BICAMERAL ELECTORAL COLLEGE I

Intro

First some background: The legislative branch is composed of two houses -- the House of Representatives which allocates representation to each state dependent upon population and the Senate which allows each state to have an equal number of senators, namely two. All legislation must pass approval by both houses and must be signed by the president to become effective law. The president can veto legislation denying its passage, but the veto can be overridden by a 2/3 majority of the Congress via both houses. Such is part of the system of 'checks and balances' that keeps our government self-regulating against undue powers and tyranny or at least impeding them (in theory at least).

Having a Senate and a House of Representatives as described above was a compromise which kept small states from being totally drowned-out when voting on national laws while still retaining the just advantage of more populous states in their having greater net representation in the national congress. This bicameral compromise addresses both concerns and splits Congress half-and-half. Each house has a say on national legislation and each effectively has half of the power of Congress when it comes to the passage of laws. One house votes with states as equals and the other house with states allotted votes according to population brackets.

Checks, Balances, Legislatures

Now if you oppose the electoral college, then you are also opposing semblance to the nifty House and Senate compromise. This is because the electoral college allocates to each state a number of electors for choosing the president which is equal to the number of senators and representatives that state has by both houses. Plus if you oppose the electoral college, you oppose the electoral college's possible intermediary checks and balances on the electorate. Why would we not employ such principles in choosing a national leader?

Note that the Constitution grants every state legislature the sole power to determine how those allocated electors are selected on behalf of their state to the electoral college. State legislatures used to appoint U.S. Senators and they ratify amendments to our constitution. Thus legislatures have intended function at the federal level. Until 1824, over a quarter of state legislatures were choosing presidential electors as opposed to having a statewide popular vote. Our earliest presidential races had substantially higher proportions doing the same.

As the archival presidential elections show, the founders desired not just checks and balances between government branches, but they also wanted checks and balances between government and the people as well -- functioning in both directions. This is because the founders knew the citizens and elections could be swayed by radicals and mass movements possibly of tyrants or anti-Christ figures. An electoral college would possibly serve as an obstacle or delay to the acquiring of the presidency by such individuals since electors do not hold office of trust or profit under the U.S., nor are they the people or legislatures voting directly. They can opt to act on their own accord thus serving as an intermediary check on presidential prospects. So when someone is about to essentially become a third of our national (federal) government, shouldn't this system of checks be utilized on their acquisition of power? Shouldn't that choice be subdivided by states and state governments just like our federalized national government structure was intended?

The privilege granted to you to vote for electoral college electors is an accommodation of your state legislature who feels you can be trusted at this time and thinks the masses are of stable enough mind, within sound reason and perceives the society as functionable and at relative peace. However, with today's goings on you have to begin to wonder if this is still a valid perspective or if ever allowing a popular vote to solely determine the president should ever have been dabbled with.

As stated above, the checks and balances can work in reverse direction as well. Say if a group of electors were chosen by a state legislature and that group votes against a candidate where the people feel all this was done in an air of frivolity or without due regard, the people will focus their punishment on the state legislature in its election. Ideally, legislators with scruples would more likely only take such risk of retaliation if they felt that the people's interests were bent or the Republic faced trouble with a prospective national leader.

Powers of Representation

Before trying to do away with our important electoral college check, consider Canada. They determine their prime minister through the majority or by the plurality of seats won by a particular party in the representative house. While they do have a senate, the representative body is usually where the prime minister is derived from. Since this house is based on population, the national leader and the executive direction can solely be determined by the more populated eastern provinces while the western provinces garner substantially less influence. Thus, their national leaders are more skewed towards the views and concerns of the big east provinces. This is one reason there has been secession sentiments and movements in western Canada. Without more electoral college balance, America may suffer in a similar fashion with New York, California, Texas, Florida and several other big states mostly determining the outcome for president. It would be worse than it is now without an electoral college to give some boost to the smaller states. Actually, the current electoral college form usually does agree with the popular vote's outcome most of the time except for a few occasions. So why should popular vote purists bother to get rid of it altogether? The few times it has diverted from the popular vote it was probably a needed check to do so.

If you wish to complain about the electoral college, you should do so by focusing on the method your state legislature allows for elector selection. Most states employ the all-or-nothing mode whereby all electors to the electoral college for a state are unanimously determined by winner of the state's popular vote. There is some perceived strategy to having all-or-nothing within the current system. It will make candidates for president cater more strongly to the general interests of your state or its majority in order to get all your state's electoral votes. If your state is a smaller state it can make you more noticeable against the larger states within that system. However, what if an opposing candidate wins? If that candidate only has support of the minority in your state, they will have less incentive to accommodate your state in governing or campaigning next time around. If it is not sufficiently close in your state, will they opt to campaign in other states with closer races instead of vying for yours? Will candidates see your state as one big blob and carry a watered-down, disingenuous, common-denominator stance towards you or would it be better if they could appeal more to the various regional issues in your state? You may wish to consider the pros and cons as there are many possible outcomes.

Technically, perhaps the current all-or-nothing system may have been thought of as a safety back in the day when travel was harsh, there were no instantaneous mass communications and there were no computers. Today however, all of these amenities exist. Campaigns can travel anywhere quickly and the issues are more exposed to the masses. Ballots can be counted quicker and easier. So there is less cause to grant unanimous electors for each state. Thus the more regional interests can be allowed to shape races and hold their sway in close or not-so-close elections. If we were awarding a state's allocated electors by some kind of proportional showings, candidates would take interest somewhere in your state whether or not their statewide polling was sufficiently beyond 50% as in today's system.

