The Electoral What???

So what’s the deal with the Electoral College? What is it? Why do we have it? Why not just base the election for the president on the popular vote? What were the Founders thinking when they set up this complicated system of presidential elections, and why not change it now?

Establishment of Electoral College

The Electoral College was established in Article II of the Constitution, although it was not given that exact name within the Constitution, it simply talked about the electors. The official name of Electoral College was assigned to these electors in 1845.

Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution states:

Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the legislature thereof may
direct, a number of electors equal to the whole number of senators and representatives to which the state may be entitled in the Congress; but no
senator or representative, or person holding office of trust or profit under the
United States, shall be appointed and elector.

This article explains how the electors are allocated to the states. Electors are distributed the same way that members of congress are apportioned; the number of representatives per state is based on the population of that state, with the number of senators being equal in all states, that number being two. The number of congressional members ensures that all states have an equal say in at least one body of congress, but that all people have a voice within that same body. States have equality through the Senate and each person is represented in the House of Representatives.

Reason for Electoral College

The Founders believed that all states should be seen as equal no matter how large their populations grew. The Electoral College keeps states like California and New York from holding absolute power over presidential elections. All those small states in the middle have two electors just like the large states. This might not seem supper important when you look at California’s 55 votes compared to Arizona’s 10, but take away the two equal votes the states have and the smaller states would have no chance influence presidential elections. With those two electors, a cluster of smaller states can stand against the overwhelming number of electors in one populous state.

That is why the mid-west or the South can form voting block, allowing all those red states to carry as much weight as the larger but less numerous blue states. The Founders were all about balancing out power.

How the Electoral College Influenced Elections

The 2000 presidential election revealed the balance of power concept. Al Gore won the big population states, like CA and NY, but the smaller states joined together, with a couple bigger states and shifted the win to George W. Bush. At the time everyone was upset. We had not had an election that was decided by the Elector College in over 100 years at the time. People were upset that the popular vote had not decided that election, that the Supreme Court gave the win to Bush, but it wasn’t the Supreme Court, but the Founders and the Constitution that gave the win the Bush. The balance added by the Electoral College was lived out in that election.

The 2000 win for Bush was not the first nor the most dramatic win by a man not receiving the largest number of popular votes. In 1876, Samuel Tilden received a quarter of a million more votes than Rutherford B. Hayes. Three states had accusations of voter fraud, and their election results were disputed, so no one had enough electoral votes to claim the presidency. A commission of fifteen members was appointed to solve the dispute. They (8 to 7) gave the disputed states to Hayes, and he was elected president.

In 1824, Andrew Jackson won the popular vote and 99 electoral votes, but not the majority of electoral votes needed to win the presidency. John Quincy Adams won 84 electors, and Henry Clay and William Crawford split the 78 electors that were left. In order to resolve the issue, the election was thrown into the House of Representatives, where Clay threw his support behind Adams, causing the House to vote for Adams. Jackson accused Clay and Adams of unfairly swinging votes in Adams direction, and came back four years later to claim the presidency back from John Quincy.

The first time the Electoral College came into play in a presidential election was in 1800. The Founders had to live by the rules they established in the Constitution, when Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Aaron Burr ran against one another. Jefferson defeated Adams soundly, but the electors divided sending the election to the House, where the votes lined up behind Adams. At that time, the person who won the second most votes in an election became vice-president. Adams won the presidency with Jefferson winning the vice-presidency. It was a long four years for Adams, and Jefferson came back to win the 1804 election easily.

Balance of Power

The Founders gave us the Electoral College to ensure that the states with the largest populations would not overwhelm all of the political landscape. I think at many levels they succeeded. California, with the largest number of electoral votes went to the democrats in the last two elections (2000, 2004), yet republicans won the White House in those elections. The last Californian elected president was Ronald Reagan, and before him Richard Nixon, but we have had presidents from Georgia, Arkansas and Nebraska within that same period of time, showing that population is not all that matters within our electoral system of government. If not for the Electoral College, limiting the effect of the popular vote, New York, California and a couple of other states would determine every presidential election.

