New York Times calls for the end of Electoral College

[Keevan_Colton]

And if you alter the EC to stop being a winner take all system it becomes basically a popular vote with a built in error to make voters in small states more important.

[Joe]

Fantastic, now why don't you try actually correcting my mistake rather than just copping a shit attitude and saying absolutely nothing at all, cockgobbler.

Ok genius, here's me correcting your mistake:

YOU ARE COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY WRONG! WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG!

There are definitely more than 3 democracies out there that elect their president thru a straight popular vote, shitmunch.

Would you care to list them?

[Bugsby]

And if you alter the EC to stop being a winner take all system it becomes basically a popular vote with a built in error to make voters in small states more important.

Best of both worlds? Yes? Thats what I thought.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Golden Mean Fallacy, idiot.

The pro-Popular Vote people here have not seen JACK or SHIT for why a democracy where the government represents her CITIZENRY why people get counted differently based on where they live. Its unfair.

[Bugsby]

Golden Mean Fallacy, idiot.

The pro-Popular Vote people here have not seen JACK or SHIT for why a democracy where the government represents her CITIZENRY why people get counted differently based on where they live. Its unfair.

It's because of regional concerns. If there is a direct popular vote, then a president can campaign on issues that help people in urban centers and hurt people in rural areas. This would cause an imbalance in society, as candidates are seen to care more about large population centers (and hence more votes) than about farmers and other people in small-population states.

You say it's unfair to give people extra consideration when they live in Montana? The other system says that the concerns of the people of Montana are unimportant because there are no urban centers in Montana, so it is not worth adressing teh concerns of its citizens. We still do have a federal government....

[Slartibartfast]

There are definitely more than 3 democracies out there that elect their president thru a straight popular vote, shitmunch.

Would you care to list them?

Only because I'm bored. I can think of a couple that you didn't mention:


Americas
Mexico, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Panama, Colombia, Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Chile, Venezuela, Ecuador

Africa
Tanzania, Ghana, Mali, Senegal, Guinea, Togo, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Algeria, Malawi, Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Tunisia, Cote d'Ivoire, Zambia, Guinea-Bissau, Sao Tome and Principe, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, Kenya, Niger, Gambia, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Liberia, Mauritania, Djibouti, Chad, Nigeria, Uganda, Benin, Zimbabwe

Asia
Armenia, Turkmenistan, Georgia, Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Azerbaijan, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, Taiwan

Europe
Bulgaria, Austria, Slovakia, France, Slovenia, Portugal, Macedonia, Lithuania, Croatia, Poland, Belarus, Romania, Ireland, Finland

Oceania
Palau, Kiribati

Middle East
Iran, Yemen, Cyprus, Syria

More
Philippines


Maybe it can be argued that not all of these are "true democracies" (whatever that means) but I think this list conclusively shows that there are more than 3 (THREE) democracies in the world that elect their President directly.

[Lord MJ]

Sudan, Iran, Syria

[Durandal]

Pre-invasion Iraq also used a straight democracy (and I use that word very loosely), if memory serves.

[Slartibartfast]

Sudan, Iran, Syria

Read the disclaimer.

[Durandal]

Though Joe's question might be modified to ask, "How many other countries as large as the US elect their presidents with a popular vote?"

[Patrick Degan]

You're the one conceeding here.

As you wish...

You "precident" is an appeal to tradition. Call it what you like, that's what it is.

Uh uh, stupid. "The Bible says it, therefore it's so" is an Appeal to Tradition. "The Constitution says it and these are the reasons why:" is an argument from legal precedent, political history, and constitutional theory. You have offered no substantive rebuttal to any of these points and now try to handwave away every argument by labeling them as "shite" and "sophistry".

You have ignored numbers in favour of some unsubstantiated idea of differences.

And you keep ignoring why "balance of interests" is an important constitutional consideration in American governance. Nor have you put your so-called numbers up before any substantive test of history or political realities which simply cannot be glossed over as you wish they could.

You cite voting blocs as a problem, yet want a system where areas are made into voting blocs.

Strawman.

If that isnt a perfect example of your retarded notions here I dont know what is.

And again, I'm not responsible for your fantasies.

You've called everything a strawman and stuck your fingers in your ears.

Sayeth the man who simply handwaves away every inconvenient argument he can't be bothered to try to answer substantively with the words "shite" and "sophistry". You'll pardon me for laughing, I trust.

In fact, you've debated like Comical Axi.

Pot. Kettle. Black. Point of fact, I've gotten better contests from Comical Axi than I've received from you this whole thread.

[Slartibartfast]

[quote="Durandal]Though Joe's question might be modified to ask, "How many other countries as large as the US elect their presidents with a popular vote?"[/quote]

No, it needs more work. After all, we have to include France and Finland in that group.

Maybe "how many countries that start with the letter F OR are former communists and speak russian in the world elect their presidents with a popular vote?"

[The Kernel]

Uh uh, stupid. "The Bible says it, therefore it's so" is an Appeal to Tradition. "The Constitution says it and these are the reasons why:" is an argument from legal precedent, political history, and constitutional theory. You have offered no substantive rebuttal to any of these points and now try to handwave away every argument by labeling them as "shite" and "sophistry".

Amazing, you admit that you are basing your entire argument on the Constitution, yet you refuse to call it an appeal to tradition. Guess what moron? The Constitution also sets legal precedence for slavery, does that mean that you suddenly have an inviolate argument for slavery as an institution?

It's obvious you really don't understand what Keevan meant by such little details as "evidence" and "logical argument".

[Patrick Degan]

Uh uh, stupid. "The Bible says it, therefore it's so" is an Appeal to Tradition. "The Constitution says it and these are the reasons why:" is an argument from legal precedent, political history, and constitutional theory. You have offered no substantive rebuttal to any of these points and now try to handwave away every argument by labeling them as "shite" and "sophistry".

Amazing, you admit that you are basing your entire argument on the Constitution, yet you refuse to call it an appeal to tradition. Guess what moron? The Constitution also sets legal precedence for slavery, does that mean that you suddenly have an inviolate argument for slavery as an institution?

What an utterly moronic Red Herring! Hey, dimbulb, in case it's escaped your notice, that clause in the Constitution is no longer operative and has zero relevance to any issue which is in operation. That non-argument reflects such levels of stupidity that it hardly merits a response of any sort.

It's obvious you really don't understand what Keevan meant by such little details as "evidence" and "logical argument".

Sayeth the man who just dropped the above pile of idiocy. And I do understand Colton's meaning of the terms "evidence" and "logical argument". Unfortunately, I must operate according to how those terms are actually defined in the real world and not in his little playland of the mind.

[The Kernel]

What an utterly moronic Red Herring! Hey, dimbulb, in case it's escaped your notice, that clause in the Constitution is no longer operative and has zero relevance to any issue which is in operation. That non-argument reflects such levels of stupidity that it hardly merits a response of any sort.

Exactly, thanks for making my fucking point moron. It's no longer an active clause in the Constitution because people had the forsight to say "Hey, this may be in our Constitution, but it doesn't work" instead of "It's in the Constitution which means it is perfectly morally acceptable!! GRRRRR!!!!"

[The Yosemite Bear]

"Creates the possibility?"

The NY times is behind in their information, Kennedy was the first president put in office without winning the popular vote. Jimmy Carter was the last "Dark Horse" canidate to get elected despite the gerrymandering of the EC.

The deck's been prettywell stacked since then, witness election manipulations in certain districts just as in certain states.

[Joe]

Though Joe's question might be modified to ask, "How many other countries as large as the US elect their presidents with a popular vote?"

Actually, I should have said "industrialized countries" to begin with.

[Xon]

Though Joe's question might be modified to ask, "How many other countries as large as the US elect their presidents with a popular vote?"

Actually, I should have said "industrialized countries" to begin with.

Australia elects our effective head of state (While the Queen technically has more power in Australian than she does in Britan, she is a figurehead) by what is a popular vote.

The system Patrick Degan is proposing to replace the EC sounds very similar to the system Australia currently uses.

[Xon]

Australia elects our effective head of state.

Forgot to add its the Prime Minister who is the effective rule of the country, not the Queen.

[Patrick Degan]

What an utterly moronic Red Herring! Hey, dimbulb, in case it's escaped your notice, that clause in the Constitution is no longer operative and has zero relevance to any issue which is in operation. That non-argument reflects such levels of stupidity that it hardly merits a response of any sort.

Exactly, thanks for making my fucking point moron. It's no longer an active clause in the Constitution because people had the forsight to say "Hey, this may be in our Constitution, but it doesn't work" instead of "It's in the Constitution which means it is perfectly morally acceptable!! GRRRRR!!!!"

Fuck but you are DENSE! You make no goddamned point at all, and it is fundamentally dishonest to attempt to poison the well in this discussion by conflating the Electoral College with slavery. Thank you for demonstrating your utter ignorance of the issues and the very evident fact that you are in way over your head in this debate. Especially by making such a dumbass non-argument which would get you laughed out of any Constitutional Law 101, American History, or Civics class in any university in this country.

And now, some instruction is in order:

Linky

excerpt:

Supporters of the college

Supporters of the college claim that it acts as a method of amplifying the voting power of an individual voter from a specific state in a U.S. presidential election. Without the Electoral College, with the vote based on majority rule, it would be possible to win a strict majority of votes located in a few geographically restricted areas of the country.

