Tomorrow is a huge day in American politics! If you are old enough to vote, be sure to exercise that amazing right! If you are not quite voting age, you can still do your part by reading up on the history and make-up of the U.S. voting process and by studying the candidates and talking about them with family and friends. Knowledge is power! What are the thoughts out there about this campaign season starting so early? And do you believe the American voting protocol (delegates, Electoral College, etc.) is still effective, or is it time to overhaul the system? Here’s a quick 411 on delegates:Both major political parties (Democratic and Republican) officially nominate their candidate for President at their respective national conventions, usually held during the summer before the election. Depending on state law and state party rules, when voters cast ballots for a candidate in a presidential caucus or primary, they may actually be voting to award delegates “bound” to vote for a candidate at the state or national convention, or they may simply be expressing an opinion that the state party is not bound to follow in selecting delegates to the national convention. In addition to delegates chosen during primaries and caucuses, state delegations to both the (Democratic and Republican) conventions also include “unpledged” delegates. For Republicans, these include top party officials. Democrats have a more expansive group of unpledged delegates called “superdelegates“, who are party leaders and elected officials.
In recent elections, the eventual nominees were known well before the actual conventions took place. The last time a major party’s nominee was not clear before the convention was in 1976, when incumbent president Gerald Ford narrowly defeated Ronald Reagan.
Great post. I came across this article earlier today on Yahoo! News: How to untangle the politics of Super Tuesday primaries. Not sure for how long that link will be good, so read it while it’s there. I’m still waiting for somebody to explain to me what’s wrong with an old-fashioned popular vote? These layers of representation have never made sense to me.
I, too, have wondered about deciding Presidential elections via a purely popular vote. Here’s an excerpt from the website of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration for ponderation:
“Is my vote for President and Vice President meaningful in the Electoral College system?”
“Yes, within your State your vote has a great deal of significance. Under the Electoral College system, we do not elect the President and Vice President through a direct nation-wide vote. The Presidential election is decided by the combined results of 51 State elections (in this context, the term ‘State’ includes DC). It is possible that an elector could ignore the results of the popular vote, but that occurs very rarely. Your vote helps decide which candidate receives your State’s electoral votes.
“The founders of the nation devised the Electoral College system as part of their plan to share power between the States and the national government. Under the Federal system adopted in the U.S. Constitution, the nation-wide popular vote has no legal significance. As a result, it is possible that the electoral votes awarded on the basis of State elections could produce a different result than the nation-wide popular vote. Nevertheless, the individual citizen’s vote is important to the outcome of each State election.”
I’m not entirely comfortable with the characterization of my vote as merely having “a great deal of significance.” I’d rather election to the most powerful office on the planet be absolutely impossible without the votes of common folk. I remember the emphasis in social studies class on the purpose of the Electoral College having to do with the lack of information and transportation for our young nation’s residents, which, of course, is no longer a problem… well, at least the transportation part. We’ve still got some work to do in the area of information. I get concerned when I hear a woman interviewed by NPR speaking with great passion about voting for “Hucklebee” (if she can’t get the name right, what else doesn’t she know?). That’s when I think the Electoral College may still be a necessity!
Right—if you view the Electoral College within its historical context, it makes quite a lot of sense. You’ve mentioned some of the salient points already. In addition to those, we have to remember that the intent of many of the Framers was that the United States should be a partyless system. There was a real concern in those days that you’d have a glut of candidates, every state would simply vote for its favorite son, and you’d end up with nobody receiving more than an insignifant fraction of the popular or representative vote. So they put all of these systems in place to ensure that the country would be able to elect a clear winner—but more than that, a winner whom everybody would accept—and I guess it worked pretty well, at least until the partyless ideal washed away as all the politicos stratified into a couple of major parties.
Every iteration of the Electoral College system since then has built off of that, and as a result, I think it’s somewhat anachronistic. I get the intention of it, but to me, when some candidate wins a state by 1% of the popular vote and yet receives the entire state’s portion of electoral votes, I’m frankly embarassed to be a participant. I can get behind a representative voting system to some degree—at a lower level of abstraction for example—but we’ve taken it too far.
That’s just my opinion.
Oh, and by the way, the delegate system used in these primaries may be even more absurd than the national presidential electoral system, if only because the method for awarding delegates to these candidates is totally haphazard. It differs from state to state and party to party. Most people couldn’t possibly ever hope to understand it (an exaggeration, but you get my point).
Oh, you bring up yet another interesting point (this is fun!) about one of the original purposes of the Electoral College: the prevention of a party-based victory. Those who wish to serve in office are absolutely hamstrung by the entrenched identities of the two major factions, and it must be so frustrating for some of them. If they stray on even one point from their parties’ respective philosophies, they risk alienation and all that it entails. I admire those who have strong political or religious stances and can still willingly, even enthusiastically, consider an alternative perspective; whether or not they accept it in the end, they don’t see it as a threat to their belief system. I don’t like the idea of doing much of anything merely on principle. How many of these politicians sell themselves out to the party line to get and keep their seats? As for those of us voting the candidates into office, argh… I have to confess that I’m guilty of having marked an entire ballot based only on party affiliation in order to “punish” the opposing side wholesale. Therapeutic in theory, but not that effective in reality! But it’s done quite often nevertheless. And functioning on blind principle is such a dangerous cop-out: it doesn’t require any thinking.