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mcookies
30 January 2008 @ 10:11 am
How does the US electoral system work? Kind of like this.  

A response to a question from

[info]ethel_aardvark who lives in New Zealand where electoral politics maybe make more sense.

I think this is correct. I hope so. I will try to look it up later and make sure but I think the basic idea is in there. The part about money and possible disenfranchisement of millions of people because of the electoral college. I so got that right.

The first thing to discuss is money. You have to have a lot of it. That's really all there is to say about money. Now, the electoral college.

 

In the early days of the United States, every state was designated a certain number of delegates to the electoral college. The number of delegates a state was given was based on the population so that they were distributed proportionally. When citizens (at the time, white, male landowners) voted in the Presidential Primary, they would not actually be voting for a candidate, they would be voting for one of the delegates that supported the candidate they chose. So, the people voting would get together and caucus or later actually cast ballots. For delegates. Not candidates.

After each state had its Primary, all of the delegates would attend the party national convention. At the convention is where the real voting took place. The idea was that the candidate who had the most delegates at the convention would be the one the party nominated to run for president. But, delegates also had a little bit of leeway. They could change their votes and often these conventions could get quite heated.

Ultimately, it just meant that the popular vote was not always the way that the candidates were chosen. If the votes of the delegates diverged from the popular vote, then the delegates decided the candidate not the people.

Then we go to the national general election where the president was actually elected. Again, people would "cast a vote" for a candidate but again, they would really be voting for delegates in the electoral college. The electoral college would then get together and the number of members of the electoral college each candidate got would determine who won the presidency. Again, not the popular vote. Typically, the electoral college votes matched the popular vote but not always. Such as the 2000 presidential election where Al Gore won the popular vote but the Secretary of State of Florida (a Bush family friend) decided the state's very close election was in favor of Bush and the Supreme Court agreed.

In the 19th century, this form of voting made sense. Votes were tallied by hand, communication between states took a long time because it had to be delivered by hand and of course there weren't cars or planes or the internet. So, for a large nation with lots of states it made sense to do things this way. Well, since the beginning of the 20th century, or at least the mid-20th century, this does not make sense any more. Communication is instant and there is no reason to not have the popular vote stand as, well, the will of the people.

For some odd reason we have not abolished the electoral college and moved to a national primary election day where everyone votes on their party's candidate the same day and the person who get the most votes wins. Then that person runs against the other party's person and the popular vote again determines the winner. There are also these people called "Super-delegates" who are party big wigs in each state who have a vote as a delegate to the party convention that weighs as much as the other delegates'. The other delegates, however, represent a proportion of the population of the state who actually voted for someone. These "Super-delegates" do not. One person, a shitload of votes. Their voice counts more that the rest of us. Pretty much that disenfranchises a whole bunch of people. In the land of the free and all that.

Now, I am not so naive as to think that one person, one vote is actually the way this thing works. The electoral college keeps party influence in the hands of entrenched, establishment interests and you have to be absurdly wealthy or sell yourself to the absurdly wealthy to even get a voice in this thing. The people get to choose between the candidates that the establishment decides to allow to run. None of these people are the Puppet Master but the forces at work all tend to favor establishment candidates. I am trying to make myself sound less like a conspiracy theorist.

I hope this makes sense. I think it is pretty accurate, although it has been a while since I had a government class. Some of the details might be a little funky but the general idea is right. If anyone has corrections, please let me know. I will try to look this up later and make sure it is accurate.

 
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(Anonymous) on January 31st, 2008 04:40 am (UTC)
Um, it's a little more complicated than that....
I sorta (kind of a lot) disagree with your explanation for why the US originally had an electoral college.
(Since your friend is from New Zealand I included some details Americans would know.)


You see, the Founders of the United States had some very specific concerns about "tyranny of the majority". They explicitly discussed it several times in a series of essays called "The Federalist Papers" (they were essays published to convince people to ratify the Constitution).

They even mention at several times that it was possible for the "will of the people" to be usurped by panic or a manipulative few. These fears weren't totally ridiculous considering their main references for democracy were Ancient Greece and Rome, both of which had periods of "placating the mob" with disastrous results. Several "Federalist Papers" even mention specific instances of a leader or the college overruling the "will of the people" if they beleive their opinions are ill-advised.

The electoral college wasn't just about counting votes. It was about assuring votes to low population states. This is was a HUGE concern at the Constitutional Convention (if you read notes from the debates, you'll see some states were more concerned about this than preserving slavery, another hot topic of the Convention); in fact, this same concern is what led to the bicameral nature of the US Congress with one House determined by population (for big states) and another with two representatives to each state no matter their size (for small states). Since the Constitution need 9 of 13 colonies to ratify it for it to become the basis of our government, the support of a few smaller states was critical. These compromises are also part of the reason that the first state to ratify was tiny, little Delaware.