The fear is without the college, one could campaign and win in only the 10 largest cities in the union disenfranchising (for one example) the sparsely populated mountain region of the United States. This is illustrated by the fact that the combined total population of the 10 largest cities in the nation is (from the 1995 Statistical Abstract of the United States) almost 21.9 million. The entire population of the mountain region of the United States (et al.) is 15.2 million. This effect is magnified when the analysis is broadened to the 10 largest metropolitan areas, not just the size of the largest cities proper. This would allow a candidate to focus resources, time, and political capital in winning the greatest numbers of voters in the cities. It is felt that this pressure would apply to all parties, and lead to voters in the sparsely populated West being completely ignored.

An illustrative example where the interests of a metropolitan area directly conflict with those of a state or region exists between the city of Los Angeles (pop. 3.5 million) and the state of Colorado (pop. 3.2 million) over the issue of river water use.

A direct election would focus candidates resources on large cities such as Los Angeles. The debate would naturally center on local issues that directly affected Los Angeles citizens. Los Angeles derives a great deal of its water from the Colorado River, originating in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. The amount of water reserved for California has an impact on Colorado significantly and directly, and its use results in much contention. Supporters of the college feel that competing interests such as these are best served by compelling candidates to campaign in smaller states and address their issues. If a direct election was instituted, Colorado's voters would receive less attention, as a candidate would have to campaign over the entire state (the 8th largest) for a smaller number of votes than the geographically much smaller city of Los Angeles.

Thus, the intent of the college is to favor a candidate whose appeal is more broadly distributed on a geographical basis across the nation (see the 2000 election, below). This may lead to the rare circumstance of giving the election to a candidate who did not win a majority, or even a plurality, of the popular vote. This is seen as preferable than giving the election to one who is favored by a majority of voters but whose support is concentrated in a minority of regions or only by voters in large states.

An additional reason in favor of the Electoral College is that by having fifty-one separate elections, corruption in any single state is limited to the electoral votes of that state. Corruption is most likely to occur in a state in which there is not strong two party competition. If strong party machines in one party states could add phantom votes to a national total in close elections, the temptation to do so would be irresistible. Also, in the event of an extremely close election, as in 2000, having the Electoral College makes doing a recount much easier, since it may only be necessary to recount in a single state, rather than the entire nation.

Another attribute of the Electoral College is that it often yields a decisive result, when the popular vote can be extremely close. For instance, the 1916 election, 1948 election, and 1960 elections were virtual ties, yet in each case, Wilson, Truman, and Kennedy, respectively, won decisively in the Electoral College. The large Electoral College margins enabled the nation to move on with an accepted president. Bill Clinton may be the clearest example of this, winning only 43% of the popular in the 1992 election and 49% in the 1996 election. However, he did receive a mandate by winning a clear majority in the Electoral College in both cases.

The Electoral College was originally crafted by the framers of the Constitution in part as a compromise between larger and smaller states, as illustrated above. To elaborate further, Montana had a population of 902,195 in 2000, and has 3 electoral votes. California had 33,871,648 people and 54 electoral votes in 2000. Thus, while California has many more electoral votes to cast, people in Montana individually have a greater influence on their state's electoral votes. California has 627,252 people per electoral vote while Montana has 300,731 people per electoral vote. While largely ignored by Presidential candidates in elections, the smaller states are not as completely irrelevant as they would be otherwise.

In the 2000 Presidential election, for example, when Al Gore finished just 5 electoral votes behind George W. Bush, a switch of electors from any state, even those as seemingly irrelevant as Montana, would have switched the outcome of the election.

Part two follows:

[Patrick Degan]

Part Two

Further perspective on the history, rationale, operation, and arguments pro and con for the Electoral College:

And:

The Electoral College

In order to appreciate the reasons for the Electoral College, it is essential to understand its historical context and the problem that the Founding Fathers were trying to solve. They faced the difficult question of how to elect a president in a nation that:

* was composed of thirteen large and small States jealous of their own rights and powers and suspicious of any central national government

* contained only 4,000,000 people spread up and down a thousand miles of Atlantic seaboard barely connected by transportation or communication (so that national campaigns were impractical even if they had been thought desirable)

* believed, under the influence of such British political thinkers as Henry St. John Bolingbroke, that political parties were mischievous if not downright evil, and

* felt that gentlemen should not campaign for public office (The saying was "The office should seek the man, the man should not seek the office.").

How, then, to choose a president without political parties, without national campaigns, and without upsetting the carefully designed balance between the presidency and the Congress on one hand and between the States and the federal government on the other?

Origins of the Electoral College

The Constitutional Convention considered several possible methods of selecting a president.

One idea was to have the Congress choose the president. This idea was rejected, however, because some felt that making such a choice would be too divisive an issue and leave too many hard feelings in the Congress. Others felt that such a procedure would invite unseemly political bargaining, corruption, and perhaps even interference from foreign powers. Still others felt that such an arrangement would upset the balance of power between the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.

A second idea was to have the State legislatures select the president. This idea, too, was rejected out of fears that a president so beholden to the State legislatures might permit them to erode federal authority and thus undermine the whole idea of a federation.

A third idea was to have the president elected by a direct popular vote. Direct election was rejected not because the Framers of the Constitution doubted public intelligence but rather because they feared that without sufficient information about candidates from outside their State, people would naturally vote for a "favorite son" from their own State or region. At worst, no president would emerge with a popular majority sufficient to govern the whole country. At best, the choice of president would always be decided by the largest, most populous States with little regard for the smaller ones.

Finally, a so-called "Committee of Eleven" in the Constitutional Convention proposed an indirect election of the president through a College of Electors.

The function of the College of Electors in choosing the president can be likened to that in the Roman Catholic Church of the College of Cardinals selecting the Pope. The original idea was for the most knowledgeable and informed individuals from each State to select the president based solely on merit and without regard to State of origin or political party.

The structure of the Electoral College can be traced to the Centurial Assembly system of the Roman Republic. Under that system, the adult male citizens of Rome were divided, according to their wealth, into groups of 100 (called Centuries). Each group of 100 was entitled to cast only one vote either in favor or against proposals submitted to them by the Roman Senate. In the Electoral College system, the States serve as the Centurial groups (though they are not, of course, based on wealth), and the number of votes per State is determined by the size of each State's Congressional delegation. Still, the two systems are similar in design and share many of the same advantages and disadvantages.

The similarities between the Electoral College and classical institutions are not accidental. Many of the Founding Fathers were well schooled in ancient history and its lessons.

The First Design

In the first design of the Electoral College (described in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution):

* Each State was allocated a number of Electors equal to the number of its U.S. Senators (always 2) plus the number of its U.S. Representative (which may change each decade according to the size of each State's population as determined in the decennial census). This arrangement built upon an earlier compromise in the design of the Congress itself and thus satisfied both large and small States.

* The manner of choosing the Electors was left to the individual State legislatures, thereby pacifying States suspicious of a central national government.

* Members of Congress and employees of the federal government were specifically prohibited from serving as an Elector in order to maintain the balance between the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.

* Each State's Electors were required to meet in their respective States rather than all together in one great meeting. This arrangement, it was thought, would prevent bribery, corruption, secret dealing, and foreign influence.

* In order to prevent Electors from voting only for a "favorite son" of their own State, each Elector was required to cast two votes for president, at least one of which had to be for someone outside their home State. The idea, presumably, was that the winner would likely be everyone's second favorite choice.

* The electoral votes were to be sealed and transmitted from each of the States to the President of the Senate who would then open them before both houses of the Congress and read the results.

* The person with the most electoral votes, provided that it was an absolute majority (at least one over half of the total), became president. Whoever obtained the next greatest number of electoral votes became vice president - an office which they seem to have invented for the occasion since it had not been mentioned previously in the Constitutional Convention.

* In the event that no one obtained an absolute majority in the Electoral College or in the event of a tie vote, the U.S. House of Representatives, as the chamber closest to the people, would choose the president from among the top five contenders. They would do this (as a further concession to the small States) by allowing each State to cast only one vote with an absolute majority of the States being required to elect a president. The vice presidency would go to whatever remaining contender had the greatest number of electoral votes. If that, too, was tied, the U.S. Senate would break the tie by deciding between the two.

In all, this was quite an elaborate design. But it was also a very clever one when you consider that the whole operation was supposed to work without political parties and without national campaigns

while maintaining the balances and satisfying the fears in play at the time. Indeed, it is probably because the Electoral College was originally designed to operate in an environment so totally different from our own that many people think it is anachronistic and fail to appreciate the new purposes it now serves. But of that, more later.

The Second Design

The first design of the Electoral College lasted through only four presidential elections. For in the meantime, political parties had emerged in the United States. The very people who had been condemning parties publicly had nevertheless been building them privately. And too, the idea of political parties had gained respectability through the persuasive writings of such political philosophers as Edmund Burke and James Madison.

One of the accidental results of the development of political parties was that in the presidential election of 1800, the Electors of the Democratic-Republican Party gave Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr (both of that party) an equal number of electoral votes. The tie was resolved by the House of Representatives in Jefferson's favor - but only after 36 tries and some serious political dealings which were considered unseemly at the time. Since this sort of bargaining over the presidency was the very thing the Electoral College was supposed to prevent, the Congress and the States hastily adopted the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution by September of 1804.

