THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A FEDERAL ELECTION IN THE UNITED STATES!

Every two years the United States holds 50 separate STATE elections plus Washington, D.C. In cycles of four years the states elect a President and Vice-President. Every two years states elect members to the House of Representatives. All U.S. Senators are elected for six year terms. One-third of the total 100 U.S. Senate seats must stand for election every two years. As a matter of efficiency, elections for the presidency, representatives and senators are coordinated so that the states hold elections to fill these federal offices every two years. Concurrently the states consolidate races for state and local offices onto a single ballot.

The United States came into existence in 1788 when New Hampshire became the 9th state to ratify the Constitution. Some argue that the actual date was 1790 when Rhode Island ratified as the 13th state and others argue that the nation was born on July 4, 1776, with the Declaration of Independence. Nonsense. The Constitution required the ratification of only 9 states.

In 1781 the Colonies formed a confederation and in the Articles of Confederation they 'styled' themselves as The United States of America but that legal formation ended with the ratification by Rhode Island of our present Constitution on May 29, 1790.

It doesn't matter which date is used. Since then, there has NEVER been a federal election, i.e., an election conducted by the federal government. A grasp of this is essential to understanding events related to the election of 2000.

The public's difficulty in understanding the Presidential election process is a failure of public education. However, much blame may be attributable to the American press. The people who work for news outlets fall into two categories: Those who are dumber than dirt and those who think the public is dumber than dirt. Because reporters and editors fall into these two groups, they have, since 1789, reported Presidential elections using TOTAL national votes. THAT number has NO meaning whatsoever in ANY Presidential election.

Why news outlets have difficulty with the Electoral College concept and purpose is hard to comprehend. These same outlets seem to grasp the concept of the World Series in baseball. There, the winner is not the team getting the most runs over the course of the series . . . The winner is the team that wins the most games. The same is true of Presidential elections . . . The winner is the candidate who wins the most electoral votes . . . NOT most of the popular votes.

In the United States, elections to select the President, Vice-President, Senators, and members of the House of Representatives, are ALL state elections. The election process laws are made by the states, administered by the states, and enforced by the states. Senators and Representatives are elected directly by popular vote of the people of each state or district. The President and Vice-President are NOT elected by popular vote. In fact, the hyperbole from the press about the TOTAL popular vote is fun to watch and talk about but it has absolutely no meaning toward electing a President and Vice-President. The Constitution specifies that each state shall select a number of ELECTORS (people to cast the actual votes) equal to the number of Representatives and Senators from that state. For example, North Carolina had 12 Representatives for the election of 2000 and all states have two Senators. Therefore, NC was allocated 14 electors. The allotment of Representatives for the 2000 election was based on the 1990 Decennial Census. The number of Representatives allocated to each state will be revised (reapportioned) based on the 2000 Decennial Census.

No state can have fewer than 3 electors because the Constitution guanrantees each state one representative plus two senators. When a state's population grows to a certain level, that state will be apportioned more than one Representative. The state with the least population to have 4 electors for the 2000 election was Rhode Island with a 1990 population of 1,003,464.

There is a total of 538 electors. The number is determined thus: There are 435 Representatives in the House, plus 100 Senators, plus (by amendment to the Constitution) 3 electors for Washington, D.C. As of the election of 2000 there were 7 states which, based on population, had the minimum of 3 electors. They were: Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming. Of those seven states, the one with the largest population was Montana with a 1990 population of 799,065. By the 2000 census, Rhode Island had grown to only 1,049,662 while Montana had grown to 905,316. If this trend continues through the census of 2010, Montana could get 4 electors and Rhode Island may drop to 3.

The only Constitutional restriction to qualification as an elector is that the person may NOT hold any federal office. An elector could be a member of the state legislature, the Governor, Lt. Governor, the local mail carrier or a patient in a mental institution.

State political parties with candidates for President and Vice-President select electors for their parties but the names of those electors may or may not appear on the ballots. There is one elector for each of the congressional districts plus two at-large for the senators. In some states the names of electors appear on the ballots along with the names of the candidates.

Whether the elector's name appears on the ballot or not, when a person cast a vote they are voting for the elector who is then expected to cast one vote each for President and Vice-President. The elector may decide (after the election) to vote for someone else. Some states have enacted unconstitutional laws against a change of mind by the elector but these laws have never been tested in court.