Thankfully, the Framers of the Constitution understood the need to limit power, and realized the best way to do that was to balance out power among the branches of government as well as between the larger and smaller states. The Electoral College is a complicated system, but it has served us well for the past 219 years.

Check out this years electoral map as it changes and shapes up over the next week at:

http://rove.com/election

The Greatness of America

Tonight I watch John McCain and Barack Obama sit at the same table and have dinner with one another. They were at a fundraiser for the Alfed Smith Foundation (I know nothing of this organization). Each man had a chance to speak and they were both hilarious. They basically roasted themselves, each other, the media and the political process we have all been involved in for the past 18 months. They laughed at one another’s jokes, were sincere in their praise of each other, and they warmly shook hands as it was all over.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cen37qxA7E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SkFjTCscM4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLR3oa30w9Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZXX9Wfl5S0

No other nation in the history of the world has transferred power from one leader to another as peacefully, as seamlessly, as consistently as the United States of America. That is, in the end, the key to our greatness. The principles the Founders established in the Constitution have withstood the test of time; they have weathered civil war, economic despair, foreign attacks, and political divisions. This nation was not established by the will of one man, but upon the dream of many men. Men who understood tyranny, dictatorship, and would never allow their nation, birthed in freedom, to be shackled by any man’s hunger for absolute power. They understood that the right to govern is derived from the people, and established the Constitution, the document that would forever guide the nation, upon that principle:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. The Preamble of the Constitution

Obama's Call

Barack Obama says that all American’s have a right to health care. He uses the story of his Mom’s battle with ovarian cancer as a justification for his position. He and Michelle both utilize the picture of his fifty-three year old mother arguing on the phone with the insurance company as the backdrop for their position. They explain that no one in that situation should have to spend their last days on earth convincing their insurance company to cover their medical costs, and they are right. No one should have to do that.

I find the picture that Michelle and Barack Obama paint to be an indictment, but not an indictment of the healthcare industry; not an indictment of insurance companies. No, the picture of this deathly, sick woman, battling ovarian cancer, arguing on the phone with her insurance is an indictment of her son and his wife.

Why was he, this educated, well spoken, successful man watching his mother's struggle. Why was he not on the phone himself, why wasn’t he helping to pay for the care of his dying mother? Why were they by-standards to the injustice they felt his mother to be suffering, when both of them have law degrees from prestigious schools?

The picture is meant to stir sympathy for this dying woman and her plight; meant to shame insurance companies around the country; meant to point a finger at those in the healthcare industry, but what it really does is to reveal the character of Barack Obama. He chose to let his mother fight her own fight, even while he was on the streets of Chicago telling others to stand up for injustice. He presents himself as a defender of the weak, as the righter of injustice, yet he never puts himself on the line. He organizes other, but stays out of the fray, allowing those weaker than himself to stand on the front lines, fighting for themselves.

Is it really the responsibility of a faceless person on the other end of a phone to care for all the needs of the person they are talking to, or does that responsibility fall on the shoulders of the son or daughter actually sitting in the room with their sick parent?

Liberals like to attack institutions for not caring, for not taking care of the needs of people, but the amazing thing is that they themselves walk by those in need. Joe Biden said paying taxes is patriotic, Obama wants to tax those making over $250,000 a year in order to make the playing field even for others, but neither man gives freely of his own wealth to those in need. Based on the tax returns the Obamas released, they gave only 1% of their income in charitable giving from 2000-04. In 2005-06, they contributed 5% of their income. That number was said to increase in 2007, but the returns for that year have not yet been released.
Compared to the frugal, Scrooge-like giving of Joe Biden, the Obamas look like Santa Clause. Joe Biden, in a ten-year period, contributed a total of $3690 to charity. Even though, the Biden’s would be considered one of the wealthiest 1% by their own campaign, because they make over $250,000 a year.