To prevent tie votes in the Electoral College which were made probable, if not inevitable, by the rise of political parties (and no doubt to facilitate the election of a president and vice president of the same party), the 12th Amendment requires that each Elector cast one vote for president and a separate vote for vice president rather than casting two votes for president with the runner-up being made vice president. The Amendment also stipulates that if no one receives an absolute majority of electoral votes for president, then the U.S. House of Representatives will select the president from among the top three contenders with each State casting only one vote and an absolute majority being required to elect. By the same token, if no one receives an absolute majority for vice president, then the U.S. Senate will select the vice president from among the top two contenders for that office. All other features of the Electoral College remained the same including the requirements that, in order to prevent Electors from voting only for "favorite sons", either the presidential or vice presidential candidate has to be from a State other than that of the Electors.

In short, political party loyalties had, by 1800, begun to cut across State loyalties thereby creating new and different problems in the selection of a president. By making seemingly slight changes, the 12th Amendment fundamentally altered the design of the Electoral College and, in one stroke, accommodated political parties as a fact of life in American presidential elections.

It is noteworthy in passing that the idea of electing the president by direct popular vote was not widely promoted as an alternative to redesigning the Electoral College. This may be because the physical and demographic circumstances of the country had not changed that much in a dozen or so years. Or it may be because the excesses of the recent French revolution (and its fairly rapid degeneration into dictatorship) had given the populists some pause to reflect on the wisdom of too direct a democracy.

The Evolution of the Electoral College

Since the 12th Amendment, there have been several federal and State statutory changes which have affected both the time and manner of choosing Presidential Electors but which have not further altered the fundamental workings of the Electoral College. There have also been a few curious incidents which its critics cite as problems but which proponents of the Electoral College view as merely its natural and intended operation.

The Manner of Choosing Electors

From the outset, and to this day, the manner of choosing its State's Electors was left to each State legislature. And initially, as one might expect, different States adopted different methods.

Some State legislatures decided to choose the Electors themselves. Others decided on a direct popular vote for Electors either by Congressional district or at large throughout the whole State. Still others devised some combination of these methods. But in all cases, Electors were chosen individually from a single list of all candidates for the position.

During the 1800's, two trends in the States altered and more or less standardized the manner of choosing Electors. The first trend was toward choosing Electors by the direct popular vote of the whole State (rather than by the State legislature or by the popular vote of each Congressional district). Indeed, by 1836, all States had moved to choosing their Electors by a direct statewide popular vote except South Carolina which persisted in choosing them by the State legislature until 1860. Today, all States choose their Electors by direct statewide election except Maine (which in 1969) and Nebraska (which in 1991) changes to selecting two of its Electors by a statewide popular vote and the remainder by the popular vote in each Congressional district.

Along with the trend toward their direct statewide election came the trend toward what is called the "winner-take-all" system of choosing Electors. Under the winner-take-all system, the presidential candidate who wins the most popular votes within a State wins all of that State's Electors. This winner-take-all system was really the logical consequence of the direct statewide vote for Electors owing to the influence of political parties. For in a direct popular election, voters loyal to one political party's candidate for president would naturally vote for that party's list of proposed Electors. By the same token, political parties would propose only as many Electors as there were electoral votes in the State so as not to fragment their support and thus permit the victory of another party's Elector.

There arose, then, the custom that each political party would, in each State, offer a "slate of Electors" - a list of individuals loyal to their candidate for president and equal in number to that State's electoral vote. The voters of each State would then vote for each individual listed in the slate of whichever party's candidate they preferred. Yet the business of presenting separate party slates of individuals occasionally led to confusion. Some voters divided their votes between party lists because of personal loyalties to the individuals involved rather than according to their choice for president. Other voters, either out of fatigue or confusion, voted for fewer than the entire party list. The result, especially in close elections, was the occasional splitting of a State's electoral vote. This happened as late as 1916 in West Virginia when seven Republican Electors and one Democrat Elector won.

Today, the individual party candidates for Elector are seldom listed on the ballot. Instead, the expression "Electors for" usually appears in fine print on the ballot in front of each set of candidates for president and vice president (or else the State law specifies that votes cast for the candidates are to be counted as being for the slate of delegates pledged to those candidates). It is still true, however, that voters are actually casting their votes for the Electors for the presidential and vice presidential candidates of their choice rather than for the candidates themselves.

The Time of Choosing Electors

The time for choosing Electors has undergone a similar evolution. For while the constitution specifically gives to the congress the power to "determine the Time of choosing the Electors", the Congress at first gave some latitude to the States.

For the first fifty years of the Federation, Congress permitted the States to conduct their presidential elections (or otherwise to choose their Electors) anytime in a 34 day period before the first Wednesday of December which was the day set for the meeting of the Electors in their respective States. The problems born of such an arrangement are obvious and were intensified by improved communications. For the States which voted later could swell, diminish, or be influenced by a candidate's victories in the States which voted earlier. In close elections, the States which voted last might well determine the outcome. (And it is perhaps for this reason that South Carolina, always among the last States to choose its Electors, maintained for so long its tradition of choosing them by the State legislature. In close elections, the South Carolina State legislature might well decide the presidency!)

The Congress, in 1845, therefore adopted a uniform day on which the States were to choose their Electors. That day - the Tuesday following the first Monday in November in years divisible by four - continues to be the day on which all the States now conduct their presidential elections.

Historical Curiosities

In the evolution of the Electoral College, there have been some interesting developments and remarkable outcomes. Critics often try to use these as examples of what can go wrong. Yet most of these historical curiosities were the result of profound political divisions within the country which the designers of the Electoral College system seem to have anticipated as needing resolution at a higher level.

* In 1800, as previously noted, the Democratic-Republican Electors gave both Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr and equal number of electoral votes. The tie, settled in Jefferson's favor by the House of Representatives in accordance with the original design of the Electoral College system, prompted the 12th Amendment which effectively prevented this sort of thing from ever happening again.

* In 1824, there were four fairly strong contenders in the presidential contest (Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William Crawford, and Henry Clay) each of whom represented an important faction within the now vastly dominant Democratic-Republican Party. The electoral votes were so divided amongst them that no one received the necessary majority to become president (although the popular John C. Calhoun did receive enough electoral votes to become vice president). In accordance with the provisions of the 12th Amendment, the choice of president devolved upon the House of Representatives who narrowly selected John Quincy Adams despite the fact that Andrew Jackson had obtained the greater number of electoral votes. This election is often cited as the first one in which the candidate who obtained the greatest popular vote (Jackson) failed to be elected president. The claim is a weak one, though, since six of the twenty four States at the time still chose their Electors in the State legislature. Some of these (such as sizable New York) would likely have returned large majorities for Adams had they conducted a popular election.

* In 1836, presidential election was a truly strange event. The developing Whig Party, for example, decided to run three different presidential candidates (William Henry Harrison, Daniel Webster, and Hugh White) in separate parts of the country. The idea was that their respective regional popularities would ensure a Whig majority in the Electoral College which would then decide on a single Whig presidential ticket. This fairly inspired scheme failed, though, when Democratic-Republican candidate martin Van Buren won an absolute majority of Electors. Nor has such a strategy ever again been seriously attempted. Yet Van Buren himself did not escape the event entirely unscathed. For while he obtained an electoral majority, his vice presidential running mate (one Richard Johnson) was considered so objectionable by some of the Democratic-Republican Electors that he failed to obtain the necessary majority of electoral votes to become vice president. In accordance with the 12th Amendment, the decision devolved upon the Senate which chose Johnson as vice president anyway. A really bizarre election, that one.

* In the 1872 election, Democratic candidate Horace Greeley (he of earlier "Go West, young man, go West" journalistic fame whose nomination makes a good story in itself) thoughtlessly died during that period between the popular vote for Electors and the meeting of the Electoral College. The Electors who were pledged to him, clearly unprepared for such an eventuality, split their electoral votes amongst several other Democratic candidates (including three votes for Greeley himself as a possible comment on the incumbent Ulysses S. Grant). That hardly mattered, though, since the Republican Grant had readily won an absolute majority of Electors. Still, it was an interesting event for which the political parties are now prepared.

* In 1876, the county once again found itself in serious political turmoil echoing, in some respects, both the economic divisions of 1824 and the impending political party realignments of 1836, but with the added bitterness of Reconstruction. A number of deep cross currents were in play. After a vast economic expansion, the county had fallen into a deep depression. Monetary and tariff issues were eroding the Union Republican coalition of East and West while a solid Republican black vote eroded the traditional Democratic hold on the South. The incumbent Republican administration of Grant had suffered a seemingly endless series of scandals involving graft and corruption on a scale hitherto unknown. And the South was eager to put an end to Radical Reconstruction which was, after all, a kind of vast political mugging. Against this backdrop, the resurging Democratic Party easily nominated Samuel J. Tilden, the popular Governor of New York, and Thomas A. Hendricks of Indiana (shrewd geographic choices under the circumstances). The Republicans, in a more turbulent convention, selected Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes and William A. Wheeler of New York. A variety of fairly significant third parties also cropped up, further shattering the country's political cohesion.

This is about as good a prescription for electoral chaos as anyone might hope for. Indeed, it is almost surprising that things did not turn out worse than they did. For on election night, it looked as though Tilden had pulled off the first Democratic presidential victory since the Civil War - although the decisive electoral votes of South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana remained in balance. Yet these States were as divided internally as was the nation at large. Without detailing the machinations of the vote count, suffice it to say that each State finally delivered to the Congress two sets of electoral votes - one set for Tilden and one set for Hayes. Because the Congressional procedures for resolving disputed sets of Electors had expired, the Congress established a special 15 member commission to decide the issue in each of the three States. Thus, Hayes was elected president despite the fact that Tilden, by everyone's count, had obtained a slight majority of popular votes (although the difference was a mere 3% of the total vote cast). As a final note, the Congress enacted in 1887 legislation that delegated to each State the final authority to determine the legality of its choice of Electors and required a concurrent majority of both houses of Congress to reject any electoral vote. That legislation remains in effect to this day so that the events of 1876 will not repeat themselves.

