Sunday, 29 June 2008
8) Has there been reports of voting scams? If so, where?
Texas : Early voting by mail. In Texas you may vote early by mail if you are: going to be away from your county on Election day, sick or disabled, 65 years of age or older on Election day or confined in jail. In this process scams designed to manipulate the voting process by gaining access to mail-in ballots could become a problem in Texas if voters are not well-informed. They should not allow someone to mail their ballot that they do not know.
Florida 2000: The “butterfly ballot” which involved many voters having difficulties with the paper based punch card voting machines and they were either unable to understand the required process for voting or unable to perform the process. As a result, there was an unusual amount of over votes and under votes. Broward County Florida misplaced 103,222 votes.New Hampshire: Diebold Voting Machines failures occurred, hand counts began, memory cards were missing and there were machine failures.
California: This state has moved the primary into the month of March which involved redistricting and it was also believed that an earlier election would make California more important in the process of electing the President.
New Hampshire 2008: There were counting mishaps in this state. Optical machine scanner counted Clinton as the winner and the hand counts counted Obama as the winner, by the exact same margin, proving that the machines were switching the votes.
7) Has there ever been a presidential candidate to win the popular vote and
In the November 7, 2000 election Al Gore, Democrat won the popular vote over George Bush, Republican with 50,999,897 popular votes (48.4%) for Gore and 50,456,002 (47.9%) for Bush. Gore received 543, 816 more popular votes than Bush. Bush won the presidency with the electoral votes of 271 over Gore with 266.
6) How do elections work in some other countries?
Russia
The winning candidate requires an absolute majority of the total vote. If no candidate secures this majority in the first-round ballot, then a second-round run off election must be held three weeks later in which the only contestants are the two front-running candidates in the first round. In 1996 Boris Yeltsin won barely a third of the vote in the first round; in 2000 and 2004 Vladimir Putin won an absolute majority in the first round, and Dmitry Medvedev has done the same in 2008. The ballot option of voting "against all" has been abolished; in 2004 this protest vote was 3.4 percent of the total.
The previous minimum turnout of 50 percent of the registered electorate has also been abolished. In the three previous presidential elections, the turnout has ranged between 69.7 percent in the 1996 first round and 64.3 percent in 2004. In 2008, it was about 68%.
The inauguration day of the new president is 7 May 2008.
Duma election laws provide for both a party list vote and single-seat districts. In both cases, a minimum of 25 percent of the registered voters must participate to make the election valid.
Half of the 450 Duma deputies will be selected through a party list, in which voters will cast their ballots in favor of a party. To get on this portion of the ballot, a political group must have not only registered its complete slate of candidates with the Central Electoral Commission, but also collected 200,000 signatures by October 22. Parties that receive at least five percent of the party list vote in the election will be allocated a portion of the 225 seats. For instance, a party receiving twenty percent of the party list vote will be allocated 45 seats plus twenty percent of those seats remaining from those parties that failed to break the five percent cutoff. It is possible that many parties will fail to break the five-percent cutoff, with those parties that do falling heir to a large number of unallocated seats.
The other half of the State Duma, 225 deputies will be elected in single-seat districts. To get on the ballot, candidates must have collected signatures equal to one percent of the total number of voters in the district by October 22. There will be no run-off elections; the candidate with the most votes is declared the winner. As in the 1993 elections, many candidates for single-seat districts positions are likely to run as independents, although they can elect to formally join a faction after the new legislature convenes.
This means that the political correlation of forces in the lower house will not be immediately clear from the formal announcement of the election results. However, the indicator that matters most, in terms of public perceptions of who won and who lost, is the percentage the party wins in the party list race. Parties that do well here will be seen as the winners of the legislative elections, even though other groups may have done much better in the single-seat districts and can later claim the allegiance of a larger Duma faction.
Germany
The Federal President is elected by a majority of the Federal Convention, an assembly of all Bundestag members and an equal number of delegates chosen by the state legislatures according to the principle of proportional representation. Prominent private citizens also participate. The Federal Convention is convened by the president of the Bundestag exclusively for the purpose of electing the Federal President. If no candidate receives a majority in either of the first two ballots, a candidate is chosen on a third ballot by simple majority. Any citizen over the age of 40 eligible to vote may be considered for the office of President. The president is elected for a term of five years and may be re-elected once.