Biden's Adjusted Gross Income Charity

1998 $215,432 $195
1999 $210,797 $120
2000 $219,953 $360
2001 $220,712 $360
2002 $227,811 $260
2003 $231,375 $260
2004 $234,271 $380
2005 $321,379 $380
2006 $248,459 $380
2007 $319,853 $995
Total $2,450,042 $3,690

These men decry the lack of care showed for the poor in our nation, they demand healthcare for every citizen, they criticize the educational system and yet, neither man opens up their own wallets to feed the poor, to provide healthcare for the members of their own families, or to aid another in their pursuit of a higher education. They deny their personal responsibility, yet attack those who fulfill their personal responsibility to those around them. They believe themselves to be modern day Robin Hoods, taking from the rich to give to the poor, yet they won’t even reach into their own pockets.

Barack Obama’s Mom should not have spent her last hours on earth fighting with the insurance company. Her son should have taken care of that for her, he should have been her community organizer, he should have been the one on the phone.

The Greatest Challenge of Our Time

“This is the greatest challenge of our time”….what might that challenge be? The sub-prime lending crisis, healthcare, energy independence, global climate change? Every time Barack Obama opened his mouth last night he said, “This is the greatest challenge of our time.” Every time I listen to him speak there is one song that comes to my mind, one phrase that runs through my head, “It’s the end of the world as we know it, it’s the end of the world as we know it but I feel fine.”

I do feel fine. I do not believe that if the House of Representatives doesn’t pass a piece of legislation that the world will end. Based on the media and the political establishment it truly must be a miracle that the US is still standing, after the House said no the first time to the enormous bailout package that is now being sold as a “rescue” plan.

Even after it was passed and signed into law by the President, it did not stop the Stock Market from dropping below 10,000 this Monday? Amazingly though, people are still working, still eating, still shopping, still travelling, still buying homes and cars, still living as Americans have always lived.

Those in DC have a false sense of their own importance and significance. They believe that THEY can “rescue” banks, homeowners, and even the US economy by simply passing a piece of legislation. They have no control over the stock market; their attacks on Wall Street have attempted to shift blame. If they make Wall Street the bad guy, then they can come in and look like the heroes.

The funny thing to me is that they all talk about the middle class. How the middle class need a rescue plan, a life preserver thrown to them by the great Federal government, but you know whom Wall Street is? It is made up of the middle class; their 401K , their IRAs, their e-trade business, their Walmart stock, so when the politicians sit around attacking Wall Street they are attacking the very people they say they want to save.

Obama says that wealth does not trickle down, but it does. People with money should buy homes, because they can afford them and will pay their mortgage payments. They are the ones running the small business that has 20 employees, they are the ones investing into their communities and creating wealth for others. Obama’s philosophy and that of the Democratic party is what created this sub-prime lending mess. They sell a bill of goods that says that wealth can be created by giving people things, well if you are giving it to them, they are going to expect more giving and that does not create wealth. All that creates is a dependence on the government.

Apparently, John McCain is okay with that dependence mentality as well. He is planning on having the Federal government by bad mortgages and having the courts or others renegotiate those mortgages. No longer a free market system of supply and demand, if you can’t afford it, you should not have bought it, so you lose it. No now, both parties want to FIX things, take the consequence of bad business practices and poor choices away and make the government the savior of the people.

There is no fiscal conservative at the top of either ticket. Nina Easton of Fortune Magazine said last night was a historic debate. No longer are free market principles the standard, not even for the republican candidate.

The reason Sarah Palin won her debate with Biden is because she believes in the American people. She said last Thursday night “Government needs to get out of the peoples way, so that the people can continue to make the United States the greatest nation on earth.” Maybe this is just a trial run for the real conservative to arise four years from now and reclaim the true Reagan mantel, but until then this election is “the greatest challenge of our time”, and neither candidate has a plan to fix that.

It’s the end of the world as we know it, it’s the end of the world as we know it, but I feel fine…..