* Benjamin Harrison's election in 1888 is really the only clear-cut instance in which the Electoral College vote went contrary to the popular vote. This happened because the incumbent, Democrat Grover Cleveland, ran up huge popular majorities in several of the 18 States which supported him while the Republican challenger, Benjamin Harrison, won only slender majorities in some of the larger of the 20 States which supported him (most notably in Cleveland's home State of New York). Even so, the difference between them was only 110,476 votes out of 11,381,032 cast - less than 1% of the total. Interestingly, in this case, there were few critical issues (other than tariffs) separating the candidates so that the election seems to have been fought - and won - more on the basis of superior party organization in getting out the vote than on the issues of the day.

These, then, are the major historical curiosities of the Electoral College system. And because they are so frequently cited as flaws in the system, a few observations on them seem in order.

First, all of these events occurred over a century ago. For the past hundred years, the Electoral College has functioned without incident in every presidential election through two world wars, a major economic depression, and several periods of acute civil unrest. Only twice in this century (the States' Rights Democrats in 1948 and George Wallace's American Independents in 1968) have there been attempts to block an Electoral College victory and thus either force a negotiation for the presidency or else force the decision into the Congress. Neither attempt came close to succeeding. Such stability, rare in human history, should not be lightly dismissed.

Second, each of these events (except 1888) resulted either from political inexperience (as in 1800, 1836, and 1872) or from profound political divisions within the century (as in 1824, 1876, and even 1948 and 1968) which required some sort of higher order political resolution. And all of them were resolved in a peaceable and orderly fashion without any public uprising and without endangering the legitimacy of the sitting president. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how a direct election of the president could have resolved events as agreeably.

Finally, as the election of 1888 demonstrates, the Electoral College system imposes two requirements on candidates for the presidency:

* that the victor obtain a sufficient popular vote to enable him to govern (although this may not be the absolute majority), and

* that such a popular vote be sufficiently distributed across the county to enable him to govern.

Such an arrangement ensures a regional balance of support which is a vital consideration in governing a large and diverse nation (even though in close elections, as in 1888, distribution of support may take precedence over majority of support).

Far from being flaws, then, the historical oddities described above demonstrate the strength and resilience of the Electoral College system in being able to select a president in even the most troubled of times.

Current Workings of the Electoral College

The current workings of the Electoral College are the result of both design and experience. As it now operates:

* Each State is allocated a number of Electors equal to the number of its U.S. Senators (always 2) plus the number of its U.S. Representatives (which may change each decade according to the size of each State's population as determined in the Census).

* The political parties (or independent candidates) in each State submit to the State's chief election official a list of individuals pledged to their candidate for president and equal in number to the State's electoral vote. Usually, the major political parties select these individuals in their State party conventions while third parties and independent candidates merely designate theirs.

* Members of Congress and employees of the federal government are prohibited from serving as an Elector in order to maintain the balance between the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.

* After their caucuses and primaries, the major parties nominate their candidates for president and vice president in their national conventions - traditionally held in the summer preceding the election. (Third parties and independent candidates follow different procedures according to the individual State laws). The names of the duly nominated candidates are then officially submitted to each State's chief election official so that they might appear on the general election ballot.

* On the Tuesday following the first Monday of November in years divisible by four, the people in each State cast their ballots for the party slate of Electors representing their choice for president and vice president (although as a matter of practice, general election ballots normally say "Electors for" each set of candidates rather than list the individual Electors on each slate).

* Whichever party slate wins the most popular votes in the State becomes that State's Electors - so that, in effect, whichever presidential ticket gets the most popular votes in a State wins all the Electors of that State. (The two exceptions to this are Maine and Nebraska where two Electors are chosen by a statewide popular vote and remainder by the popular vote within each Congressional district).

* On the Monday following the second Wednesday of December (as established in federal law) each State's Electors meet in their respective State capitals and cast their electoral votes - one for president and one for vice president.

* In order to prevent Electors from voting only for "favorite sons" of their home State, at least one of their votes must be for a person from outside their State (though this is seldom a problem since the parties have consistently nominated presidential and vice presidential candidate from different States).

* The electoral votes are then sealed and transmitted from each State to the President of the Senate who, on the following January 6, opens and reads them before both houses of the Congress.

* The candidate for president with the most electoral votes, provided that it is an absolute majority (one over half of the total), is declared president. Similarly, the vice presidential candidate with the absolute majority of electoral votes is declared vice president.

* In the event no one obtains an absolute majority of electoral votes for president, the U.S. House of Representatives (as the chamber closest to the people) selects the president from among the top three contenders with each State casting only one vote and an absolute majority of the States being required to elect. Similarly, if no one obtains an absolute majority for vice president, then the U.S. Senate makes the selection from among the top two contenders for that office.

* At noon on January 20, the duly elected president and vice president are sworn into office.

Occasionally questions arise about what would happen if the presidential or vice presidential candidate died at some point in this process. For answers to these, as well as to a number of other "what if" questions, readers are advised to consult a small volume entitle After the People Vote: Steps in Choosing the President edited by Walter Berns and published in 1983 by the American Enterprise Institute. Similarly, further details on the history and current functioning of the Electoral College are available in the second edition of Congressional Quarterly's Guide to U.S. Elections, a real goldmine of information, maps, and statistics.

The Pro's and Con's of the Electoral College System

There have, in its 200 year history, been a number of critics and proposed reforms to the Electoral College system - most of them trying to eliminate it. But there are also staunch defenders of the Electoral College who, though perhaps less vocal than its critics, offer very powerful arguments in its favor.

Arguments Against the Electoral College

Those who object to the Electoral College system and favor a direct popular election of the president generally do so on four grounds:

* the possibility of electing a minority president

* the risk of so-called "faithless" Electors,

* the possible role of the Electoral College in depressing voter turnout, and

* its failure to accurately reflect the national popular will.

Opponents of the Electoral College are disturbed by the possibility of electing a minority president (one without the absolute majority of popular votes). Nor is this concern entirely unfounded since there are three ways in which that could happen.

One way in which a minority president could be elected is if the country were so deeply divided politically that three or more presidential candidates split the electoral votes among them such that no one obtained the necessary majority. This occurred, as noted above, in 1824 and was unsuccessfully attempted in 1948 and again in 1968. Should that happen today, there are two possible resolutions: either one candidate could throw his electoral votes to the support of another (before the meeting of the Electors) or else, absent an absolute majority in the Electoral College, the U.S. House of Representatives would select the president in accordance with the 12th Amendment. Either way, though, the person taking office would not have obtained the absolute majority of the popular vote. Yet it is unclear how a direct election of the president could resolve such a deep national conflict without introducing a presidential run-off election -- a procedure which would add substantially to the time, cost, and effort already devoted to selecting a president and which might well deepen the political divisions while trying to resolve them.

A second way in which a minority president could take office is if, as in 1888, one candidate's popular support were heavily concentrated in a few States while the other candidate maintained a slim popular lead in enough States to win the needed majority of the Electoral College. While the country has occasionally come close to this sort of outcome, the question here is whether the distribution of a candidate's popular support should be taken into account alongside the relative size of it. This issue was mentioned above and is discussed at greater length below.

A third way of electing a minority president is if a third party or candidate, however small, drew enough votes from the top two that no one received over 50% of the national popular total. Far from being unusual, this sort of thing has, in fact, happened 15 times including (in this century) Wilson in both 1912 and 1916, Truman in 1948, Kennedy in 1960, and Nixon in 1968. The only remarkable thing about those outcomes is that few people noticed and even fewer cared. Nor would a direct election have changed those outcomes without a run-off requiring over 50% of the popular vote (an idea which not even proponents of a direct election seem to advocate).

Opponents of the Electoral College system also point to the risk of so-called "faithless" Electors. A "faithless Elector" is one who is pledged to vote for his party's candidate for president but nevertheless votes of another candidate. There have been 7 such Electors in this century and as recently as 1988 when a Democrat Elector in the State of West Virginia cast his votes for Lloyd Bensen for president and Michael Dukakis for vice president instead of the other way around. Faithless Electors have never changed the outcome of an election, though, simply because most often their purpose is to make a statement rather than make a difference. That is to say, when the electoral vote outcome is so obviously going to be for one candidate or the other, an occasional Elector casts a vote for some personal favorite knowing full well that it will not make a difference in the result. Still, if the prospect of a faithless Elector is so fearsome as to warrant a Constitutional amendment, then it is possible to solve the problem without abolishing the Electoral College merely by eliminating the individual Electors in favor of a purely mathematical process (since the individual Electors are no longer essential to its operation).

Opponents of the Electoral College are further concerned about its possible role in depressing voter turnout. Their argument is that, since each State is entitled to the same number of electoral votes regardless of its voter turnout, there is no incentive in the States to encourage voter participation. Indeed, there may even be an incentive to discourage participation (and they often cite the South here) so as to enable a minority of citizens to decide the electoral vote for the whole State. While this argument has a certain surface plausibility, it fails to account for the fact that presidential elections do not occur in a vacuum. States also conduct other elections (for U.S. Senators, U.S. Representatives, State Governors, State legislators, and a host of local officials) in which these same incentives and disincentives are likely to operate, if at all, with an even greater force. It is hard to imagine what counter-incentive would be created by eliminating the Electoral College.

