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"These last few day have, more then anything, shown the American
people that one vote really does matter," spoken by President
Clinton the day after the election. He is of course referring
to the debacle of the Florida vote and the Electoral College.
President Clinton could not be more wrong in his statement.
This vote if nothing else shows the American people that their
vote does not matter, unless of course you live in Florida
and you can follow instructions.
The
Electoral College has been in place for over 200 years. When
it was put in place it was a compromise. There was a debate
in the American government between whether to have the congress
and the senate elect the president or to have the people directly
elect the president. It was felt that to give the congress
and the senate the right to select the president would give
them too much power. It was also felt that the people were
too uneducated to select a proper president. The compromise
was that each state would get a number of electors based on
their population. They would get one elector for the total
number of congressmen/women and senators. This was intended
to help the smaller states have more say, because each state
would always get at least three elector votes.
Doc
Bradley speaking at a recent Electoral College protest
in downtown Fayetteville. The motivation for the rally was the current
president-elect dilema between Al Gore and George W.
Bush. The protest was a nation-wide effort on 11 November
2000.
Photo:
Adam
Wallworth |
Each
state gets two senators. The number of congressmen/women is
based on the population. That is the total population and not
just those that can vote. According to the United States Constitution,
Article I, Section 2, Representatives and direct Taxes shall
be apportioned among the several States which may be included
within this Union, according to their respective numbers, which
shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free Persons,
including those bound to service for a Term of Years, and excluding
Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons (with "all
other persons," referring to slaves). What that meant was that
if a state had one million slaves, then it would get 600,000
more people to be counted towards congressional seats. This
is one of the reasons that so many of our leaders before the
Civil War came from Virginia. There was a high population of
voting white males and a large number of slaves. The early Electoral
College clearly favored the south and was set up to do so.
After
the Civil War and reconstruction periods, the shift in the
vote went to the north because of the population centers.
Blacks were still counted for election and population totals
but were not allowed to vote. Because of economic hard times
in the south, there was a great influx of people to the north
and to the west. The south no longer held the strong hand
in choosing the president.
The
Electoral College today is stills much the same as it was
200 years ago. States go all or nothing for one candidate
or another (except in Nebraska and Maine where people vote
directly for the individual electors) When a person votes
for president, they are not really voting for the president,
they are voting for the party. Electors are selected by each
party to represent the state. Whichever party gets the most
votes, their electors vote for the party's candidate. This
means if you have three candidates running and candidate 'A'
gets 35% of the vote and candidate 'B' gets 34% of the vote
and candidate 'C' gets 31% of the vote, candidate 'A' gets
all the state electors even though 65% of the state voted
against him or her.
With
the Electoral College we have the big seven: New York at 33
votes, California at 54, Texas 32, Florida's 25, Pennsylvania
has 23, Illinois at 22, and Ohio's 21. These states alone
make up 187 College votes. If you add in Michigan's 18, North
Carolina at 14, New Jersey's 15 and Virginia's 13 you get
a total of 270 Electoral College votes. If you take into account
that on average only half the people in America vote then
the total voters in these states is about 75 million. And
if there is a big three-way ticket then all one would need
to do is carry 35% of each state, then some one could win
the election with about 27 million votes. That is just 10%
of the population selecting the next president. Seem outlandish?
It is not so hard to comprehend when one looks at the election
results from 1992. Bill Clinton got 44,908,254 votes to George
Bush's 39,102,343, but Clinton got 370 electoral votes to
Bush's 168. About 20% of the country elected Bill Clinton.
And this year, the majority might go to Al Gore, but the Electoral
College might go to George W. Bush.
How
does America change its voting practice? Well it's not easy.
Each state is allowed under the U.S. Constitution to select
its own voting method for electorates. It would require a
change to the constitution for things to get better. A leading
idea is to scrap the whole system and go to a direct vote.
This way the people of America would directly elect their
president like they do their own state and local officials.
Another idea is also to have run-off elections in every election
where there is not a 50% majority. This could be done by an
instant run-off. Voters would number their choices in order
from best to worst. After two front-runners are selected,
the ballots could then be checked to see which of the two
would have received more votes if they had been the only two
choices. And lastly, the elections should be stretched seven
to nine days to allow for a weekend, so those people that
are working class can more easily vote.
The
system now is not true democracy. Other countries have taken
the idea of democracy and ran with it. America seems to have
a misguided sense of honor in that it doesn't want to adopt
anything that other countries have done to improve it. This
is a discredit to us and to the rest of America.
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