Vote allotment was confusing, but Guyanese happy over Obama victory

Nov 08, 2012 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
Tens of thousands of Guyanese Americans joined their Caribbean brothers and sisters in the US as well as born Americans in celebrating President Obama’s convincing victory over Republican Mitt Romney. Even Guyanese at home stayed up late on Tuesday night, anxiously awaiting the results, and nearly all of them went to bed very happy.
For the past 18 months, the US television was bombarded with news, comments and advertisements for the Presidential elections which no doubt cost the two parties no less than two billion dollars.
I was prompted to write this piece because the outcome of Obama’s victory did not rest on the popular vote of the 100 million voters, since the election of the President and Vice President is not conducted on the popular vote but votes from the Electoral College. Obama won both the Electoral College and the popular vote, but his success came from the electoral votes.
Like me, most Americans, especially Caribbean-Americans do not quite understand the system, and I decided to do some research.
In the 2000 elections, George W. Bush polled 500,000 votes less than his opponent, Al Gore, but yet he won the presidency because he secured more votes from the Electoral College. But the year 2000 was not the only election where the candidate who polled less of the popular vote was chosen as President. It first happened in 1824 when John Quincy Adams won the presidency, then Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876 and Benjamin Harrison in 1888.
A pamphlet published by the League of Women Voters Education Fund states that “Every four years, the Electoral College, a little known feature of our Constitution, enjoys a fleeting movement of fame. About six weeks after the long grind of the presidential election is over, the 538 members of the college meet in their respective states to perform their sole constitutional function: to elect the President and Vice-President of the United States.
But the impact of the college on presidential elections is far greater-and more controversial-than its brief life indicates. For example, many knowledgeable observers of American politics attribute the predominance of two major parties to the winner-take-all feature of the college’s state-based system. In all but two states, losing candidates, whether they got two million or two votes, get no electors. (Maine and Nebraska allot two electoral votes to the candidate who wins the statewide popular vote; the balance are allocated based on the popular vote by congressional district.)
As a result, small parties and less well known candidates seldom have had a chance to affect the outcome of an election directly.
The usual effect of so-called “third-force” candidates is to take away votes from one major party candidate in a close race, tipping the results to the other major party candidate. But if a third or fourth candidate does manage to carry at least one state or some electoral votes-and that has happened in four elections since 1900-then he or she may have a huge impact-partly because the House of Representatives gets to choose the President (and the Senate, the Vice-President) if the Electoral College can’t produce an absolute majority.
Politicians and pundits disagree as to whether the college favors small states, or whether it gives an indirect advantage to rural areas or to ethnic minority clusters in populous states. They disagree over its value as a preserver of federalism or as an impediment to the principle of one-person, one-vote. All observers agree, however, that every four years the voters of America need to be reminded of the ins and outs of the Electoral College system before they cast their ballot for President.
Americans choose their President in a complicated series of steps that have evolved from Article l, Section 2 of the US Constitution, through various amendments, federal and state laws, political party rules and traditions.
The Constitution authorizes each state to appoint a number of electors equal to the number of representatives plus senators that the state has in Congress. To this total of 435 plus 100, the Twenty-third Amendment added three for the District of Columbia – the same number of electors as the least populous state bringing the total of the college to 538 members.”
The six states with most electors are: California, 55, Texas 38, New York 29, Florida 29, Illinois 20 and Pennslvania 30. The seven small states are Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming – 3 each.
The Electoral College is determined every 10 years by the US Census thus determining the number of electoral states.
Oscar Ramjeet

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