Finally, some opponents of the Electoral College point out, quite correctly, its failure to accurately reflect the national popular will in at least two respects.

First, the distribution of Electoral votes in the College tends to over-represent people in rural States. This is because the number of Electors for each State is determined by the number of members it has in the House (which more or less reflects the State's population size) plus the number of members it has in the Senate (which is always two regardless of the State's population). The result is that in 1988, for example, the combined voting age population (3,119,000) of the seven least populous jurisdiction of Alaska, Delaware, the District of Columbia, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming carried the same voting strength in the Electoral College (21 Electoral votes) as the 9,614,000 persons of voting age in the State of Florida. Each Floridian's potential vote, then, carried about one third the weight of a potential vote in the other States listed.

A second way in which the Electoral College fails to accurately reflect the national popular will stems primarily from the winner-take-all mechanism whereby the presidential candidate who wins the most popular votes in the State wins all the Electoral votes of that State. One effect of this mechanism is to make it extremely difficult for third party or independent candidates ever to make much of a showing in the Electoral College. If, for example, a third party or independent candidate were to win the support of even as many as 25% of the voters nationwide, he might still end up with no Electoral College votes at all unless he won a plurality of votes in at least one State. And even if he managed to win a few States, his support elsewhere would not be reflected. By thus failing to accurately reflect the national popular will, the argument goes, the Electoral College reinforces a two party system, discourages third party or independent candidates, and thereby tends to restrict choices available to the electorate.

In response to these arguments, proponents of the Electoral College point out that is was never intended to reflect the national popular will. As for the first issue, that the Electoral College over-represents rural populations, proponents respond that the United State Senate - with two seats per State regardless of its population - over-represents rural populations far more dramatically. But since there have been no serious proposals to abolish the United States Senate on these grounds, why should such an argument be used to abolish the lesser case of the Electoral College? Because the presidency represents the whole country? But so, as an institution, does the United States Senate.

As for the second issue of the Electoral College's role in reinforcing a two party system, proponents, as we shall see, find this to be a positive virtue.

Arguments for the Electoral College

Proponents of the Electoral College system normally defend it on the philosophical grounds that it:

* contributes to the cohesiveness of the country by requiring a distribution of popular support to be elected president

* enhances the status of minority interests,

* contributes to the political stability of the nation by encouraging a two-party system, and

* maintains a federal system of government and representation.

Recognizing the strong regional interests and loyalties which have played so great a role in American history, proponents argue that the Electoral College system contributes to the cohesiveness of the country be requiring a distribution of popular support to be elected president, without such a mechanism, they point out, president would be selected either through the domination of one populous region over the others or through the domination of large metropolitan areas over the rural ones. Indeed, it is principally because of the Electoral College that presidential nominees are inclined to select vice presidential running mates from a region other than their own. For as things stand now, no one region contains the absolute majority (270) of electoral votes required to elect a president. Thus, there is an incentive for presidential candidates to pull together coalitions of States and regions rather than to exacerbate regional differences. Such a unifying mechanism seems especially prudent in view of the severe regional problems that have typically plagued geographically large nations such as China, India, the Soviet Union, and even, in its time, the Roman Empire.

This unifying mechanism does not, however, come without a small price. And the price is that in very close popular elections, it is possible that the candidate who wins a slight majority of popular votes may not be the one elected president - depending (as in 1888) on whether his popularity is concentrated in a few States or whether it is more evenly distributed across the States. Yet this is less of a problem than it seems since, as a practical matter, the popular difference between the two candidates would likely be so small that either candidate could govern effectively.

Proponents thus believe that the practical value of requiring a distribution of popular support outweighs whatever sentimental value may attach to obtaining a bare majority of popular support. Indeed, they point out that the Electoral College system is designed to work in a rational series of defaults: if, in the first instance, a candidate receives a substantial majority of the popular vote, then that candidate is virtually certain to win enough electoral votes to be elected president; in the event that the popular vote is extremely close, then the election defaults to that candidate with the best distribution of popular votes (as evidenced by obtaining the absolute majority of electoral votes); in the event the country is so divided that no one obtains an absolute majority of electoral votes, then the choice of president defaults to the States in the U.S. House of Representatives. One way or another, then, the winning candidate must demonstrate both a sufficient popular support to govern as well as a sufficient distribution of that support to govern.

Proponents also point out that, far from diminishing minority interests by depressing voter participation, the Electoral College actually enhances the status of minority groups. This is so because the voters of even small minorities in a State may make the difference between winning all of that State's electoral votes or none of that State's electoral votes. And since ethnic minority groups in the United States happen to concentrate in those State with the most electoral votes, they assume an importance to presidential candidates well out of proportion to their number. The same principle applies to other special interest groups such as labor unions, farmers, environmentalists, and so forth.

It is because of this "leverage effect" that the presidency, as an institution, tends to be more sensitive to ethnic minority and other special interest groups than does the Congress as an institution. Changing to a direct election of the president would therefore actually damage minority interests since their votes would be overwhelmed by a national popular majority.

Proponents further argue that the Electoral College contributes to the political stability of the nation by encouraging a two party system. There can be no doubt that the Electoral College has encouraged and helps to maintain a two party system in the United States. This is true simply because it is extremely difficult for a new or minor party to win enough popular votes in enough States to have a chance of winning the presidency. Even if they won enough electoral votes to force the decision into the U.S. House of Representatives, they would still have to have a majority of over half the State delegations in order to elect their candidate - and in that case, they would hardly be considered a minor party.

In addition to protecting the presidency from impassioned but transitory third party movements, the practical effect of the Electoral College (along with the single-member district system of representation in the Congress) is to virtually force third party movements into one of the two major political parties. Conversely, the major parties have every incentive to absorb minor party movements in their continual attempt to win popular majorities in the States. In this process of assimilation, third party movements are obliged to compromise their more radical views if they hope to attain any of their more generally acceptable objectives. Thus we end up with two large, pragmatic political parties which tend to the center of public opinion rather than dozens of smaller political parties catering to divergent and sometimes extremist views. In other words, such a system forces political coalitions to occur within the political parties rather than within the government.

A direct popular election of the president would likely have the opposite effect. For in a direct popular election, there would be every incentive for a multitude of minor parties to form in an attempt to prevent whatever popular majority might be necessary to elect a president. The surviving candidates would thus be drawn to the regionalist or extremist views represented by these parties in hopes of winning the run-off election.

The result of a direct popular election for president, then, would likely be frayed and unstable political system characterized by a multitude of political parties and by more radical changes in policies from one administration to the next. The Electoral College system, in contrast, encourages political parties to coalesce divergent interests into two sets of coherent alternatives. Such an organization of social conflict and political debate contributes to the political stability of the nation.

Finally, its proponents argue quite correctly that the Electoral College maintains a federal system of government and representation. Their reasoning is that in a formal federal structure, important political powers are reserved to the component States. In the United States, for example, the House of Representatives was designed to represent the States according to the size of their population. The States are even responsible for drawing the district lines for their House seats. The Senate was designed to represent each State equally regardless of its population. And the Electoral College was designed to represent each State's choice for the presidency (with the number of each State's electoral votes being the number of its Senators plus the number of its Representatives). To abolish the Electoral College in favor of a nationwide popular election for president would strike at the very heart of the federal structure laid out in our Constitution and would lead to the nationalization of our central government - to the detriment of the States.

Indeed, if we become obsessed with government by popular majority as the only consideration, should we not then abolish the Senate which represents States regardless of population? Should we not correct the minor distortions in the House (caused by districting and by guaranteeing each State at least one Representative) by changing it to a system of proportional representation? This would accomplish "government by popular majority" and guarantee the representation of minority parties, but it would also demolish our federal system of government. If there are reasons to maintain State representation in the Senate and House as they exist today, then surely these same reasons apply to the choice of president. Why, then, apply a sentimental attachment to popular majorities only to the Electoral College?

The fact is, they argue, that the original design of our federal system of government was thoroughly and wisely debated by the Founding Fathers. State viewpoints, they decided, are more important than political minority viewpoints. And the collective opinion of the individual State populations is more important than the opinion of the national population taken as a whole. Nor should we tamper with the careful balance of power between the national and State governments which the Founding Fathers intended and which is reflected in the Electoral college. To do so would fundamentally alter the nature of our government and might well bring about consequences that even the reformers would come to regret.

Conclusion

The Electoral College has performed its function for over 200 years (and in over 50 presidential elections) by ensuring that the President of the United States has both sufficient popular support to govern and that his popular support is sufficiently distributed throughout the country to enable him to govern effectively.

Although there were a few anomalies in its early history, none have occurred in the past century. Proposals to abolish the Electoral College, though frequently put forward, have failed largely because the alternatives to it appear more problematic than is the College itself.

The fact that the Electoral College was originally designed to solve one set of problems but today serves to solve an entirely different set of problems is a tribute to the genius of the Founding Fathers.

by William C. Kimberling, Deputy Director
FEC National Clearinghouse on Election Administration

The views expressed here are solely those of the author and are not necessarily shared by the Federal Election Commission or any division thereof or the Jackson County Board of Election Commissioners.



A Selected Bibliography On the Electoral College

Highly Recommended

Berns, Walter (ed.) After the People Vote: Steps in Choosing the President. Washington: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1983.

Bickel, Alexander M. Reform and Continuity. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.

