The Framer’s Plan:



The Framer’s Plan:

The President is selected by an altogether extraordinary process that many Americans do not completely understand. It is far more complicated than simply having the people show up to vote in their respective precincts. Rather, it is a combination of Constitutional provisions, state laws, and practices of the political parties. The framers felt that the Electoral College would be the most effective way to select a president. They had no way of realizing just how confusing this would be to future high school students in Government class!

Early, the framers felt that Congress should select the President. On the surface, this seemed like a pretty good idea as the congress would be selected by the people. But in the words of Alexander Hamilton, this would put the President “too much under the legislative thumb.” Hamilton opposed the this new government being a parliamentary system, and he supported a presidential system!

But who should select the President? Very few of the framers felt that the common people should do the job! After all, it could lead to tumult and disorder – and the vastness of the country would make it difficult to count the votes – and the average citizen was not able to know enough about the candidates to make an informed decision. To quote George Mason, “The extent of the Country renders it impossible that the people can have the requisite capacity to judge the respective pretensions of the Candidates.”

How about that!?!

The Electoral College was chosen as a method of choosing the President and Vice President. Each elector (or member of the Electoral College) would cast two electoral votes for different candidates. The plan is shown on the chart below:

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The framers intended the electors to be “free agents”, that is unbound to decide who they felt was the best qualified to fill the job. But the rise of political parties really messed up this system!

Rise of Political Parties:

Ooops! The framers had not planned on the rise of political parties – and their system proved incapable of handling the hassle! It was the election of 1800 that proved there would need to be an adjustment in the Electoral College – here’s how it all shook down.

In 1800 there were two well-defined and powerful political parties; the Federalists (led by John Adams), and the Democratic-Republicans (led by Thomas Jefferson). All of the Federalists got together and decided to vote for John Adams and Charles Pinckney. All of the Democratic-Republicans decided to get together and vote for Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. See the problem? Look at the map…

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When there is a tie, the House of Representatives is to decide the election! After a few counts, and with the urging of a Federalist (Alexander Hamilton), finally they chose Jefferson to be President and Burr to be the Vice President. This election marked the introduction of several new elements in selecting the President:

➢ Party nominations for the presidency and vice presidency

➢ The nomination of candidates for presidential electors who pledge to vote for a particular candidate

➢ The automatic casting of electoral votes in line with those pledges

This type of system would perpetually end in a tie, and that would force a change to the Constitutional process of the Electoral College… Here comes the 12th Amendment!

The 12th Amendment

This amendment was ratified in 1804 and it made one major change to the electoral process:

“Electors shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice President.”

Without this change, there would perpetually be a tie for the presidency… This minor adjustment in the Constitution yielded the system that we continue to use today!

Presidential Nominations: The Role of Conventions

The first method the parties developed to nominate their presidential candidates was the congressional caucus. Hopefully you recall that the caucus was a meeting of like-minded individuals in the party who would discuss and decide (by consensus) who would run for the office. The strong surge of democratic spirit – spurred by Andrew Jackson – the major parties turned to the national convention. This system has been used ever since!

Convention Arrangements:

The convention system belongs to the political party, and is largely out of the scope of the government. There are very few regulations at any level of government that would regulate these events.

The National Committee makes the arrangements for the party’s convention. The committee sets the date and picks the location – many of the nation’s largest cities compete to have the convention. It means serious revenue in tourism!

The political party, through the National Committee, decides how many delegates each state will send to the National Convention! States do not all get equal numbers of delegates – the number depends on the state’s electoral vote and history of party support.

There are really two campaigns for the presidency. Before we even have the Democrats vs. the Republicans, the struggle for convention delegates within the state occurs. Through Presidential Primaries (remember when we talked about these?), delegates are selected!

Presidential Primaries:

The Presidential Primary is an election within a state to do a couple of things:

1) choose some or all of a state party organization’s delegates to the party’s national convention

2) express a preference among various contenders for their party’s presidential nomination.

Name recognition and money are essential to those who are trying to get nominated. Candidates essentially need to run in mini-elections in almost every state. Some states hold their primaries on the same day, making it almost impossible for the candidates to be at both. This is why some of the candidates need to pick and choose which primaries they will run in – in order to get the “biggest bang for the buck”! The first primary is always held in New Hampshire.

The “winner take all” primaries were once widely used, that is, whichever candidate won the plurality (or the most) votes received all of those delegates at the National Convention. This has been mostly replaced by “proportional representation” – that is any candidate who wins at least 15% of the votes cast in the primary gets the number of that state’s convention delegates that corresponds with the percentage. It’s a good thing some of those guys are good at math!

More than half of the states today actually hold a “preference primary”. This is when the people vote for their candidate preference, and the delegates are chosen later. Are you confused yet?

Well, so are the people who try to make sense of the whole process. It seems that the party out-of-power has the hardest contests – this is because the President is often seeking re-election or he has given his formal support (or endorsement) to a candidate. The “opposition party” needs to find the best candidate for the job, which entails an intra-party competition, where competing candidates will attempt to rip each other apart! This has the potential of dividing the party, thus making winning the election more difficult without the unity. However, through the convention, the party tries to re-unify to present a united front!

Could the system be better? Some people would suggest that we have a single, national primary where each party would select the candidates. Others would support regional primaries held several weeks apart. Most likely though, we will keep the system that is currently in place!

The National Convention:

These are the official meetings where each major party’s delegates formally choose their candidates for President and Vice President. Once upon a time, these events were wild and chaotic – inflammatory and divisive… Today, it’s more of a time for the party to rally together and get momentum for the upcoming campaign drive.

