Remarks of Stephen B. Nix, Esq., at the Conference on Elections,
Ukraine Free University Munich, Germany, February 14, 2003

February 14, 2003

Americans do not elect the President of the United States. Virginians elect the president. New Yorkers elect the president. Mainers, Californians, and Texans elect the president.

The President of the United States is not directly elected by the citizens of the United States. The president is elected by an institution called the Electoral College. In effect, the Electoral College gives the states the power to elect the president.

In order to understand what the Electoral College is, it is necessary to paint an accurate picture of the United States when it was first formed. In the late 1700s, the new country was not a tight-knit nation. The infrastructure was weak between the 13 states, making communication and trade extremely difficult¹. The 4 million citizens were not equally spread out along the seaboard but concentrated in the larger states of New York and Virginia.

This disparity in size, and the lack of communication, caused the states to become extremely protective of their own sovereignty. Uniting the United States sparked one of the greatest debates of American history.

More populous states wanted representation based on their population - a government of the people. A larger population meant larger tax revenues. According to the original ethos behind the American Revolution of 1776, taxation required representation and thus more taxation required more representation.

On the other hand, less populous states, knew that such a population-based system would lead to their inevitable subjugation. Smaller states needed the ability to protect the rights of their own citizens. They proposed a system in which each state would have equal representation -an equal union of states.

Both of those ideas were adopted into the federal structure of the constitution. The size of the House of Representatives is based upon the population of the country as a whole, and distributed based on state population. The size of the Senate is fixed - two senators per state. Together, the two bodies make up the United States Congress.

The Constitutional Convention, during which the US Constitution was developed, debated several methods of applying similar guidelines to selecting the president. They knew that a straight popular election would lend too much power to the larger states. In addition, they believed that the average, uninformed citizen would simply vote for the candidate nearest their state².

The Constitutional Convention considered the idea of allowing state legislatures to select the president. However, this idea was rejected out of the fear that the president would become indebted to the legislatures, thus destroying the idea of a federal system.

Finally, a proposal for a College of Electors was introduced. This is much like the Catholic College of Cardinals which elects the Pope³. The idea behind the College of Electors was for the most knowledgeable and informed individuals from each state to select the president based solely on merit and without any regard to State of origin or political party.

The states would decide who they sent to the College of Electors. In order to preserve a federal structure, and the balance of power between the people and the states, the number of electors each state had was equal to the size of their congressional delegation, house representatives plus senators.

Larger states would have more representation, but smaller states would have more representation per capita.

The structure of the Electoral College is set forth in Article II of the Constitution. States would decide who they sent to the college of Electors and how those electors were chosen. In order to preserve the division of powers, Members of Congress were specifically barred from serving as electors.

Each state's electors would meet separately to vote on the president so as to avoid coercion form other states. Each elector cast two votes for president, at least one of which must have been for a candidate from outside their home state.

The candidate receiving the absolute majority of votes would become president while the second-place finisher would graciously become vice-president.

This idealistic incarnation worked for 4 elections until the nationalistic tide that had swept America began to subside and political parties emerged.

In 1800, Thomas Jefferson, a Virginian, and his running mate Aaron Burr, a New Yorker, defeated John Adams for the presidency. However, Jefferson and Burr received an equal number of electoral votes.

Per the constitution, a tie vote was to be decided by the House of Representatives with each state getting one vote. After 35 ties in the House and a great deal of political bargaining, Jefferson finally won the presidency⁴.

The laws governing the Electoral system had forced the exact political dealings that the Electoral College was designed to prevent. In response, congress ratified the Twelfth Amendment.

The Twelfth Amendment restructured the voting responsibilities of Electors. Rather than cast two votes for president, Electors would now differentiate and cast one vote for president, and one vote for vice-president.

The House of Representatives would still decide a stalemate but each member would get a vote rather than each state only having one. These new provisions paved the way for our modern political system.

The manner of choosing Electors was affected most by the growth of party politics. At first, some state legislatures chose Electors while other states held popular elections. In either case, Electors were chosen from a central list of candidates for the position.

During the early 1800's, as new states were incorporated and flaws were discovered in old states' constitutions, nearly all states adopted a statewide popular election for electors. In addition, the names of electoral candidates were submitted on lists by the political parties⁵.

The people on the lists would be pledged to whichever presidential candidate the party nominated. The list receiving the most votes in the popular election gained control of all of the electoral votes for that state.