The United Kingdom
Where there are multi-member districts, each party can put forward as many candidates as there are members to be elected in each constituency. Electors express their preferences between the candidates by numbering 1 to x, with x equaling the total number of candidates. An electoral quota is worked out which represents the lowest number of votes that a candidate needs in order to be elected. This is calculated by dividing the number of votes cast by the number of seats plus one. First preferences are then counted, and candidates who meet the quota are elected. If insufficient candidates meet the quota, the candidate
with the least vote’s drops out and his/her votes are re-allocated according to the voters’ second preferences. If an elected candidate receives votes in excess of quota, these are deemed to be unused and are also redistributed in proportion to voters’ second preferences. If enough members have still not been elected, the process is repeated
until all the seats are filled. The advantages are it ensures that every vote counts to the full, retains a direct link between the elected representatives and their voters and gives them a geographical base, it ensures whoever is elected has majority support, it’s more likely that supporters of a party will have at least one representative in their district to represent their views, the voter can also choose between candidates for the same party, it makes it very difficult to gerrymander electoral districts. The disadvantages are it’s more complicated to understand and to vote and can be very complicated to count, it dilutes the direct link as there will be a large number of voters and maybe a very large area for an elected person to represent, generally it is likely to weight the result more in favor of the largest party and disadvantage small and geographically scattered parties.
5) Are we the only country that uses this system to elect a president?
No other country that participates in democratic voting has an electoral college. The closest thing to the procedure which is used by the United States is a parliament. The United Kingdom has an electoral college as well.
4) Has there been prior attempts in abolishing the electoral college?
There have been past attempts to abolish the Electoral College. In 1950 Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and Texas Representative Ed Gossett introduced a reform plan known as proportional allocation in the 81st Congress as an amendment proposal that would abolish the Electoral College as it was known, replacing it with a proportional electoral vote. In this case, electors and the college would remain in place, but electoral votes would be allocated to presidential tickets in a manner directly proportional to the popular votes each ticket received in the states. The proposal was amended in the Senate to also require a 40% threshold of electoral votes for a ticket to be elected to the Presidency and Vice Presidency. If no one received such a threshold, the Senate and the House of Representatives, in a joint session, would then choose among the top two presidential candidates and their running mates. The Lodge-Gossett Amendment passed the Senate with a super majority by a vote of 64-27, but was strongly opposed in the House of Representatives. Opposition in the House came primarily from liberal groups.
In 1956 Hubert Humphrey's S. J. 152 proposal of reform was introduced in the 84th Congress. In this plan, the Electoral College would be abolished as known, but the then 531 electoral votes would still be put to use. Two electoral votes would be awarded to the candidate winning the overall popular vote in each of the then 48 states voting for president. The remaining 435 would then be divided nationally in proportion to the nationwide popular vote. The proposal passed the House of Representatives, but later died in the Senate.
In 1969 House Representative Emanuel Celler introduced a proposal in the 91st Congress which would abolish the Electoral College in favor of a direct popular election with a 40% threshold and a runoff if no threshold was achieved. The bill was wildly popular in the House, passing 338-70, yet failed to pass in the Senate due to a filibuster.
After the close election between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford in 1976, Senator Birch Bayh introduced a proposal in the 96th Congress in 1979 to abolish the Electoral College and replace it with direct election. The measure failed the Senate by a vote of 51-48 in 1979. Because of its failure in that chamber, the House decided not to vote on its version of the proposal. In 1992 & 1997 hearings were conducted to consider reform possibilities, but no proposal left the committee chambers.
In 2004 Colorado proposed by ballot measure 36, to amend the way it allocates its electoral votes. Instead of remaining a winner-take-all state, the proposal would have changed the state to proportional allocation. Also Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. introduces the first proposal for Electoral College reform since 1979. HJR 109 proposed a majority direct election of president, but this proposal was unsuccessful as well.
There have been more recent attempts to abolish the Electoral College. California Senator Dianne Feinstein announced on August 30, 2007 that she would introduce a resolution to abolish the Electoral College and provide for the direct popular vote of the President. California Senator Feinstein devised a voting method for the state she represents, as well as the rest of the U.S. Currently, California gives all of its 55 electoral votes to the candidate winning the popular vote statewide, a method used by almost all the states. Under the initiative drive being circulated in California, the state would give Presidential candidates one electoral vote for every Congressional district that they win, plus two electoral votes for the candidate that gets the most votes in the state.
Senator Feinstein introduced the resolution in September 2007 in the 110th Congress. Several states were currently exploring ways to enter into a compact to guarantee that the Presidential candidate receiving the most votes wins; that each vote counts the same; and that each vote is cast for whom it is cast. The proposed "Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote" had 364 sponsors in 47 states for the 2007 state legislative sessions. Since there are 538 electoral votes in total, and a majority is 270, the compact would go into effect when enough states to cast the 270 Electoral College votes pass it. It has been approved by the Maryland state legislature and signed into law. A similar bill was approved by the California state legislature in 2006, but Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed it. Several other state legislative bodies have passed the proposal in 2008: In Arkansas, Colorado, and North Carolina, one house of the state legislature has passed the proposal in 2008. In Hawaii and Illinois, both houses of the state legislature have passed the proposal in 2008. The Hawaii governor vetoed the legislation. The Illinois governor signed the legislation, which made Illinois the second state to enact the proposal into law.
