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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Jules Witcover
Only a dozen years after the infamous Florida recount fiasco that put the loser of the national popular vote in the Oval Office, the specter of a repetition appears to be a possible outcome on November 6.
Various national and state polls, which this year have become epidemic and contradictory, hint that Mitt Romney might finish first in the popular vote but lose to President Obama in the
It's not as if such an result would come out of the blue. Ever since George W. Bush became president, although Al Gore got more than half a million more popular votes, reformers have deplored the simple injustice of this denial of the popular will.
In 1999, I raised the peril myself in a book, "No Way to Pick a President," in a chapter called "An Accident Waiting to Happen," which the very next year did happen. Other calls for abandoning the
This "college" is really just a correspondence school of "electors" who never meet, merely mailing in their votes from their states. The electors customarily are party officials or political hacks who supposedly have free will but almost always follow the popular vote in their state. An occasional "faithless elector" goes off the reservation or votes for a third-party candidate, without affecting the outcome.
Defenders of the
In 1876, Samuel J. Tilden beat Rutherford B. Hayes by 250,000 popular votes but fell a single electoral vote shy. A special commission of congressional and
In 1960, John Kennedy won the popular vote over Richard Nixon by 112,000 votes, but he was credited with all of Alabama's Democratic ballots although six of the state's 11 electors cast their electoral votes for Sen. Harry F. Byrd of Virginia. Had Byrd's 176,000 popular votes not been counted for Kennedy, Nixon would have been the popular winner, though he lost in the
In a 1956 debate with John Pastore of Rhode Island, Kennedy in defending the system pointed out that "Rhode Island is over-represented in the
One founder, George Mason of Virginia, said during debate on the college that "it would be as unnatural to refer the choice of a proper magistrate (president) to the people as it would to refer a trial of colors to a blind man." Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts agreed, warning that "the people are uninformed and would be misled by a few designing men."
Gerry's last comment may be even more applicable in today's campaigns run by political consultants flooding the air with negative television ads. However, that does not negate the validity of what the man from Rhode Island told JFK 56 years ago.
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