The Electoral College Essay Research Paper Parenthetical — страница 3

principal at Capital City Partners, a political and policy consulting firm in Washington. “People would be tempted to say, `to hell with the party. I’ll enter the primaries. That gives me recognition. Then I’ll look at my options.’ ” Direct elections might significantly empower any alternative party that had the organizational power and money to get some altitude nationally. “The winner-take-all system discourages third parties,” said L. Sandy Maisel, a professor of government at Colby College. Smith College’s Gold added: “It could enhance the influence of third parties on the major parties, especially if you move to a system of runoffs”(Simendinger). So, other than there being a more accurate depiction of the will of the people, how would the new system be

beneficial? One man, Sen. Birch Bayh, claims that direct election would place more power in the hands of African-Americans. Is this true and if so, how? Bositis, an African-American political analyst thinks so. “His logic: African-Americans, who make up big parts of the electorate in some Southern states (Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia), would have more say because those states are not now in play between the parties; without the Electoral College, “urban areas in big states will dominate [and] that happens to be where blacks live.” Blacks in New York and California (states now taken for granted as Democratic terrain) would get much more attention from all parties if voters, rather than states, were the currency”(Simendinger). Changing

the system as such could have many effects such as Politicians might have to approach their campaigning in a very different light. Whichever dominant group may be around at the time, whether they are religious, ethnic, or other, would almost surely control the views and beliefs of the candidates. Little things like that do not necessarily favor anyone except the majority. So, for every good part about changing, there is an equally bad one in most cases, but not all. It makes the question of changing a matter of which way isn’t perfect but rather more tolerable. When it comes right down to it, there is nothing to be accomplished through talking about it so it a change conceivable or nothing more than a na?ve dream? At this time, a change is almost a virtual impossibility. With

the system that is in place now, those states who are less populated have a small way to sort of even the score through the two electoral votes each gets for having two senators. With the majority of the states looking at it from this standpoint, as states, each might have more to lose rather than gain, but what about the United States as a entire community? If abolishment isn’t a realistic possibility, then there are many other ways in which the Electoral College could be reformed to be better. Some of these might include: “A direct-vote approach. If no candidate receives 40% of the popular vote, there will be a runoff between the top two, a district plan, awarding two electoral votes to a state’s popular- vote leader and the others to the winner in each congressional

district. Maine has used this method since 1972, and Nebraska since 1992, a proportional method, dividing each state’s electoral vote to mirror its popular vote. This also does away with the winner-take- all nature of counting electoral votes which is inconsistent with the “one-man, one-vote” principle, majority-preference voting. Voters rank their preferences. If no candidate wins more than 50%, then the bottom voter-getter is eliminated and the second choices of voters are redistributed. The process is repeated until a candidate wins more than 50% of the vote, a “national bonus plan” that would maintain the Electoral College but add 102 electoral votes to the existing total of 538 and award all of the bonus votes to the national popular-vote winner”(Readers 20).

With so many possibilities, it is a wonder that a system so flawed could be in practice for so long. What would happen if the Electoral College were eliminated is that presidential elections would become national events fought over network television. More of the contest would become like the debates–which are, for all their faults, the educational and philosophical high points of our presidential election campaigns. Eliminating the Electoral College and nationalizing presidential elections could promote the proper use of the 14th and 15th Amendments by guaranteeing that each citizen enjoys equal access to voting opportunities through uniform ballots and voting machinery, and the availability of polling places.(Judis) Understandably, with a new system, a much greater importance