Florida Democrat Bill Nelson proposed legislation with a three-part initiative. The most vital part of it is the proposed constitutional amendment to abolish the 18th-century Electoral College, plus the establishment of regional primaries and other reforms. His principal argument for getting rid of the Electoral College is the system permits a candidate with fewer votes nationally to win the presidency by capturing narrow victories in big states. The second part of Nelson’s initiative, gives voters more say than political party bosses in picking the presidential candidates by establishing six rotating, interregional primaries beginning in March and ending in June every four years. It pairs large and small states into six different regions; and, the states in each region take turns going first, removing exclusive power from the nation’s first primary and caucus states. Under the third part of Nelson’s broader election plan, all voters would get to vote early and could cast absentee ballots on demand, which a number of states already allow. Then, all voting machines would have to produce a paper trail, and states that develop mail-in balloting would be eligible for federal grants. The next step in the process, Nelson said, is to gain support from enough lawmakers, while also pushing hard for congressional hearings. The initiative is drawing positive reaction from several voting rights groups including Why Tuesday and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, that seek to make election reform a national priority.
3) What are the arguments for keeping it or getting rid of it?
Small states like Delaware have only have 3 electoral votes, which the lowest amount along with a few other states i.e., Wyoming, DC, North Dakota and Vermont. Other states such as California have 55 electoral votes and Texas with 34. If we used the popular vote all states would have the same voice.
The popular vote would lend to more democratic principles. The popular vote total should do the following:1. Allocate only 1 vote per person2. Include the will of all who participate in the delegate selection contest for the Democratic National Convention3. In those cases were participants did not have their votes recorded, do everything possible to estimate their preferences.
2) How is the electoral college currently working now?
Like previously stated the Electoral College system has changed little since it was created. However, the process of selecting the electors has changed. You may be surprised to learn but, the process of becoming an elector does not work the same in every state. However, there are two common ways that an elector is chosen.
One way to become an elector is to be nominated by a state party committee. This may occur to reward someone for many years of service to a particular party. The second way an elector is chosen is by an elector to campaign for the elector spot. The decision to choose an elector is then made during a vote, which is usually held at a state party convention.
So, now that you understand the process of choosing an elector, you may be wondering if these individuals are required to have any qualifications. The answer to this is no. This is because the United States Constitution contains very little information pertaining to the qualifications of electors. All the constitution states is what an elector can not be. An elector can not be any of the three following things. He or she can not be a Representative or Senator, a high-ranking United States official in a position of “trust or profit,” or someone who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States.
So, who exactly are these electors that get nominated to vote in their assigned post?
These people are usually highly active in their political party of choice. They could also be a individuals that are activists, party leaders, or even have ties (which could be political and/or personal) to the Presidential candidates.
Once nominated, these electors meet in each State one the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. A majority vote of 270 electoral votes will decide the next President and Vice President.
If no presidential candidate wins the majority of the elector votes, the 12th Amendment of the Constitution will then take over. The 12th Amendment states that the presidential election will then be decided by the House of Representatives. The House would then select the next president by majority vote out of the three candidates that had the most electoral votes.
It is important to note that 48 out of the 50 states use a system known as a “winner-take-all system.”
In this system the final electors are decided on voting day. In many states the names of the electors are printed somewhere on the ballot. Their names could be listed right under the names of the presidential candidates’ names. Sometimes names are not listed at all. When this happens, a vote for a presidential candidate is a vote for the elector of that party, since the electors are nominated by the parties themselves. This is how the “winner-take-all system” works.
The other system is know as the “district system” and is only used by Maine and Nebraska. Kevin Bonsor explains this process by saying that “in these states, two electors' votes are made based on the candidate who received the most votes statewide. The remaining electoral votes go by congressional districts, awarding the vote to the candidate who received the most votes in each district” (How Stuff Works, 2008).
Keep in mind that in the “winner-take-all” states there have been instances where electors have voted opposite of the people’s decision. This action is completely legal and although it has been a rare event, it has happened. You can take a look at a listing of States that are bound by State law to vote for specific candidate by clicking here.
1) What is the history of the electoral college and how has it evolved?
The Electoral College was established in 1787 and was created by the men who drafted the United States constitution. It was a compromise on how the president would be elected. At the time, it was feared that a popular vote alone would only elect a favorite and that the vote would not be based on the candidates qualifications. The idea of a popular vote was feared for this reason because in 1787 mass communication and transportation did not exist. The other options of having state legislators or Congress decide on the president were largely rejected because of the fears of corruption , political bargaining, and the influence of foreign powers.
Therefore, a “Committee of Eleven” proposed an election of the president to be decided on through a College of Electors. The original idea was that this College of Electors would consist of the most knowledgeable and informed individuals from each state. These electors would select the president based solely on merit and not party affiliation or state of origin.
Today, several state and federal changes have taken place in order to change the time and procedures of choosing the Presidential Electors. However, these changes have not made the inner fundamental workings of the Electoral College any different.
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