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October 4, 19M- The N.C» Essay Page FLUNKING THE ELECTORAL WHERE KINGS HAVE ALWAYS-STOOD by Lynn Bernhardt At a time when one of the major causes of civil strife in our coun try centers around the enigmatic and questionable issue of our involve ment in a remote and costly war, it may be beneficial to look back in our history and consider the words of one of our country's great champ ions of freedom. The following quo tation was handed to me on a single sheet of white paper by a student at Duke University two years ago as I was attending a concert there: "Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever ^ deem it necessary to repel an inva sion and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purposes and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect after you have given him so much as you propose. If today he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to pre vent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us.' But he will say to you, 'Be silent; I see it if you don't.'" "The provision of the Constitu tion giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I under- stand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and Impoverishing their people in war, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our Convention under stood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly operations and they re solved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the pow er of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter and places our Presi dent where Kings have always stood." The words were said by Abraham Lincoln to his law partner, William Herndon over one hundred years ago, but they still ring true. In an is sue such as our involvement in a war which creates such dissent and con troversy, perhaps it is time for the people of this country to decide where our President does stand, not only in the power of making war, but also in other areas of legislation. Times change and with them the needs of a nation; to grant a single man the authority to make war at his discretion, at the sacrifice of the lives and money of the people he should serve, certainly contradicts (con't on col. 3, this pg.) COLLEGE A standard misconception is that the President is elected by a majority of the popular vote. This is not true. The people who do are a little-known group of 538, the Electoral College. To become presi dent a candidate must receive a sim ple majority of 270 of the electoral votes. In an election year in which there are only two major can didates the electoral system rarely differs from the popular vote but in a strong three-way race, as we have this year, the dangers increase to an incredible degree. Not only could a candidate be elected by a minority of the votes, he could be elected with as little as one-third of the popular votes. Even more dangerous would be a situation in which no candidate would receive the needed 270 electoral votes. Then the presidential election would be thrown into the House of Representa tives where each state would have one vote, 26 need to be elected. This might eliminate all of the pop ular votes in a state like Illinois because their House delegation is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats. The Senate would vote for the Vice-President in a similar manner, thus creating the possibili ty that the President and the Vice- President would be from different political parties. What will happen on November 5 is something less than simple. The Constitution allots each state a number of Represenatives and Sena tors in Congress. A state may se lect its electors in any manner; most are picked by the state legis latures. For more than a century the plurality of the popular vote has determined the way all of a state's electors vote. However , members of the Electoral College not obligated to vote for the candi date chosen by the state's voters. Three times since 1948 an elector has cast a maverick vote, the most recent being an Oklahoma elector pledged to Nixon in 1960 who voted instead for Harry F. Bryd of Virgi nia. The danger in a strong three- way race is that as little as thirty four per-cent of a state's popular vote could determine all of its e- lectoral vote if the other two can didates received thirty-three per cent each, a possibility in some states this year. The plurality take all system was developed in the early Nine teenth Century when the two-party system first developed. It gave the party in power a method to maximize its hold on political power. Minor ity presidents have occurred three BY TERRENCE S. TICKLE times under this system. John Q. Adams was the first. He received only thirty per cent of the popular vote but won when Henry Clay the Clay electoral votes rather than give them to Andrew Jackson who had forth-three per cent of the popular vote. In 1876 Rutherford Hayes was elected in the House of Representa tives when he bought the Southern votes by agreeing to remove Federal troops from the post-Civil War occu pation of the South. In 1888 Ben jamin Harrison won the electoral vote with 100,000 fewer popular votes than Grover Cleveland. Under these circumstances could a candidate like George Wallace win in '68. If he carried all of the states of the old Confederacy, plus the border states of Maryland, Dela ware, Oklahoma, Missouri, West Vir ginia plus California, Illinois and Pennsylvania, he could receive the needed 270 electoral votes with as little as twenty-two per cent of the popular vote. More likely he will try to use his balance of power in the Electoral College to bargain for a relaxation of Federal efforts in the civil rights field. Solutions to this Rube Goldberg political creation seem remote. A Constitutional amendment providing for election by popular vote would be the obvious solution but there is a strong opposition from both the left and the right. The present system is the only hold that the ur ban centers have on the federal go vernment. Rural areas are still o- ver represented in the Congress. Southern politicians enjoy the ba lance of power they have because of the electoral system. The solution will, no doubt, ultimately wait un til that election when all of the unbelievable loopholes 't.n this Con stitutional process produces a to tally unsatisfactory President. It could happen this year! N,C. ESSAY STAFF Editor Co-editor & Review Feature Writers Tony Senter Lynn Bernhardt David Wood Mahk Walsh Dance Editor Sandra Williams Music Editor Celia Sparger Political & Editorial D. Williamson Typist Harold Ingram Photography Cathy Casper Advisor Anthony Fragola the wishes of those men who willing ly sacrificed their lives to make this country a democracy. Such in dependent actions may even approach dictorial powers.
N.C. Essay (Winston-Salem, N.C.)
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Oct. 4, 1968, edition 1
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