In North Carolina the elector is bound by NC law to cast the vote based on the results of the popular election. However, if the NC elector decides to vote for someone else, the vote stands. The only penalties are that the elector is fined $500, certainly dismissed from the party, and branded for life as a "faithless elector;" the term used in the Constitution for an Elector who does not vote according to the party line.

"Neither the Constitution nor Federal law prescribe the manner in which each State appoints its electors other than directing that they be appointed on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November."

The forgoing paragraph is from a Web Page of the U.S. House of Representatives and shows that the Constitution allows states to choose the method for appointing electors. The Constitution does NOT specify that electors are to be chosen by popular vote. Depending on state law, electors could be selected by the legislature, the Governor, or whatever, although we would not want to be standing near anyone who might propose such an interesting plan. Also, although that is the letter of the law as specified in the Constitution, it is almost certain that most all Federal Judges would rule such an idea unconstitutional, thereby making up a new law and changing the Constitution WITHOUT an amendment.

Reading the history of the debates which framed the Constitution, it is clear that "original intent" WAS to limit public access to the ballot box in ALL elections for federal office. The founders fully intended that only select citizens, i.e., white property owners, would have a vote. However, reason prevailed and it was left out of the Constitution and left to the states to decide. The states (colonies) were already using popular elections to select representatives and, therefore, continued the practice. This is clearly one area of "original intent" where the public would overwhelmingly agree that the system has evolved into a superior concept.

How does the federal government get involved when there is a dispute over a state election? By simply agreeing that they, the feds, are protecting a citizen's civil rights; i.e., "equal protection." From the perspective of that argument, federal courts will hear cases which might show states trying to exclude certain citizens or where errors are so egregious that citizen's are denied the right to fairly vote, i.e., equally participate in the determination of governance.

What value is the Electoral College? It is of enormous value to mid-size and small states because it is the only way for them to be heard in Presidential elections. To win the Presidency a candidate needs 270 electoral votes. For the 2000 election that could have been achieved with the top 11 states: California 54, New York 33, Texas 32, Florida 25, Pennsylvania 23, Illinois 22, Ohio 21, Michigan 18, New Jersey 15, North Carolina 14, and Georgia or Virginia 13: equals 270.

However, losing just one of the large states means that the candidate must find a way to make up the difference. That's where smaller states can come into play. If the Electoral College were eliminated candidates would not move to smaller states to make up the difference. They would move to large cities because that's where the populations are concentrated. In other words; why campaign in Wyoming with a population of 500,000 when one could gain that many extra votes with a higher turnout in New York City, Boston, Washington, D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Atlanta, etc.

Soon after the election of 2000, there was an outcry to abolish the Electoral College. People from the most densely populated states are interested in eliminating the College. They are from those few states which could pick the President by overwhelming numbers of popular votes. No one from the small states who understands the process is calling for the elimination of the College.

Looking at it another way, the electoral vote total of the top 20 states is 381, or more than 70% of the overall total. The electoral count of the bottom 20 states is 80, or less than 15% of the overall total, but the bottom 15% has some power because of the need to make up election loses in the big 11.

California has over 33 million people, is growing fast and could, if highly energized, cast over 25% or more of a total popular vote. Today, however, whether California turns out 10,000,000 or 25,000,000 voters under the Electoral College system, its influence is limited to 54 electoral votes or less than 20% of the total needed to win.

Elimination of the Electoral College would be a huge incentive for high population states to vote as blocks and try to overwhelm other states. There are already voting blocks of Blacks, Hispanics, women, Jews, Poles, Italians, American Indians, and others. The election of 2000 shows a distinct pattern of regionalism, i.e., southern and mountain states versus the coastal states and upper mid-west. The results clearly show the areas of the country interested in receiving federal money for mass transit, roads, bridges, tunnels, schools, welfare, and social programs, versus areas of interest like right to bear arms, pro-life, reduced taxes, and smaller government.

In the election of 2000 George W. Bush led the popular vote across the nation until California's results were reported. Only then did Al Gore move ahead in popular vote totals as he won California by 1½ million votes. However, we will never know who actually won the popular vote because, as each state's counted results determined the winner for that state, the counting stopped, leaving nearly two million uncounted absentee ballots nation wide.

The Electoral College was written into the Constitution as one of the last items on the agenda of the delegates in Philadelphia in 1787. It was debated long and hard. Its purpose was to provide some equalization between small and large states. Since then it has served many other equally important purposes. It has not outlived its usefulness as many large states claim. That is clear from the election of 2000.