Today, when Americans fill out their ballot on Election Day, "Electors for" is clearly written before the name of each presidential candidate. Voters do not choose the president; they choose the electors that choose the president.

In truth, the president is not even elected on Election Day. After being elected to the Electoral College around November 8th, electors do not actually meet to cast their votes for president until the middle of December.

However, because of the winner-take-all system, and modern media coverage communication, the presidential decision is accurately forecast weeks before the true election.

Electors are nominated to the lists because they have shown dedication to their party and their candidate. However, Electors are not legally required to vote for the candidate to whom they are pledged, and in some cases have switched allegiances⁶.

During the twentieth century, eight electors switched allegiances and in all of those cases, the presidents won by a landslide victory and the electors simply switched the candidates for vice-president and president.

The structure of the Electoral College allows it to brush off such small anomalies and, in fact, the strength of the system has only emerged in a select few elections.

In 1872, during the period between the popular vote and the meeting of the Electoral College, Democratic candidate Horace Greeley died.

The electors pledged to him, clearly unprepared for this event, ended up splitting their votes between several other Democratic candidates. The imminent crisis was averted, however, when the Republican Ulysses S. Grant secured an absolute majority of electoral votes⁷.

If Grant had not secured that majority, the election would have been decided by the House of Representatives, as stipulated in the Constitution.

Perhaps the most interesting interpretation of the electoral system came when the now-extinct Whig party ran a campaign in which it ran three candidates for the presidency in different regions of the country. The premise was that once each candidate won the electoral votes for his region, the party would have the ability to pick its own president⁸.

It was a sound theory. However, Martin Van Buren, the democratic candidate won a majority of electoral votes and rendered the Whig campaign moot. No party has attempted a similar campaign strategy since.

Recently, in the election of 2000, Al Gore won more popular votes than President Bush but still lost the election. However, when looking more closely at the numbers, it is clear that the Electoral College worked exactly as had been intended.

Al Gore won five-hundred and forty thousand more popular votes than George Bush, less than 1 percent of the total votes cast. In the simple examination of a map of the United States, one can see that Gore won most of his votes in fewer but larger states: California, New York, and Pennsylvania⁹.

Bush spread his votes throughout the United States. He won small states such as Nevada, South Dakota, Oklahoma and New Hampshire. He did win Texas, the third most populous state, but every little state that he won had an impact.

In the end, the election was decided by four electoral votes. While Florida, with twenty-five electoral votes was the last to be counted, the election was decided by the four votes of New Hampshire or Idaho. Or even the three votes of Wyoming or Delaware. If any of one of Bush's small states had gone the other way, the election would have followed suit. Bush won because he appealed to more states in more regions of the country than Gore.

And that is why he is the American President.

Opponents of the Electoral College argue that the will of the people should decide the leader of the country. But previous elections have shown us that a popular election would marginalize smaller states.

Candidates would no longer need to win in the mountain states, or the northeast. The presidency would be decided by California, New York, and a few others, not by the United States. In fact, candidates would not even bother to campaign in many of the small and medium-sized states¹⁰.

The current system encourages the distribution of popular support throughout the country. No candidate can win without sufficient support of the people, but the winner must be supported by a cross-section of the United States.

The Electoral College ensures a regional balance of power which is vital in governing a large and diverse nation. As I said before, Americans do not elect their president, but the United States do.

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Notes

1. Kimberling, William C., "The Electoral College," The Electoral College, Online, 3 Feb. 2003.
2. Kimberling
3. Kimberling
4. "Thomas Jefferson," The American President, Online, 3 Feb. 2003.
5. Kimberling
6. Kimberling
7. "Election of 1872," U-S-History.com, Online." 3 Feb. 2003.
8. "Election of 1836," U-S-History.com, Online," 3 Feb. 2003.
9. "Elections 2000," The Washington Post, Online, 3 Feb. 2003.
10. Kimberling

Works Cited

1. "Elections 2000." The Washington Post. Online. 3 Feb. 2003
2. "Election of 1836." U-S-History.com. Online." 3 Feb. 2003
3. "Election of 1872." U-S-History.com. Online." 3 Feb. 2003
4. Kimberling, William C. "The Electoral College." The Electoral College. Online. 3 Feb. 2003.
5. "Thomas Jefferson." The American President. Online. 3 Feb. 2003

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