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Politics : Electoral College 2000 - Ahead of the Curve -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (5756)	12/11/2000 10:32:25 AM
From: Ilaine	Respond to of 6710

>>The next change affecting the Electoral College came a decade after the meeting of the Electoral Commission: on 3 February 1887, President Grover Cleveland signed into law a bill changing the date of the meeting of the Electors in their respective States to cast their votes for President and Vice-President to the second Monday in January (instead of the first Wednesday in December, as heretofore)- this was to give time for the States to adjudge any dispute involving the Electoral Vote from that State (among the other provisions of this 1887 Act are the following: the States may- by law- provide for a method of settling disputes over who the Electors should be BEFORE the Electors meet to cast their votes and the Governors of the States are required to certify as to who the Electors are once they are formally "appointed" [in current practice, the Electors are those chosen by the Party whose presidential candidate won the plurality of the presidential vote in that State (or, in Maine and Nebraska, the Congressional District as regards Electors to be chosen by district), so that their "appointment" is effective once the Secretary of the State officially certifies the results of the State's (or Congressional District's) popular vote for President of the United States]: if there is only one set of returns sent by a State, it is to be accepted as the Electoral Vote of that State, but- in the case of two or more sets of returns- if there is a question as to who has the lawful authority to have settled a dispute involving Electors from a given State OR if no determination was made by a given State re: a dispute involving that State's Electors, the two houses of Congress are to vote separately on the issue [upon an objection by at least one Senator and one Congressman to the counting of that State's Electoral Vote during the Joint Session]- if the Senate and the House agree in their separate votes, their "concurrent" decision becomes the official determination of the Electoral Vote from a disputed State, but- if they disagree in their separate votes- then the Electors as certified by the Governor of the given State becomes the official determination of who lawfully cast the Electoral Vote for that State. The most interesting provisions of this 1887 Act was that which stated that when the Joint Session of Congress for the purpose of counting and tabulating the Electoral Vote would come- in alphabetical order- to a disputed State to which objection was raised to the counting of that State's Electoral Vote, the two houses would retire immediately to their respective chambers and vote on the dispute right then and there and then immediately return to a Joint Session which, technically, would not end until the tabulation of the Electoral Vote was completed and the results announced!). The primary purpose of the 1887 Act was to try and avoid having to go through the whole Electoral Commission debacle of ten years before by putting the onus on the States to avoid- wherever practicable- ever having to send two or more sets of returns as happened in the 1876 Election and setting up a more or less fail-safe procedure through which Congress (without having to involve other branches of the government: especially the Supreme Court!) could fairly adjudicate any dispute involving a State's Electoral Vote. This 1887 Act- except for changes in the dates of some of the elements of the presidential election process since- is still in force today! In 1934, as a consequence of the adoption of the 20th Amendment to the Constitution (the so-called "Lame Duck Amendment" which moved the date of inaugurating a newly elected President and Vice-President from 4 March after a presidential election up to 20 January [this first became effective with the presidential term beginning in 1937] and the date of a newly-elected Congress from 4 March up to 3 January) the year before, the dates of the Electors' meeting in their respective States to cast their votes for President and Vice-President and that of the Joint Session of Congress to tabulate the Electoral Vote was changed once again. The Presidential Electors would now cast their votes in their respective States on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December- this provision is still in force (and, thus, the Electors will vote for President and Vice-President this year on Monday 18 December 2000); Congress would meet to open, announce, count and tabulate the Electoral Vote on 6 January (unless that day be a Sunday, whereupon they are to meet on 7 January). The next change to affect the Electoral College occurred with the adoption of the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution in 1961: this Amendment allows the District of Columbia- even though it is not a State- to cast a popular vote for President and Vice-President and have a number of Electoral Votes counted by Congress on its behalf equal to the number to which it would be entitled if it were a State but never more than the Electoral Vote of the least populous State. 1969 saw two minor, yet somewhat interesting, additions to the "Electoral College story": on 6 January, as the Electoral Vote was being announced and tallied in Joint Session of Congress, the provisions of the 1887 Act regarding the handling of objections to the counting of a State's Electoral Vote were utilized for the first time. When North Carolina's Electoral Vote was announced, a handful of Senators- along with several Congressmen- from both parties objected to the counting of the vote of one so-called "faithless Elector" who- unlike his fellow Electors from that State- had voted for the American Independent Party ticket of Alabama Governor George Wallace and Air Force General Curtis LeMay instead of the winning Republican ticket of former Vice President Richard Nixon and Governor Spiro Agnew of Maryland which had carried the State. Pursuant to the provisions of the 1887 Act, the two houses immediately retired to separately vote on this issue; both "concurred" that the vote of the "faithless Elector" should be counted as cast and then immediately returned to Joint Session to complete the tabulation of the Electoral Vote and the announcement of the result. Also in 1969, Maine became the first state in nearly 80 years to authorize the popular election of at least some Presidential Electors by district (Michigan had done so for the 1892 Election but this provision was repealed in time for the 1896 Election, at which time Michigan returned to the statewide popular vote system of allocating Electors): effective with the 1972 Election, Maine would elect two Electors at large and one Elector from each of the State's Congressional Districts. Nebraska would follow suit with a similar law effective with the 1996 Election. However, as of this writing, neither Maine nor Nebraska has ever failed to cast its entire Electoral Vote for the statewide winner- despite these districting provisions, showing that allocating the Electoral Vote by district is an empty gesture unless it is done by a large State in population (and no large State has an incentive to so water down its influence on the outcome of the presidential election by so dividing its significant Electoral Vote!)<< thegreenpapers.com