| NEWS
|
National
Metro
Africa
World
Business
|
|
|
| OPINION
|
Editorial
Columnists
Contributors
Letters
Cartoons
Discussions
Outlook
|
|
|
| SPORTS
|
Home
Abroad
Golf Weekly
Results
|
|
|
| FEATURES
|
Focus
Policy & Politics
Arts
Media
Science
Natural Health
Law
Education
Weekend
Friday Review
Executive Briefs
Fashion
Food & Drink
Auto Wheels
Friday Worship
Saturday Magazine
Sunday Magazine
Ibru Ecumenical Centre
Agro Care
|
|
|
|
|
Electoral college, crux of American presidential election
By Bayo Ohu, Asst. News Editor
ONE fundamental constitutional issue to be placed in focus as the November 2 Presidential election in the United States draws close is the system of Election College in which electoral votes rather than popular votes are used in deciding the winner of the Presidential election.
Constituting the electoral college is the totality of the electoral votes per state which is equal to the total number of members of the Congress- House of Representatives and the senate from each state. All, except two of each state's electoral votes are awarded on the basis of population, rather than the voting strength.
The cumulative effect of the defects and dangers of adopting this system in selecting the President is the controversy generated by the unit-rule system of counting electoral votes. Under the existing system, the candidate receiving a plurality of the popular vote in any given state is credited with all the electoral votes of that state regardless of how unfinitesimal the plurality.
At the end of the day, the totality of electoral votes garnered by each Presidential candidate in all the states will determine who gets the Presidency and not the totality of the popular votes obtained. In this respect, a candidate with the highest majority votes may not emerge winner if his opponent with lesser popular votes got more electoral votes.
The summary of electoral and popular votes at the Presidential election of 2000 shows that President George W. Bush who was declared elected got 50,456,002 votes or 47.87 per cent of the total votes cast but received a total of 271 electoral votes, one vote more than the required 270 while the Democratic challenger, Albert A. Gore secured 50,999,897 votes or 48.38 per cent of the total ballots cast but only able to get 266 electoral votes.
The major defect in adapting the Electoral College System to elect American President is that the system, as can be seen from the result of the 2000 presidential election, negate the principle of popular democracy in which majority of the people decide who rule them or better put, the man elected to rule emerges through the popular wish of the people.
To further bring out the flaws in the Electoral college System, a closer look at how the electoral votes are awarded shows a criteria that did not reflect the true wish of the electorates in each state. For instance in the state of Florida, the Republican candidate, Bush who was awarded all of the 25 electoral votes in the state has only 537 votes more than his Democratic challenger, Gore.
Here, Bush had 2,912,790 votes or 49 per cent of the total votes cast in the state while Gore got 2,912,253 votes also representing 49 per cent of the total votes.
In the state of New Mexico, the Democratic candidate who was awarded the entire electoral votes got only 366 votes more than his Republican challenger. There are other examples in many other states that made one to ask, why should not the electoral votes in each state be divided among the candidates in direct proportion to the popular votes.
Perhaps the best logical questions at this stage is: Why was the Electoral College created by the constitution of the United States of America? Why not allow the decision and popular wish of the people as demonstrated by a direct voting at election stand?
An American Political Scientist, Mare Schulman offered an answer to the two posers. According to him, the Electoral College was created for two reasons. The first purpose was to create a buffer between population and the selection of a President. The second was part of the structure of the government that gave extra power to the smaller states.
In the first reason, the American founding fathers were afraid of direct election to the Presidency because they feared that a tyrant could manipulate public opinion and come to power. It was equally desirable that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analysing the qualities adapted to the station and acting under circumstances favourable to deliberation and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choices.
The founders believed that the electors in the electoral college would be able to ensure that only a qualified person becomes President. They also believed that with Electoral College no one would be able to manipulate the citizenry. It would act as check on an electorate that might be duped. They did not trust the population to make the right choice and were of the belief that the Electoral college had the advantage of being a group that met only once and thus could not be manipulated.
The Electoral College is also part of compromises made at the convention to satisfy the small states. Under the system, each state had the same number of electoral votes as they have representative in the congress, thus no state could have less than three votes. So, at the 2000 presidential election, the state of Wyoming has about 210,000 votes and thus each elector represented 70,000 votes while in California 9,700,000 votes were cast for 54 votes, respresenting 179,000 votes per electorate.
However, one aspect of the electoral system that is not mandated in the constitution is the fact that the winner takes all the votes in the state. So, it makes not differences if one win a state by 50.1 per cent or 90 per cent of the vote, you receive the same number of electoral votes.
This can be a recipe for one individual to win some states by large pluralities and lose others by small number of votes, and thus this became an easy scenario for one candidate winning the popular vote while another winning the electoral vote. The winner takes all methods used in picking electors has been decided buy the states themselves and this trend took place over the course of the 19th century.
Although there are defects and clear problems with the Electoral College, there are also some advantages to it, thus changing it is very unlikely, because it would require a constitutional amendment ratified by three-quarter of states to change the system and it is hard to imagine the smaller states agreeing to any amendment to the constitution.
Notwithstanding the obstacles and the way of any attempt to change the electoral system, historical record have shown that there have been efforts in the past to effect a constitutional amendment on this. For instance, after the suffrage reforms of the 1820s, there were movements either to abolish or to alter its role in the election of U.S. Presidents.
Direct-reliance on the popular vote since it reflects the will of the people more accurately than anything else can, instead of the intervening mechanism of the electoral college may seemed more desirable to many Americans.
In 1948 Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts and Representative Ed Gossett of Texas jointly introduced legislation calling for a proportional system for the election of the President and Vice-President.
