"David Tenner" <dtenner@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:Xns9AD0EAF1E3118dtennerameritechnet@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> (2) Re-convene the last Electoral College. This was advocated by former
> President Truman and former Vice-President Nixon. Nixon argued that it
> was im****tant that the new Vice-President "come from the elective rather
> than the appointive process." He observed that the majority of the
> member****p of the Electoral College would always be from the President's
> own party. However, the obvious objection is that electors are chosen
not
> to exercise a considered judgment but to carry out the will of the
voters
> of their states. (The handful who do exercise their own judgment--the
> "faithless electors"--are not generally looked on with great favor; and
> even they usually emphasize that they would not have voted against their
> party's ticket if it would have made any difference in the result.) In
> presidential elections, electors ratify the choice of the party
convention
> (of whichever party carries their state). If we do not trust them to
> exercise their own judgment--and they are certainly not chosen for that
> purpose nowadays or indeed almost from the beginning of presidential
> elections [1]--whose choice would they ratify in this event? The
> President's? Maybe, if he had the universal respect of his party--but
> that was not the case with Nixon in 1973. The party's National
Committee?
> Theoretically, it is the highest governing body of the party between
> conventions, and in 1912 the Republican National Committee did name
> Nicholas Murray Butler to replace the deceased James Sherman as the
> party's vice-presidential candidate. But there are no precedents for
any
> *victorious* presidential tickets (Taft and Butler got only eight
> electoral votes in 1912) and in any event in 1912 the Republican
> electorate had actually voted in November 1912 for what they knew was a
> Taft-Butler ticket, whereas in this scenario nobody but the party
National
> Committee had decided on the Vice-President when the electors
re-convene.
>
> (There was also a more technical objection: Many of the members of the
> Electoral College might have died since the last election, so there
would
> be a delay in filling these vacancies.)
>
> Anyway, suppose this method is chosen. Who do the (overwhelmingly
> Republican) electors vote for in 1973? Without having to worry about
> Congressional confirmation, does Nixon try to get someone other than
Ford,
> does the Republican National Committee agree, and how do the electors
> react? Furthermore, even if it turns out to be Ford, without having
> obtained the confirmation of a Democratic-majority Congress, doesn't he
> face much more hostility from the Democrats?
>
Snip
> [1] As early as 1796, the first contested presidential election, the
> original assumption that electors would use their own judgment was
already
> obsolete, and the conduct of Samuel Miles (a Pennsylvania Federalist
> elector who voted for Jefferson and Pinckney instead of Adams and
> Pinckney) provoked exactly the same kind of indignation seen in the
cases
> of more recent "faithless electors." As one angry Pennsylvanian wrote
in
> a letter to the *Gazette of the United States*: "What, do I choose
Samuel
> Miles to determine for me whether John Adams or Thomas Jefferson shall
be
> President? No! I choose him to act, not to think."
> http://www.fairvote.org/e_college/faithless.htm
>
What about the contests for Veep in 1789 and 1792? I raised this issue in
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/soc.history.what-if/msg/3dabe91a1c1ec929?hl=en
"If (say) a Virginian voter had strong views on whether they wanted
Adams as Veep, did they have a choice of electors pledged to either
Adams or someone else? If not, when did this become the case?
http://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=59542
talks about a Federalist and anti-Federalist slate as early as 1789".
I have, as recommended by you, ordered The Last of the Fathers: James
Madison and the Republican Legacy. I'll be interested to see whether
Madison expressed views on how the Electoral College ended up
working in practice.
--
"Write nothing with thy hand but that which thou wilt be pleased to see at
the resurrection"
Prayer at the end of a Coptic-Arabic manuscript of the gospels
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