NEW PRESIDENT

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 107, 1 November 1940, Page 6

NEW PRESIDENT

CHOICE IN AMERICA

THE SYSTEM OF ELECTION

VOTE NEXT TUESDAY

On Tuesday next the citizens of the United States will determine who is to be the next President of the Union. But they will not vote for that President; his name will not even appear, save informatively, on the ballot papers which they receive, he will not be elected until the first Wednesday in January, and the vote will not be counted until the second Wednesday in February, when that event will take place in the Hall of the House of Representatives.

These apparent paradoxes are due to the method of the election, and to the way the modern electoral practices of the United States have departed from the ideals of the framers of the Constitution. That document contemplated a "deliberative, judicial, and nonpartisan system" under which the presidential electors, who are to be chosen by popular vote few days from now, should actually pick the President. Hamilton, in "The Federalist," ■declared that it was desirable "that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analysing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favourable to deliberation." ELECTORS CHOSEN. The Constitution accordingly directs that 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 (members of the House of Representatives) to which the State may be entitled in Congress, to choose the President. (Each State has two Senators; Representatives are awarded on a population basis.) The qualifications for the office of President today are that the holder must be a natural born citizen of the United States, that he must be 35 years of age, and have been 14 years a resident in the country. The electors meet in their respective States and vote by ballot for two persons, of whom one at least must not be an inhabitant of the same State as themselves. They then make separate lists of the numbers of votes so cast, sign, certify, and seal the documents, and transmit them to the President of the Senate, and along with the votes they must send their certificates of election as evidence of their power to act. When they have done this they have finished their duty and the election is formally complete. But first these electors (or members of an electoral college) are chosen by the popular vote which this year is to take place on November 5. This election will determine who is to be the President and Vice-President of the United States for the next four years, and at the same time it will fill a number of vacancies in the Senate, one-third of which retires every two years, and will elect the House of Representatives, which is chosen every two years. VOTING BY PARTIES. This method of choosing the President has not always existed in the form we know it today. The present system is the product of party politics and results in a purely party vote. Under this method each party organisation prepares a full list of presidential voters equal to the total number of electors assigned to it under the Constitution. These presidential electors are, in practice, chosen by the State Conventions or State Committees, and often the office is regarded as an honour which may be awarded to some distinguished citizen, or to supporters willing to make handsome contributions to the party funds. On election day, in consequence, the voter does not cast his vote for the men he desires to be President and Vice-President, though for his information their names will appear on the ticket. He votes, instead, for all the presidential electors put forward by his State. What happens thus is that a choice is made of a certain number of presidential electors—s3l throughout the Union. The number elected by the States varies from three from small States like Nevada and Vermont to 47 from New York State and 36 from Pennsylvania. PRESIDENTIAL PARADOX. In ordinary circumstances the party which obtains a plurality (that is, a majority which is not necessarily an absolute majority) of the votes of any one State is entitled to the votes of that State in the electoral college. Very rarely is there any split in the tickets, and no elector would dare to break faith with the party which nominated him and support the candidate of the other party. The obvious result of such a system is the possible election of Presidents who have, not commanded a majority of the popular vote. And these elections have occurred a number of times. Abraham Lincoln, for example, was chosen in 1860 after polling only 1,800,000 votes against 2,800,000 recorded by his opponents in the popular election. • The opposition happened to be so distributed that it held a minority of the presidential electors. President Wilson, in 1912, received a popular vote which was 2,000,000 less than that of other candidates, yet he obtained 435 out of 531 electoral votes. Two Presidents, Hayes and Benjamin Hai'rison, did not even receive a plurality, as the Americans say. That is, they were given fewer popular votes than one of their principal rivals. This is the result of the system which gives all the electoral votes of a State, no matter how small the margin of popular majority, to the man who carries that territory. Should no candidate receive a majority of the electoral vote the President is chosen by the House of Representatives from the three candidates who received the highest number of ballots. In this process each State is entitled to only one vote and a majority of all States is needed for a choice. THE LAST RESORT. Even the contingency of the House failing to reach a decision has not been overlooked. If this state of affairs exists on the March 4 following the election it is the duty of the VicePresident to act as President. March 4 is the date set down for the new President to assume his official duties. This long delay is a "weakness of the American political system and where the two executives, the new and the old, are committed to radically different policies it makes for uncertainty and confusion. Its potential dangers were revealed in 1860-61 when President Buchanan, in the closing months of his administration, permitted several Southern States to secede from the Union and left the country in a state of chaos. To meet this position it has often been suggested that the President and new Congress should take office immediately after the election, but Constitutional amendments on these lines have never succeeded. One curious fact is that no official notice whatever is given to the Presidentelect of his victory. He is supposed to know about it and present himself on ■ March 4 without being told I