It's also another reason you find a LOT more support for the electoral college in lower population Western states. There is a real fear that without the electoral college, large cities would dominate US politics (even more than they do now). Both the electoral college and the Senate members of Congress were created to demonstrate to smaller states that they COUNTED. That their wants and needs wouldn't be swept aside by the majority.

The electoral college was simply another means the founders of the US developed to make things more complicated ON PURPOSE. They saw it as a feature because after getting their independence, a lot of people wouldn't have voted for a government that looked too effective. In fact, our current Constitution is actually the 2nd try. The first try, "The Articles of Confederation", was even more complicated and jury-rigged (and a total, utter failure).

I agree there's much about the current election process that favors entrenched interests but I would argue you could tie a lot of that to election legislation (rule-making and procedures) from about WWI on (after the Republicans and Democrats were the only two parties of note). It was at that time the process became such that you had to be a part of the system to participate.

I'm not a LiveJournal user, just a world-class lurker, but I've always enjoyed US history so I thought your friend might find a different perspective interesting. If not, sorry for the huge ass comment. I'm a little in love with all the complications and weirdness in US History.

Jessica (for rebuttal - jal4568@earthlink.net)
PS - If there are formatting issues, I apologize. I'm not really used to LiveJournal's comment system.
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no_more_cookies: Roslin for President[info]mcookies on January 31st, 2008 05:33 am (UTC)
Re: Um, it's a little more complicated than that....
Excellent. I was definitely prepared for it to be more complicated than that. It has been a long time since I officially knew any of this--like probably more than a decade. I do now remember the bit about fearing a tyranny of the majority. I also fear the tyranny of the majority. Often the majority is rather scary. I usually just think about it when considering the checks and balances and the two houses of congress, not the electoral college.

Thank you for adding this great information to complicate things. I think I would still prefer the popular vote to carry the day, particularly with these super-delegates (although I must admit to being particularly fond of 2 of California's super-delegates, Diane Feinstein and Maxine Waters, and largely agreeing with where their votes are going) whose votes count for way more than rest of ours, but this will certainly make me think about it more.
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ethel_aardvark[info]ethel_aardvark on February 4th, 2008 11:11 pm (UTC)
I think that makes sense - I still have trouble getting my head around the idea that you don't cast a vote directly but cast it for a delegate to an electoral college, who may or may not vote the way you expect.

It also seems a trifle different to democracy in most other Western countries.

So is the difference between senate and congress the two-per-state vs population based votes? Which is which?
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ethel_aardvark[info]ethel_aardvark on February 4th, 2008 11:12 pm (UTC)
Also, do you hold all the elections at once? What is it that gets voted for in the middle of the presidential term?
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no_more_cookies[info]mcookies on February 5th, 2008 01:51 am (UTC)
The presidential elections are every four years but there are mid-term elections half way through that are for some seat in congress. Representatives in the House serve two year terms and senators serve 6 year terms.
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no_more_cookies[info]mcookies on February 5th, 2008 01:45 am (UTC)
I am glad that mostly makes sense. I still have trouble getting my head around the fact that we don't vote directly. It is pretty different, I think, than most other Western countries. Does New Zealand have a parliamentary system?

Yes, the difference between the two houses of congress is how many representatives each state gets. Each state gets 2 senators and the number of members of the House of Representatives are determined by the population.
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ethel_aardvark: Molly[info]ethel_aardvark on February 9th, 2008 04:14 am (UTC)
NZ has an MMP voting system, similar to what is in Germany I think. Basically, we only have one house, but you get two votes, one for a party and one for a candidate. The one for a candidate is who represents you in your local electorate, which is half the 120 seats in parliament (60 electorates) and the other 60 seats are to make up the totals for the party vote, so the whole 120 seats are proportional to which party people voted for.

Which has its flaws too, because with the party vote you're voting for the people already pre-selected on that party's list, but then it seems every system has its flaws.

We used to have the same system as in Britain, where you just voted for one electorate candidate, but they changed to MMP sometime in the 90s. There's flaws with that system too (One party can get more votes, but fewer seats, and minor parties can't get enough people voting for their candidate that they get any representation).

But I still find voting for people who vote for people seems weird :-)
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no_more_cookies: Roslin for President[info]mcookies on February 10th, 2008 04:40 pm (UTC)
Interesting. I think I like that kind of system better.
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(Anonymous) on May 10th, 2008 11:59 am (UTC)
Funny quote

The meek shall inherit the earth, but *not* its mineral rights.
-- J.P. Getty


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