Congressional Quarterly's Guide to U.S. Elections (2nd ed). Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1985.

Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr. (Ed.) History of Presidential Elections 1789-1968. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1971.

Other Sources

American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Proposals for Revision of the Electoral College System. Washington: 1969.

Best, Judith. The Case Against the Direct Election of the President. Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1975.

Longley, Lawrence D. The Politics of Electoral College Reform. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972.

Pierce, Neal R. and Longley, Lawrence D. The People's President: The Electoral College in American History and the Direct-Vote Alternative. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.

Sayre, Wallace Stanley, Voting for President. Washington: Brookings Institution, c1970.

Zeidenstein, Harvey G. Direct Election of the President. Lexington, Mass: Lexington Books, 1973.
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For more on the Electoral College
http://www.archives.gov/federal_registe ... llege.html

Do try explaining to the class how slavery has any fucking thing to do with the fundamental constitutional machinery of governance please.

[Patrick Degan]

Part Three

Oh, and as far as the numbers argument goes, try crunching this:

Math Against Tyranny
by Will Hively, Discover magazine, November, 1996

When you cast your vote this month, you're not directly electing the president--you're electing members of the electoral college. They elect the president. An archaic, unnecessary system? Mathematics shows, says one concerned American, that by giving your vote to another, you're ensuring the future of our democracy.

"One morning at two o’clock," Alan Natapoff recalls, "I realized that I was the only person willing to see this problem through to the end." The morning in question was back in the late 1970s. Then as now, Natapoff, a physicist, was spending his days doing research at mit’s Man-Vehicle Laboratory, investigating how the human brain responds to acceleration, weightless floating, and other vexations of contemporary transport. But the problem he was working on so late involved larger and grander issues. He was contemplating the survival of our nation as we know it.

Not long before Natapoff’s epiphany, Congress had teetered on the verge of wrecking the electoral college, an institution that has no equal anywhere in the world. This group of ordinary citizens, elected by all who vote, elects, in turn, the nation’s president and vice president. Though the college still stood, Natapoff worried that sometime soon, well-meaning reformers might try again to destroy it. The only way to prevent such a tragedy, he thought, would be to get people to understand the real but hidden value of our peculiar, roundabout voting procedure. He’d have to dig down to basic principles. He’d have to give them a mathematical explanation of why we need the electoral college.

Natapoff’s self-chosen labor has taken him more than two decades. But now that the journal Public Choice is about to publish his groundbreaking article, he can finally relax a bit; he might even take a vacation. In addition to this nontechnical article, which skimps on the math, he’s worked out a formal theorem that demonstrates, he claims, why our complex electoral system is "provably" better than a simple, direct election. Furthermore, he adds, without this quirky glitch in the system, our democracy might well have fallen apart long ago into warring factions.

This month many of us are playing our allotted role in the drama that’s haunted Natapoff for so long. Ostensibly, by voting on November 5, we are choosing the next president of the United States. Nine weeks after the apparent winner celebrates victory, however, Congress will count not our votes but those of 538 "electors," distributed proportionally among the states. Each state gets as many electoral votes as it has seats in Congress--California has 54, New York has 33, the seven least populated states have 3 each; the District of Columbia also has 3. These 538 votes actually elect the president. And the electors who cast them don’t always choose the popular-vote winner. In 1888, the classic example, Grover Cleveland got 48.6 percent of the popular vote versus Benjamin Harrison’s 47.9 percent. Cleveland won by 100,456 votes. But the electors chose Harrison, overwhelmingly (233 to 168). They were not acting perversely. According to the rules laid out in the Constitution, Harrison was the winner.

Some reversals have been more complicated. In 1824, Andrew Jackson beat his rival, John Quincy Adams, by more popular and then more electoral votes--99 versus 84--but still lost the election because he didn’t win a majority of electoral votes (78 went to other candidates). When that happens, the House of Representatives picks the winner. In 1876, Samuel J. Tilden lost to Rutherford B. Hayes by one electoral vote, though he received 50.9 percent of the popular vote to Hayes’s 47.9 percent; an extraordinary commission awarded 20 disputed electoral votes to Hayes. We’ve also had some famous close calls. In 1960, John F. Kennedy narrowly beat Richard Nixon in the popular voting, 49.7 percent to 49.5 percent, a smaller margin than Cleveland had over Harrison. But wait: Nixon won more states (Nixon 26, Kennedy and others 24). But no: Kennedy, who won bigger states, went on to win the electoral balloting, 303 to 219. This time we, the people, did not strike out. The popular-vote winner became president.

Clearly, in U.S. presidential elections, it ain’t over till it’s over. A popular-vote loser in the big national contest can still win by scoring more points in the smaller electoral college. But isn’t this undemocratic? Isn’t it somehow wrong that a few hundred obscure electors, foisted on a new republic by men of property in powdered wigs, should be allowed to reverse the people’s choice?

By 1969, Congress was beginning to think so. After Nixon defeated Hubert Humphrey with a popular margin, again, of less than 1 percent, the possibility of a modern-day winner’s being denied the presidency had become so obnoxious to the House of Representatives that it approved a constitutional amendment to abolish the electoral college. The American Bar Association supported the move, calling our current electoral system "archaic, undemocratic, complex, ambiguous, indirect, and dangerous." In the Senate, too, the amendment had broad support. What could be simpler or fairer than electing the president by direct popular vote? Over the next few years the issue lost momentum, but Jimmy Carter’s narrow victory over Gerald Ford in 1976 brought it back to life. The League of Women Voters, a host of political scientists, and a large majority of American citizens, according to various polls, all agreed that the electoral college should be abolished. In 1977, though, among those testifying against the amendment was a self-described political nobody from Massachusetts: Alan Natapoff.

Leafing now through the Congressional Record, Natapoff laughs. "The impact of my testimony," he says, "was negligible." He hadn’t yet proved his theorem, and the mathematical argument he did present was edited to a "blunted" paraphrase, leaving out some of his most important arguments. The electoral college survived, of course, but not because of anything Natapoff said. After a decade of sporadic debate and 4,395 pages of testimony, the bill died in the Senate. It had majority support, but not the two-thirds majority required to pass it.

The issue will likely catch fire again, though, the moment another popular winner fails to muster the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch victory. "Raw voting, having the president elected by a popular vote, is deep in the American psyche," Natapoff says. It’s been around since Andrew Jackson finally won the presidency--four years later than he should have, according to 153,544 raw, frustrated voters. "My theorem," Natapoff admits, "contradicts the common wisdom of our time. Everybody gets this wrong. Everybody. Because we were taught incorrectly."

Natapoff included. How could a boy who grew up in the Bronx, played ball in the streets, and attended public schools in New York City not have absorbed the common wisdom? Natapoff went on to study particle physics at Berkeley. Later, at mit, he changed his field of research but not his belief in raw, popular democracy. Then one day in the 1960s, he saw an article in Life that changed his mind. It quoted political experts who said the electoral college robs voters of their power. But the mathematics these experts were using seemed too simple to support their conclusion. Natapoff looked into the math, and pretty soon he reached the opposite conclusion. Almost always, he convinced himself, our electoral system increases voters’ power. The experts had not considered enough cases; they looked only at unbelievably close elections with two candidates running neck and neck everywhere in the country. Real elections are almost never that closely contested. Some states tilt sharply toward one candidate or another, and the voting power of individuals in each state changes in ways the reformers’ arguments ignored.

The more Natapoff looked into the nitty-gritty of real elections, the more parallels he found with another American institution that stirs up wild passions in the populace. The same logic that governs our electoral system, he saw, also applies to many sports--which Americans do, intuitively, understand. In baseball’s World Series, for example, the team that scores the most runs overall is like a candidate who gets the most votes. But to become champion, that team must win the most games. In 1960, during a World Series as nail-bitingly close as that year’s presidential battle between Kennedy and Nixon, the New York Yankees, with the awesome slugging combination of Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and Bill "Moose" Skowron, scored more than twice as many total runs as the Pittsburgh Pirates, 55 to 27. Yet the Yankees lost the series, four games to three. Even Natapoff, who grew up in the shadow of Yankee Stadium, conceded that Pittsburgh deserved to win. "Nobody walked away saying it was unfair," he says.

Runs must be grouped in a way that wins games, just as popular votes must be grouped in a way that wins states. The Yankees won three blowouts (16-3, 10-0, 12-0), but they couldn’t come up with the runs they needed in the other four games, which were close. "And that’s exactly how Cleveland lost the series of 1888," Natapoff continues. "Grover Cleveland. He lost the five largest states by a close margin, though he carried Texas, which was a thinly populated state then, by a large margin. So he scored more runs, but he lost the five biggies." And that was fair, too. In sports, we accept that a true champion should be more consistent than the 1960 Yankees. A champion should be able to win at least some of the tough, close contests by every means available--bunting, stealing, brilliant pitching, dazzling plays in the field--and not just smack home runs against second-best pitchers. A presidential candidate worthy of office, by the same logic, should have broad appeal across the whole nation, and not just play strongly on a single issue to isolated blocs of voters.

"Experts, scholars, deep thinkers could make errors on electoral reform," Natapoff decided, "but nine-year-olds could explain to a Martian why the Yankees lost in 1960, and why it was right. And both have the same underlying abstract principle."