The following year in 1949, Lodge introduced a resolution proposing a constitutional amendment to that effect and on January 25, 1950, he spoke in defence of his proposed amendment and in opposition to an institution of the electoral college which seems to many American and Constitution analysts to be an antiguated, unreliable and potentially trouble some device.
He said: "I desire to make a presentation concerning senate Joint Resolution 2, which proposes an amendment to the constitution of the United States abolishing the electoral college and providing for the counting of the electoral votes for President and Vice President in proportion to the popular vote."
The proposed constitutional amendment, according to him, does three things, principally which include:
- First, it abolishes entirely the office of presidential elector and retains the electoral vote per state but purely as an automatic country device;
- second, it eliminates any possibility that an election may be thrown into the House of Representatives a possibility which was a very real one in connection with the 1948 election, and,
- third, it does away with the so-called unti-rule system of counting electoral votes.
Under the existing system of electoral college, the candidate receiving a plurality of the popular vote in any given state is credited with all the electoral votes of that state, regardless of how infinitesimal the plurality. But the proposed amendment seeks a method whereby the electoral votes in each state are automatically divided among the candidates in direct proportion to the popular votes each of them get in the particular state.
Since the constitutional amendment proposed in Senate Joint Resolution 2 has as one of its objectives, the correction of certain evils in the present method of electing the President the need for reform is highlighted by a discussion of both the obvious and latent effect inherent in the electoral college unit-rule system of choosing the American President.
The indictment that can be drawn up against the present procedure of electoral college Henry Cabot pointed out is an impressive one. In general, there are three principal counts in this indictment. They are:
- First, the evils arising from the retention of the "dummy" office of presidential elector;
- Second, the method of selecting a president when no candidate commands a majority of electoral votes and;
- Third, the defects and dangers which derive from the so-called unit-rule method of crediting all of a state's electoral votes to the plurality candidate.
* The framers of the constitution visioned the individual member of the electoral college as an official who would exercise independent judgement. His responsibility was a graxeance and it was though that only men of prestige and ability would be selected for that office.
But these characteristics are no longer associated with the office of elector. In most instances today, men elected to the post of presidential elector are men whose names mean nothing whatsoever to the average voter. It is also important to note that the individual elector is only morally bound to vote for candidates of his party for President and Vice President but he is not legally bound.
It is possible therefore, for individual members of the electoral college to cast their votes for whomsoever they please, utterly ignoring the mandate of the people and disreguarding, if they so choose, their own pledges. Indeed, there had been several examples in the past of free-wheeling electoral.
For instance, in the 1948 elections, to Tennessee elector, running on both the Democrat and Dixiecratslate cast his for the Dixiecrate candidate despite the fact that the state turned in a substantial plurality for the Democratic candidate.
The second problem against the present system of electoral college being used to elect an American President, as Senator Henry Cabot pointed out, concerns the constitutional provision which designated the House of Representatives as the final impire of Presidential elections in which no candidate receives a majority of the electoral votes.
By the present method of electoral college, a candidate in order to win the election must secure a majority of the whole number of electors which as at the 1940s mean 266 votes, and in case no person receives an electoral majority for President, the House of Representatives, voting by state units, elects the President from those receiving the three highest totals of electoral votes.
The third problem as contained in senator Henry Cabot's proposal for a constitutional amendment is that an electoral college deals with the unit-rule method of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the candidate who command even a bare plurality of the state's popular vote. In the 2000 presidential elections, examples of this scenario presented themselves in the state of New Mexico, Oregon, Wisconsin, and Florida.
It should be observed here that from the point of view of constitutional authority, the states are free for adopt more equatable methods of selecting presidential electors since article II, Section I of the American Constitution provides simple that each, state shall appoint its electors in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct.
Therefore, it is generally believed that a constitutional amendment is necessary to uproot the present electoral college system in order to establish a uniform and more accurate method of reflecting the popular wish of the people.
The defects and potential evils of the unit-rule procedure for counting electoral votes, according to Henry Cabot are many and varied, but two that are of particular importance are elaborated upon.
The first one is the disfranchisement of voters evil. In effect, this means that literally millions of American voters are disfranchised in every presidential election because of the unit-rule system.
For instance, in the 1948 Presidential elections, Mr. Dewey received a total of 8.6 million votes in the sixteen states he won and this gave his 189 electoral votes. But in the thirty-two states which he failed to win, he had a total of 13.3 million votes, meaning that this great mass of popular votes gave him no single electoral vote and therefore counted for naught.
Another major defect of the unit-rule system is the "minority president evil. For the purpose of this essay, "minority president" is referred to as a president who as elected despite the fact that he had fewer popular votes than his leading opponent. This has happened four times in American history. Adams in 1824, Hayes (1876), Harrison (1888) and George W. Bushy in 2000.
In the 2000 Presidential elections, Gorge Bush of the Republican Party who was declared winner got fewer popular votes than his democratic Party challenger-Albert Gore. Bush scared 50,456,002 votes or 47.87 per cent which gave him 271 electoral votes while Gore garnered 59,999,897 votes representing 48.38 per cent of the total votes cast but got 266 electoral votes.
Therefore, the fundamental evil in this present system of electoral college in electing the American President is that it furnishes no accurate or assured way of reflecting the popular wish of the American people.
An election procedure which is so full of dangerous uncertainties as to leave the whole result of the election unresolved, even though a plurality of the people had expressed their preference at the polls in November, is certainly one which a country founded on the principle of popular government can ill afford to condone.
|
|
|
|
|
| BUSINESS SERVICES
|
Property
Appointments
Money Watch
Market Report
Capital Market
Business Travels
Maritime Watch
Industry Watch
Energy Report
Insurance
Compulife
|
|
|
|
|
