How America Chooses Its Presidents
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“How America Chooses Its Presidents” is the author's second book dealing with the logical analysis of the system of electing a US President. The first author's book on this subject, “Extreme Outcomes of US Presidential Elections” [1], combines features of both a monograph and a textbook on extreme situations that may emerge in US Presidential elections. As a result, the first book contains numerous details on the election system that ma! y interest scholars in the field more than US voters who would like to understand how the system works and why it works as it does. Therefore, the author decided to write a new book, a much smaller volume, to spotlight important aspects of the election system for a general readership. This new book covers all the election rules discussed in the first book and uses “Extreme Outcomes of US Presidential Elections” as a reference source for a more extensive treatment of particular aspects of the election system.
Two questions on US Presidential elections have always concerned many US voters:
a) Should the Electoral College remain, or should it be abolished and replaced with a direct popular election system?
b) Should an elected US President have a mandate directly from the American people?
These important questions require, however, certain clarifications. In the first question, it is unclear if the Electoral College is understood as ! an assembly of particular people (electors) or as a mechanism fo r electing a US President. The answer may vary depending on how this is construed.
Many US voters believe that theoretical research in the field of US Presidential elections should constitute grounds for the answer to the second question. However, this answer solely depends on whom US voters would like to elect to the office of US President at a particular time in American history.
Answering these two questions requires explanations of the fundamentals of the election system. Based on these explanations, a US voter can juxtapose what he or she expects from the system and what this system currently provides. Therefore, discussing these fundamentals, along with extreme election outcomes, extreme campaign strategies, extreme election strategies, and even stalemates in the elections, is one of the main purposes of this book.
It is obvious that any elections, including US Presidential elections, can be considered fair only if the election rules are clear to t! he voters in advance. Also, these rules should cover traditionally expected situations in the elections, along with unexpected but logically possible ones. Such unexpected situations in US Presidential elections are called extreme situations (in this book and in the first book [1]). They are caused by logical flaws that are present in the provisions of the US Constitution and Federal Statutes relating to US Presidential elections, as well as by certain election issues not addressed in these documents.
As long as nobody knows what election rules will be applied if certain situations occur, rules of US Presidential elections remain fuzzy. These fuzzy rules may cause weird election outcomes that could be perceived as unfair and could even be contested in the courts.
From the author's viewpoint, extreme situations in US Presidential elections should be analyzed and dealt with preemptively. The analysis of such situations, presented in “Extreme Outcomes of US Pre! sidential Elections” [1] and in this book, is aimed at warning the A merican electorate of the danger of possible undesirable developments in the elections. This analysis emphasizes that the existing election system has the potential to cause undesirable situations in the elections no matter how remote or unlikely they may currently seem. The analysis is based entirely on common sense, and understanding its results does not require any special knowledge.
It seems important to emphasize that the US Constitution and Federal Statutes were written for the American people rather than only for constitutional lawyers. Therefore, any discrepancies detected in these documents should be pointed out to the American electorate in a form understandable to every US voter. This book, along with the first book [1], attempts to do this.
Logical flaws in the provisions of the US Constitution relating to US Presidential elections require explanations that can be made only by the US Supreme Court. However, this does not mean that the Court can prov! ide the explanations of all these flaws in principle. As a result, certain corrections to the election rules may be possible only in the framework of a new amendment to the US Constitution.
At the same time, it is interesting to notice that even the automatic plan of counting electoral votes, suggested by political leaders and scholars in the field, has failed to be introduced [2]. Some reformers have considered this plan to be too small an issue to go to the trouble of writing a new amendment to the US Constitution. Although introducing this plan could eliminate many extreme election outcomes that are discussed in this book, the plan could be introduced only if the US Supreme Court established that the (assumed) freedom of electors to vote their own choice means their obligation to follow the will of the states and the District of Columbia (DC), which they represent in the Electoral College. It seems (at least to the author) that such a “small issue” combined wi! th other issues relating to the election rules to be discussed in this book may, eventually, “tip the scale” in favor of developing a new amendment to the US Constitution. This new amendment could clarify the existing rules of US Presidential elections and correct already recognized discrepancies and logical flaws in these rules.
In addition, new issues associated with the continuity of the US Government, which emerged as a result of the September 11, 2001 tragedy, have recently been discussed in the light of the existing Presidential Succession Act. The act does not address these issues in certain extreme but logically possible situations [3]. Moreover, the applicability of this act to situations associated with the unpredictability of the voting behavior of electors may, eventually, be questioned. Indeed, it is not clear how a Federal Statute can determine rules of US Presidential elections in situations for which the US Constitution does not authorize the US Congress to provide anything by law (see Chapter 3). From the author's v! iewpoint, all the above-mentioned issues at least deserve to be publicly debated.
Also, this book discusses the conceptions of “President of the people,” “President of the states,” and “President of an electoral majority in the Electoral College,” introduced in "Extreme Outcomes of US Presidential Elections" [1] and outlined in this book. These three conceptions of the US Presidency can help the reader better understand basic principles underlying the election system.
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About the Book
How America Chooses Its Presidents addresses in a simple manner the whole spectrum of issues relating to the Electoral College from the perspective of its logical foundations. This is the first book to question the applicability of the Presidential Succession Act, a Federal Statute, in certain extreme but possible situations. The book argues that the act may not protect the country from election stalemates. Today, 50 states and DC rather than a college of electors award electoral votes in presidential elections. This appears to violate the “one state, one vote” principle, the constitutional norm governing the electing of a President by states, since a state’s electoral vote quota is based on the size of its population. Despite the counting of the nationwide popular vote since the 1824 election, its tally does not have any constitutional status, since the popular vote in every state is no more than a means for determining the winning slate of presidential electors in the state. The “winner-take-all” principle of awarding electoral votes makes many states “safe” for either major party candidate. This narrows election campaigns to a “battleground minority” of the states and contributes to keeping more than 40% of the electorate uninterested in voting in presidential elections. Abolishing the existing election system in favor of a direct popular presidential election—by means of a constitutional amendment—seems unlikely. Seventeen small states—with five and fewer electoral votes each—have no reason to voluntarily surrender the “one state, one vote” principle in electing a President in the House of Representatives, as well as the chance of having a say in the Electoral College. The book analyzes a controversial proposal to “circumvent” the small states by introducing a direct popular presidential election without a constitutional amendment and argues that this proposal is unlikely to prevail either. The book proposes a modification of the existing election system to allow the country to choose a ticket carrying two mandates that the electorate can give in the election—from the nation as a whole and from the states and DC as equal members of the Union. If any two tickets carry one mandate each, the number of electoral votes won by each ticket helps determine the election outcome. If neither a majority of voting voters nor a majority of 51 members of the Union favor any ticket, the Electoral College mechanism takes over as a backup, and if it fails, the election is thrown into the US Congress. The book, written for a general readership, provides an overview of original election rules, determined by Article 2 of the US Constitution, and contemporary ones, determined by the Twelfth Amendment. Understanding the book does not require any special knowledge, making it accessible to people of all walks of life at any age. At the same time, the readers of How America Chooses Its Presidents will undoubtedly improve their ability to think logically, making them more critical of statements about the Electoral College and about election campaigns.
About the Author
Alexander S. Belenky is the author of the books “Extreme Outcomes of US Presidential Elections” (2003) and “Winning the US Presidency: Rules of the Game and Playing by the Rules” (2004). He was an invited guest on radio and TV talk shows throughout the country in the course of the 2004 election campaign. A visiting scholar at the