You may want to read the Federalist papers, particularly #68, which was, essentially, the precursor to the Electoral College. In Federalist 68, Alexander Hamilton was specific that while he believed the EC would prevent the "prostitution" of votes, they were the votes of Congress, NOT the votes of individuals which which he was concerned. It had absolutely nothing to do with "voter fraud", the "margins" of the winner, or the size of the state. As I pointed out to you last week, there was no concern at all over "voter fraud", the concern was over "voter ignorance".
Yes, I've already said that was the concern of Hamilton and other elitists of his time........where have you been? But if you are foolish enough to believe that's the only reason for the EC don't try to hang me out to dry with you.
The founding fathers were also concerned with other issues. One of them was ballot tampering/voter fraud.....kind of like what happened in Jeb Bush's FLA. They believed that by establishing the EC, voter fraud would be reduced. For an example, if one jurisdiction of a state was corrupt and stuffed its ballot box with votes for a particular elector supporting one candidate while the rest of the state's popular vote went to electors supporting the other candidate, the juridiction's vote with the voter fraud is negated since all of a state's elector votes can only go for one candidate. In other words, with the EC in place, assholes who would be tempted to play with the ballots are discouraged. Of course, there are some assholes like in FLA who don't understand the system and play with the ballot box in any case.
It also was believed by the FF that the EC helps the residents of small states influence presidential elections far more than those in big states because in the small state, there are less people needed to elect an elector than in a big state. Nine thousand votes in Wyoming may be all that's needed to elect an elector, but in CA, it may take as many as 9 million people. I think the influence issue is an illusion but nonetheless, its the major reason why the 1977 Constitution amendment was not ratified by 3/4 of the states.
Finally, the EC was intended to enhance the margin of the winner of the national popular vote, particularly if that vote was close, in order to mitigate any controversy developing from such a narrow popular vote win. The theory was that no matter how narrow the popular vote win in any given state, the winning candidate would take all the EC votes in that state as well as all the states that went for him, and the final EC standing would help confirm his overall win even with a close popular vote.
However, that's not what happened in 2000 because of some unusual circumstances and because of the outdated quality of the EC. Gore won big in the more populous northern states while it was in the large southern states like FLA where the vote was particularly close. According to the intent of the EC founders, the EC should have confirmed Gore's larger vote total but it did not because of the uniqueness in this race. The fact that it didn't raises the question once again of the EC's purpose in modern times.
When it was formed, the disparities in population were not nearly as great as they are now......the FF could never have predicted how the advantages of one state could cause huge migrations to that state at the expense of other states and lead to significant population disparities. And they could never have conceived that these disparities would number in the millions; after all, the population of the founding colonies was only 2 million........nor could they have imagined a country that spanned the entire width of the N. American continent when they only took up a small third of it.
As much as the 2000 election glaringly showed the flaws of EC system, much worse is the division in ideologies it highlighted. Had 9/11 not happened there would have been a spirited debate on the subject........but instead people were silenced. In the meantime, Bush does not appear to understand the full impact of his election and either inadvertently or intentionally has done pretty much everything he can to encourage the division instead of trying to heal it. That's why I have said before there will be a price to pay for the wrongness that went down in 2000.
ted |