For improvement, we encourage each state to select its allotted electors by allowing half to be determined by the state legislature's proportioned results. The other half would be chosen popularly through either congressional (or smaller) districts or just the popular statewide vote. The former by district can be more of a demographic method that reflects political distribution and densities influenced by trends or infrastructure. It may indicate how a state politically operates at a closer level through the majorities of regional communities on the ground.

Popular Vote By Districts or Statewide Proportions?

The district method provides an incentive for candidates to address concerns parsed through non-sovereign entities of equal populations within a state which can reflect the weight of regional issues. From a national vantage point, it is noticeably different from having vast sovereign states of various sizes each acting as a unanimous blob to their lowest common-denominator as we do now. However, the district method could as well conceivably make a state act more as a blob in a case where a vast majority of the districts as drawn favor one candidate against any of the others -- much more than the statewide popular vote would. Thus, overlaying the statewide popular vote result on the popular electors is still an option which acts as a counter to the concerns of gerrymandering. This also caters more to the voice of each individual voter. Then again, results by districts help insulate against drawn-out controversies of a close national election where the general fluidity of a collection of statewide popular votes invites quibbling over the final result everywhere. Using districts limits the contesting of such close elections to within relatively fewer prefectures. Perhaps in order to get the best of both worlds, half of the popularly allocated electors could be determined by overlaying the statewide popular vote and the other half by overlaying ratios of districts won by candidates. Both of these overlays will occupy their own quarter of the total electoral college.

Should some electors be chosen by a governor? It is interesting in itself to debate the possibilities.

Overview and Our Demand

The advantages to this plan are substantial for consideration. The nation would less likely be held hostage to just a few swing states during close elections. The several states would be more empowered because electors from each state are also allocated to state legislatures which brings state concerns and issues to the table. The legislatures' choice and a possible popular vote by districts in each state can put more emphasis on regional topics. Also the smaller several states have a greater number (and perhaps proportion) of state governments for candidates to contend with and to be discerned by as opposed to just dealing with the fewer larger states' popular vote bloc. State legislators gain with their races garnering more attention since they will have an effect on presidential outcomes which means voters have even more incentive to turn out for state-level elections. Overall, voters are more adequately and consistently represented using the intrastate conjunction of a proportional statewide popular vote or a district-by-district popular vote along with the voter-determined state legislators choosing electors. This is opposed to the current all-or-nothing elector slate by the popular vote result across a state currently in use which gives no electoral voice to the minority or legislature.

There is a caveat to our plan. Originally, the U.S. Senate was intended to be comprised of senators who were chosen by state legislatures so that state governments would have some representation within Congress plus a check and balance with the direct representatives of the people elected to the House. Today, we have no such thing since we elect senators by popular vote. Despite the Senate having some unique impeachment and other functions, it's popular make-up basically makes for a congressional two-house redundancy by motives. As well, wouldn't Senate appointments by state legislatures also lessen the number of large statewide, big-money campaigns that many complain about?

With the case being that the general populace has total monopoly in voting for the legislative and executive branches and perhaps until we re-establish state legislative appointment of U.S. senators, the electoral college should be determined totally by state legislatures. State legislatures need some amount of voice and power returned to them at the federal level. Once senatorial appointment is resumed, then our aforementioned plan of combining popular vote electors with legislature-determined electors half-and-half by state would be initiated.

(During the period of state legislatures' totality, you will still have some voice towards presidential selection because you determine the make-up of your state legislature. As noted above, popular votes determine 2/3 of the national government's branches and indirectly determine the remaining third which gives the state legislatures nil at 0/3. By our proposed caveat, we would at least re-balance the executive and legislative branches.)

At any rate, we support the preservation of the electoral college while considering revamping it at state level. Our way (Bicam I) is by splitting each current state elector slate with one half to the state legislature and the other half to either the statewide popular vote or its popular district-by-district vote (or perhaps a quarter for each) after the caveat period of all electors being chosen only by state legislatures ends. In any case, the elector slate is overlaid with the respective vote-result proportions. All the matching elector tallies for each candidate are combined yielding the most whole electors possible. Any mixed-share electors left over are mutually settled, rounded off or default to certain methods in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct in order to yield all whole-elector tallies for the state.

Obtaining New Legislature's Input

In order to get the upcoming legislature's vote for president in the concurrent election, the presidential vote of the returning incumbents and the legislators-elect will be gathered nearer the end of election day or whenever the chads are cleared in the few, usually occurring close races. The final contested electors and mixed-elector subsets will be determined by a deadline before the electoral college meets in December. Nonetheless, projections can be made with most state legislative races called nearer end of election day.

TAKE SPECIAL NOTE OF THIS: We consider the current times to be thwarted, skewed and have long been unfairly biased in favor of the Republican and Democrat candidates for decades through government campaign funding and manipulated ballot access. Thus to make up for all the years of untrue elections, we believe it fair and proper that for the next presidential election all of you pressure your state legislatures to allow only the selection of third-party and independent electors for president (or at least vice president) in the electoral college. This is on account of the long past and current electoral grievances. This would be a proper, compensatory check and balance.