Each party’s convention accomplishes main goals:

1) name the party’s candidate for President and Vice President

2) bring the various factions and leading personalities in the party together for the common purpose

3) adopt the official party platform

A platform is the formal statements of the basic principles stands on major policy matters and the objectives for the campaign and beyond.

Informally speaking, the meeting tries to promote party unity, mobilize support for the party ticket, and capture the interest of the entire country. Obviously, the mass media will play a key role in this process!

Let’s take a look at how the four day event shakes out…

The Convention Schedule:

Day 1:

Organize the committees

Keynote Address

Other speeches

Day 2:

Presentation and adoption of committee reports

Proposed rules changes for the Convention

Presentation of the Platform – remember, this is both a statement of principle and a campaign strategy – and it needs to appeal to the widest range of delegates!

Day 3:

The Big Day –

Pick the Presidential Candidate – and approve the platform!

Day 4:

The Presidential candidate chooses his running mate –

Reconciliation speeches are given –

The candidate’s formal acceptance speech!

So – who has what it takes to be President?

Conventions try to choose a candidate who will have the widest possible appeal within the party and the electorate.

Most candidates have substantial and well-known records in public office.

Most have served as either Vice President or Governors of states – after all, the Governor is the chief executive at the state level. However, the Senate is also a good training ground.

Typically, presidential candidates are white protestant males, of middle age and having families. College education and military experience is very valuable. Each nominee needs to appear healthy, well developed speaking ability, and must look “good” on television.

On Election Day:

Do you ever hear people say every 4 years, “Well, we’re not really voting for the President”? Oddly, they are partially correct. On the first Tuesday, after the first Monday in November every 4 years, millions of Americans across the nation cast their ballots for…. The Electoral College!

Each state has a slate of electors in the Electoral College that is equal to the number of seats it occupies in Congress. Virginia has 11 Representatives and two Senators, which means that we have 13 electoral votes. Wyoming has 1 Representative and two Senators, so it has only 3 electoral votes. California has by far the most with 55 electoral votes. In this way, each person’s vote is representative proportionally to the state in which he or she lives!

Check out this whacky looking map where the state’s size is drawn in proportion to its electoral vote!

Now, to make things MORE confusing, states typically operate on a “winner take all” program. What that means is the candidate who receives the plurality (or the most) votes gets ALL of that state’s electoral vote. So if Bobby Joe Smith gets the most votes in Virginia, then he gets all 13 electoral votes!

In order to win the Presidency, a candidate needs to win a majority (or over half) of the Electoral College. There are 538 electors in the Electoral College; 1 for each Senator (100), 1 for each Representative (435) and Washington, D.C. gets 3! So if we do the math, the “magic number” to win is 270 electoral votes. So winning states is what the candidates need.

If there is no winner of the Electoral College, that is no candidate receives 270 votes, then the House of Representatives elects the President and the Senate chooses the Vice President. This has rarely happened.

Confused yet? Basically, when we vote for the President, we are voting for a slate of electors from our state who will then cast their official votes for the President. These votes are officially counted on January 6, and then the President is inaugurated on January 20.

Flaws in the Electoral College System:

The Winner of the Popular Vote is NOT guaranteed the Presidency.

This happens due to the winner-take-all system. It is possible for a candidate to win a majority of the electoral votes without winning the most popular votes. This happened most recently in 2000, when Al Gore actually won 537,179 more popular votes than George W. Bush. It also happened in 1824, 1876 and 1888.

Due to the rise of third party candidates, we have not had a President win the majority of the popular vote since 1988.

Electors are NOT required to vote in accord with the popular vote.

This is called the “faithless elector” – and rarely happens! After all, these positions are highly regarded within the party. If a person refuses to do his “duty”, then they usually are shunned by the rest of the party leadership. But still, it COULD happen!

Any Election Might Have to be Decided in the House of Representatives.

This has only happened twice in our history, and not since 1824. But there are some serious problems if it were to occur; 1) voting is done by state rather than population, 2) a state that could not decide would lose its vote, and 3) if there were a strong 3rd party, it is quite possible that no candidate could win a majority of the House.

How about a change?

The District Plan:

Here, each Congressional District would select one elector and there would be two from each state chosen at-large across the entire state. This would do away with the winner-take-all system, and perhaps make a more accurate reflection of the population. Of course, even this reform could allow for the loser of the popular vote to win the Presidency!

The Proportional Plan:

This plan proposes that a candidate would receive the proportion of electoral votes from each state that reflects that candidates popular votes. Still, this would be very confusing.

The Direct Popular Election:

This is the most common proposed change in the electoral system. This seems to make the most sense, as it would perpetuate the democratic ideal of the country. The dangers and confusion of the present system would be avoided, and there would be more equality for each American.

However, there are a few obstacles to such a reform. First, it would require a Constitutional Amendment, which is very difficult to get passed and ratified. Second, the small states would most likely oppose this system because it would not allow them the proportional advantage they already enjoy. Finally, it would dissolve some of the elements of Federalism within our system – as it would reduce the significance of the states in Presidential elections.

The National Bonus Plan:

This system would keep much of the Electoral College system in tact, especially the winner-take-all portion. But, there would be a pool of 102 electoral votes awarded to the winner of the popular vote – this would increase the size of the Electoral College, and thus the winner would need 321 electoral votes to win. This plan virtually guarantees that the winner of the national vote would become President, and retain the elements of Federalism.

Some say we shouldn’t make a change!

The dangers of the system are greatly exaggerated! There have been very few problems associated with the system.

This is a known process – it is an American creation and an American tradition which seems to work. If we change, many other problems may occur.

It identifies the winner quickly and efficiently – with the exception of 2000 – we have know immediately who the winner is.

Compare the popular vote to the electoral vote graph:[pic]

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