These insights came quickly, but it was many years before Natapoff devised his formal mathematical proof. His starting point was the concept of voting power. In a fair election, he saw, each voter’s power boils down to this: What is the probability that one person’s vote will be able to turn a national election? The higher the probability, the more power each voter commands. To figure out these probabilities, Natapoff devised his own model of a national electorate--a more realistic model, he thought, than the ones the quoted experts were always using. Almost always, he found, individual voting power is higher when funneled through districts--such as states--than when pooled in one large, direct election. It is more likely, in other words, that your one vote will determine the outcome in your state and your state will then turn the outcome of the electoral college, than that your vote will turn the outcome of a direct national election. A voter therefore, Natapoff found, has more power under the current electoral system.

Why worry how easily one vote can turn an election, so long as each voter has equal power? One person, one vote--that’s all the math anyone needs to know in a simple, direct election. Natapoff agrees that voters should have equal power. "The idea," he says, "is to give every voter the largest equal share of national voting power possible." Here’s a classic example of equal voting power: under a tyranny, everyone’s power is equal to zero. Clearly, equality alone is not enough. In a democracy, individuals become less vulnerable to tyranny as their voting power increases.

James Madison, chief architect of our nation’s electoral college, wanted to protect each citizen against the most insidious tyranny that arises in democracies: the massed power of fellow citizens banded together in a dominant bloc. As Madison explained in The Federalist Papers (Number X), "a well-constructed Union" must, above all else, "break and control the violence of faction," especially "the superior force of an . . . overbearing majority." In any democracy, a majority’s power threatens minorities. It threatens their rights, their property, and sometimes their lives.

A well-designed electoral system might include obstacles to thwart an overbearing majority. But direct, national voting has none. Under raw voting, a candidate has every incentive to woo only the largest bloc-- say, Serbs in Yugoslavia. If a Serb party wins national power, minorities have no prospect of throwing them out; 49 percent will never beat 51 percent. Knowing this, the majority can do as it pleases (lacking other effective checks and balances). But in a districted election, no one becomes president without winning a large number of districts, or "states"- -say, two of the following three: Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia. Candidates thus have an incentive to campaign for non-Serb votes in at least some of those states and to tone down extreme positions--in short, to make elections less risky events for the losers. The result, as George Wallace used to say, may often be a race without "a dime’s worth of difference" between two main candidates, which he viewed as a weakness but others view as a strength of our system.

The founding fathers were not experts on voting power. Many wanted an electoral college simply because they distrusted the mob. A large electorate, they believed, falls prey to passions, rumors, and "tumult." Electors were supposed to consider each candidate’s merits more judiciously, not blindly follow the popular will. Nowadays, of course, whoever wins the popular vote in any state wins all the electoral votes in that state automatically (except in Maine, which divides its electoral votes). We no longer need human bodies to cast electoral ballots, Natapoff says. That part of the system is indeed archaic. But it has worked beautifully, he insists, as a formula for converting one large national contest into 51 smaller elections in which individual voters have more clout. The Madisonian system, by requiring candidates to win states on the way to winning the nation, has forced majorities to win the consent of minorities, checked the violence of factions, and held the country together. "We have stumbled onto something that not everyone appreciates," Natapoff says. "People should understand it before they decide to change it."

Which is why, late one night a couple of decades back, with a minimum of fanfare, Natapoff appointed himself unofficial mathematician for one of the least popular institutions in America.

Two variables, Natapoff realized, profoundly affect each citizen’s voting power. One is the size of the electorate, a factor that political scientists already recognized. The other is the closeness of the contest, which most experts hadn’t taken into account.

It’s easy to see the effect of size. Your vote matters less in a larger pool of votes: it’s the same drop in a bigger bucket and less likely to change the outcome of an election. However, in a ridiculously small nation of, say, three voters, your vote would carry immense power. An election would turn on your ballot 50 percent of the time. For a simple example, let’s assume that only two candidates are running, A versus B, and each vote is like a random coin toss, with a 50 percent chance of going either way. In your nation of three, there’s a 50 percent chance that the other two voters will split, one for A and the other for B, and thus a 50 percent chance that your single vote will determine the election. There’s also, of course, a 25 percent chance both will vote for A and a 25 percent chance both will vote for B, making your vote unimportant. But that potential tie-splitting power puts all voters in a powerful position; candidates will give each of you a lot of respect.

As a nation gets larger, each citizen’s voting power shrinks. When Natapoff computes voting power--the probability that one vote will turn the election--he is really computing the probability that the rest of the nation will deadlock. If you are part of a five-voter nation, the other four voters would have to split--two for A and two for B--for your vote to turn the election. The probability of that happening is 3 in 8, or 37.5 percent. (The other possibilities are three votes for A and one for B, a 25 percent probability; three for B and one for A, also 25 percent; four for A, 6.25 percent; and four for B, 6.25 percent.) As the nation’s size goes up, individual voting power continues to drop, roughly as the square root of size. Among 135 citizens, for instance, there are so many ways the others can divide and make your vote meaningless--say, 66 for A and 68 for B--that the probability of deadlock drops to 6.9 percent. In the 1960 presidential race, one of the closest ever, more than 68 million voters went to the polls. A deadlock would have been 34,167,371 votes for Kennedy and the same for Nixon (also-rans not included). Instead, Kennedy squeaked past Nixon 34,227,096 to 34,107,646. You might as well try to balance a pencil on its point as try to swing a modern U.S. election with one vote. In a typical large election, individuals or small groups of voters have little chance of being critical to a raw-vote victory, and they therefore have little bargaining power with a prospective president.

So, does this historic example demonstrate how the electoral college compensates for our individual insignificance? Wasn’t each vote for Kennedy or Nixon actually more important than the raw vote count suggests, being funneled through the electoral college? If a couple thousand votes had changed in a key state or two. . . ? Actually, no--if the experts’ assumptions are true. If each vote really is like a toss of those perfectly balanced coins so beloved by theorists, then districting never boosts voting power. It’s actually a useless complication; it slightly reduces individual power. You can see this in a small electorate. If you district a nation of nine into three states with three voters each, with each vote a perfect toss-up, the probability of a deadlock in your state is 50 percent. Your vote would then decide the outcome in your state. Beyond that, the other two states must also deadlock, one going for A and one for B, to make your state’s outcome decisive for the nation. The probability of that is also 50 percent. So the compound probability of the whole election hinging on your vote is 25 percent. In a simple, direct election, on the other hand, the national pool of eight other voters would have to split four against four to make your vote decisive. The probability of that happening is 27.3 percent (35/128), giving you more power in a direct election. Districting doesn’t help this nation of nine, and it doesn’t help any electorate of any size when the contest is perfectly even.

Thus the experts who wanted to reform our system were right, but only if you grant them one large assumption. An electoral college does rob voters of power if everyone, in effect, walks into a voting booth and flips a coin to decide between two equally appealing candidates, Tweedledee and Tweedledum. "But this is an inaccurate model," Natapoff counters. "They were going to change the Constitution based on a narrow finding."

Natapoff decided to push the analysis further, even though the math got harder as he shed convenient, simplifying assumptions. He wanted to know what happens when voters stop acting like ideal, perfect coins and begin to favor one candidate over the other. He could see right away that everyone’s voting power shrinks, because the probability goes down that the electorate will deadlock. The national tally is more likely to be lopsided, just as a tail-heavy coin is more likely to come up, say, 60 heads and 40 tails than 50-50.

A general preference for one candidate over the other is like a house advantage in gambling. "If candidate A has a 1 percent edge on every vote," Natapoff says, "in 100,000 votes he’s almost sure to win. And that’s bad for the individual voter, whose vote then doesn’t make any difference in the outcome. The leading candidate becomes the house."

Of course, you might object, voters aren’t really roulette wheels. When you walk into the voting booth, you’ve probably already made up your mind which candidate you’ll vote for. If it’s A, the probability that you’ll pull the lever for B instead isn’t 45 percent, it’s more like 0 percent. Similarly, if your brother-in-law is a strong supporter of B, the probability that he’ll actually vote for B is close to 100 percent, not 45 percent. Although many people get hung up on this part of Natapoff’s argument, it’s not really that hard to understand. Imagine for a moment that you’re not a person at all, but a voting booth. When someone steps in to cast a vote, you have no idea whether that vote will be for A or for B. The voter may have made up her mind long ago, but until she actually pulls the lever, you won’t know whom she’s chosen. All you know is that of the people whose votes you count today, about 55 percent will vote for A and about 45 percent for B. Similarly, a spin of the roulette wheel isn’t really random. The laws of physics, the shape of the ball, the currents in the air, and other factors will all determine where the ball lands. But a gambler can’t calculate those factors any more than a voting booth can know which candidate an individual voter will choose.

In a nation of 135 citizens, says Natapoff, one person’s probability of turning an election is 6.9 percent in a dead-even contest. But if voter preference for candidate A jumps to, say, 55 percent, the probability of deadlock, and of your one vote turning the election, falls below .4 percent, a huge drop. If candidate A goes out in front by 61 percent, the probability that one vote will matter whooshes down to .024 percent. And it keeps on dropping, faster and faster, as candidate A keeps pulling ahead.

The next step is the kicker. The effect of lopsided preferences, Natapoff discovered, is far more important than the size effect. In a dead- even contest, remember, voting power shrinks as the electorate becomes larger. But a 1 or 2 percent change in electorate size, by itself, doesn’t matter much to the individual voter. When one candidate gains an edge over another, however, a 1 or 2 percent change can make a huge difference to everyone’s voting power, giving candidates less of a motive to keep the losers happy. And the larger the electorate, the more telling a candidate’s lead becomes, like a house advantage.

