in the history of the Electoral College but it could possibly be a problem. Less than 1% of electors have ever misrepresented their community. Twenty six states do not require an elector to vote for what they have pledged to vote for by state law. Although these states are still considered under the general ticket system. Basically the Electoral College system works like this today. Every ten years the census figures adjusts how many representatives each state has. This number plus two, representing the two senators, equals how many electors each state has. Also the District of Columbia has three electors. Then each state has the right to decide how to select these electors. Forty eight states use the general ticket system, two, Maine and Nebraska, use the district system. The general ticket system is suppose to operate as follows. There is a direct vote election held in each state and the winner of the vote is suppose to get all of that states electoral votes. In twenty four states the electors are required to vote as pledged. In Maine and Nebraska there is an election held in each congressional district. The winner of every district gets one electoral vote, and the candidate with the most electoral votes gets the remaining two electoral votes. Then all of the votes are counted, and if a candidate gets more than half the votes, he/she becomes the new president. If there is no majority then the election gets thrown into the House of Representatives. There each state is given one vote and they vote on the top three candidates. If a candidate gets a majority vote, then he or she becomes president. If not they continue voting until a majority is reached and the speaker of the house become a temporary president until a majority is reached. As I see it there are three problems to the current Electoral College system. First a president can be elected to office even if it is not what the people want. Another problem is that electors are not punished for being unfaithful to what they have pledged. And finally the system for electing a president if no electoral majority is reached. Under the assumption that all st...