Presidential Lottery by James A. Michener

Author:James A. Michener [Michener, James A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8041-5160-3
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2014-04-15T04:00:00+00:00

It will be observed that in 1960 it took only 570,000 voters in Alabama to cast 11 electoral votes, whereas in Minnesota it required more than two and a half times that number to achieve the same result. The discrepancy between Mississippi and Connecticut, each with eight electoral votes, was even greater. Direct voting would end this injustice. If a state voted its people, it would exercise leverage; if it made voting difficult or impossible, it would lose thereby.

The next objection can be extrapolated from the table just offered. If all that counted in an election were the direct popular vote, all states would be forced to adopt voting qualifications equal to the most liberal permitted in any one state. For example, if State A allowed its citizens to vote at age eighteen, and thus qualified a large number so as to influence the choice of President, the other fifty jurisdictions in self-defense would have to do likewise. At this point State B might come up with a clever innovation which the others would have to match. To stop this kind of basement bargaining, federal laws would pretty surely be required, and they would dictate such things as voting age, registration procedures, and polling practices. Opponents of federal control hold that this is too high a price to pay for the admitted advantages that otherwise flow from direct popular voting.

Another objection is that this plan would favor the large cities and would force candidates to spend most of their time fighting for the cities as now they fight for the large states. Enhancing the importance of the cities would also increase the importance of minority groups, who would thus surrender their old leverage in the state for a new one in the city.

As to the claim of the proponents that this plan would diminish the frequency of close or ambiguous elections, opponents cite the comment of President Truman, who pointed out, “There is something to be said for the narrow margin of victory in a Presidential election. It makes the new President realize … that there is more than one side to a question.” The voices and ideas of the millions who voted for the loser should be “just as important [to the President-elect] as those of the victorious millions.”

Senator Spessard Holland of Florida, in a comment given in 1967, spelled out his good reasons for opposing direct popular voting. He pointed out that since the District of Columbia would under this plan gain more voting power than the eleven states cited before, the plan would be unfair in that the District “does not have any of the duties or responsibilities of sovereign statehood.” One staunch defender of the District, and a proponent of direct voting, replied, “This would make the accident of residence or employment with the federal government a justification for depriving citizens of their right to vote according to the ancient principle that it is geographical areas that have the right to representation and not human beings.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.