Some people know this from ordinary experience. If you’re gambling in a casino, for instance, you had better keep your session as short as possible; the longer you play, the less likely you are to beat the house odds and break even (let alone win). By the same principle, if you’re flipping a lopsided coin yet looking for an equal number of heads and tails (a deadlock), you had better keep the number of coin flips low; the longer you try with lopsided coins, the more the law of averages works against a 50-50 outcome. And if you’re voting in an uneven election, you had better keep the electorate’s size as small as possible. "If the law of averages has got an edge," Natapoff says, "it’s going to tell in the long run. And so the idea is not to allow any very large elections if you are a voter. Unless the contest is perfectly even, you want to keep the size of elections small." The founding fathers unwittingly did this when they divided the national election into smaller, state-size contests.

So even though districting doesn’t help in an ideal, dead-even contest, with voters acting the same all over the country, it does help, Natapoff saw, in a realistic, uneven contest. Sports fans, again, vaguely understand the underlying principle. In a championship series, the contest becomes more equal, and the underdog has a better chance, when a team has to win more games, not just score more points. Similarly, when contesting 50 states, the leading candidate has more ways to lose than when running in a large, raw national election--there are more ways for votes to cluster in harmless blowouts, just as there are more ways for runs or goals to cluster in the seven games of the World Series or the Stanley Cup play-offs. In a big, raw national contest, those clusters wouldn’t matter.

The degree to which districting helps, Natapoff found, depends on just how close a contest is. Take as an illustration our model nation of 135, divided into, say, three states of 45 citizens each. When the race is dead even, of course, no districting scheme helps: voting power starts off at 6.9 percent in a direct election versus 6.0 percent in a districted election. But when candidate A jumps ahead with a lead of 54.5 percent, individual voting power is roughly the same whether the nation uses districts or not. And as the contest becomes more lopsided, voting power shrinks faster in the direct-voting nation than it does in the districted nation. If candidate A grabs a 61.1 percent share of voter preference, voters in the districted nation have twice as much power as those in the direct-voting nation. If A’s share reaches 64.8 percent, voters in the districted nation have four times as much power, and so on. The advantage of districting over direct voting keeps growing quickly as the contest becomes more lopsided.

Natapoff now had a two-part result. A districted voting scheme can either decrease individual voting power or boost it, depending on how lopsided the coin being tossed for each voter becomes. He found the crossover point interesting. For a nation of 135, that point is right around a 55-45 percent split in voter preference between two candidates. In any contest closer than this, voters would have more power in a simple, direct election. In any contest more lopsided than this, they would be better off voting by districts. How does that crossover point shift, Natapoff wondered, as electorate size changes?

For very small electorates--nine people, say--he found that the gap between candidates must be very large, at least 66.6 to 33.3 percent, before districting will help. That’s why raw voting works well at town meetings, where electorates are so small. As the number of voters gets larger, the crossover point moves closer to 50-50. For a nation of 135, voters are better off with districting in any race more lopsided than 55- 45. For a nation with millions of voters, the gap between candidates must be razor-thin for districting not to help. In the real world of large nations and uneven contests, voters get more bang for their ballot when they set up a districted, Madisonian electoral system--usually a lot more.

Now, try to imagine a bleary-eyed Natapoff working through the math for case after case. He finds out what happens as the size of the electorate changes, as the contest gets more or less lopsided, or as the method of districting changes (in his most favored nation of 135, you could have 3 states of 45 citizens each, 45 states of 3 citizens each--even 5 states of 20 and 7 states of 5). All these things affect voting power. Natapoff’s theorem now covers all cases. "The theorem," he sums up, "essentially says that you’re better off districted in any large election, unless every voter in the country is alike and very closely balanced between candidates A and B. In that very extraordinary case, which rarely if ever occurs in our elections, it would be better to have a simple national election."

Natapoff had finally answered, to his satisfaction, the question that had nagged him for decades. But what size, shape, and composition should our districts have? Like everyone else who delves into electoral politics, Natapoff could see that the actual, historic United States is not a perfectly districted nation. For one thing, states vary enormously in size. Natapoff can solve his equations to find an ideal district size for the purpose of national elections, assuming that each vote, like a coin toss, is statistically independent--but the answer depends on an election’s closeness. The districts could all be the same size, but only if the preference for one candidate over another is the same everywhere in the country. In general, the more lopsided the contest, the smaller each district, or state, needs to be to give individual voters the best chance of local deadlock. So in close elections, voters in larger states would have more power; in lopsided elections, voters in smaller states would. Since some campaigns run neck and neck to the wire while others become blowouts, we will probably never have an ideally districted nation for any particular election, even with equal-size states.

Ideally, too, no bloc should dominate any district. This consideration, by itself, probably makes the 50 states a grid that’s closer to ideal for electoral voting than, say, the 435 congressional districts. For example, in heavily black districts, no single white or black person’s vote would be likely to change the outcome, if blacks in that district tend to vote as a bloc. Each of those voters, black and white, would have more national power in a districting scheme more closely balanced between black and white. For this reason, Natapoff says, gerrymandering can be counterproductive even when undertaken with the intention of boosting some national minority’s power. The gerrymandered district might guarantee one seat in Congress to this minority, but those voters might actually wield more national bargaining power with no seat in Congress if representatives from, say, three separate districts viewed their votes as potentially swinging an election. Anyway, Natapoff says, the point of districting is to reduce the death grip of blocs on the outcome. "This is a nonpartisan proposition," he says. "The idea is to be sure all votes in a district have power." Ideally no single party, race, ethnic group, or other bloc, nationally large or nationally small, will dominate any of the districts-- which for now happen to be the 50 states plus Washington, D.C.

Natapoff concedes that the Madisonian system does contain within it one small, unavoidable paradox. Every once in a while, if we use districting to jack up individual voting power, we’ll have an electoral "anomaly"--a loser like Harrison will nudge out a slightly more popular Cleveland. He sees those anomalies, as well as the more frequent close calls, not as defects but as signs that the system is working. It is protecting individual voting power by preserving the threat that small numbers of votes in this or that district can turn the election. "We were blinded by its minor vices," he says. "All that happens is someone with fewer votes gets elected," temporarily. What doesn’t happen may be far more important. In 1888, victorious Republicans didn’t celebrate by jailing or killing Democrats, and Democrats didn’t find Harrison so intolerable that they took up arms. Cleveland came back to win four years later, beating Harrison under the same rules as before. The republic survived.

One other benefit attributed by Natapoff to our electoral college seems almost aesthetic. As usual, it’s easier to appreciate in sports. In 1960, under simpler rules, the Yankees might have been champions. They might have won, for instance, if there were no World Series but only the scheduled 154-game season, with one large baseball nation of 16 teams instead of two separate leagues. The team winning the most games all year long would simply pick up its prize in October. Instead, here is what happened. By the ninth inning in game seven of the series, the Yankees and Pirates had fought to a standstill--the ultimate deadlock. Each team had won three games. The Yankees had led throughout much of game seven, but Pittsburgh astonished everyone by scoring five runs in the eighth inning, after a Yankee fielding error, to go ahead 9-7. They couldn’t, of course, hold their lead. The Yankees answered with two more runs in the top of the ninth to tie the score at 9-9.

Then, in the bottom of the ninth, Bill Mazeroski, an average hitter without much power, stepped to the plate for Pittsburgh. He seemed a mere placeholder--until his long fly ball just cleared the left-field wall. Rounding second base, halfway home, Mazeroski was leaping for joy, and Pittsburgh fans were pouring from their seats, racing to meet him at the plate. The Yankees had finally toppled. There they were, ahead in the polls, piling up votes like nobody’s business, until one last swing of one player’s bat turned the whole season around. "Everybody regarded it as one of the most glorious World Series ever," Natapoff says. "To do it any other way would totally destroy the degree of competition and excitement that’s essential to all sports."


All other material ©2000 Avagara

It's never just a matter of bald numbers or selective numbers. You have to consider all the numbers and exactly how they fit into a larger context.

I await the customary responses that it's all "shite" and "sophistry".

[Phil Skayhan]

The NY times is behind in their information, Kennedy was the first president put in office without winning the popular vote.

How did you come up with that?

John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Electoral Votes: 303
Pop. Vote: 34,227,096 (49.7%)

Richard Milhous Nixon
Electoral Votes: 219
Pop. Vote: 34,107,646 (49.5%)

It was the election of 1876 when this first occured

Rutherford Birchard Hayes
Electoral Votes: 185
4,036,298 (48.4%)

Samuel Jones Tilden
Electoral Votes: 184
4,300,590 (51.6%)

[Slartibartfast]

Though Joe's question might be modified to ask, "How many other countries as large as the US elect their presidents with a popular vote?"

Actually, I should have said "industrialized countries" to begin with.

Industrialized... industrialized...

Let's see. Chile, Brazil are very much industrialized. Mexico, defitinely. I would think Austria and Portugal are too. Maybe there's a teeny weeny chance that Taiwan is industrialized, if all those "made in taiwan" labels are to be believed. There are probably others in that list.

Yep, still more than three.

[Aeolus]

Though Joe's question might be modified to ask, "How many other countries as large as the US elect their presidents with a popular vote?"

No, it needs more work. After all, we have to include France and Finland in that group.

Maybe "how many countries that start with the letter F OR are former communists and speak russian in the world elect their presidents with a popular vote?"

How about how many nations of any real importamce elect thier presidents with a popular vote?

Quote fixed. --Beowulf