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Veterans Day
Tuesday, 11 November 2008 12:00 A GMT-08
This year I honor all our veterans especially those forgotten and derided. Because of the failures of leadership they are blamed for political losses in the Congress and Whitehouse, their sacrifices and the sacrifices of their families are forgotten, even scorned.
Some 41 years ago I was on Army winter field maneuvers after 3 days out in sub zero weather I sustained a shattered left kneecap, it was -20F, I spent the night in misery until evacuated the next morning. It gave me tiny perspective to what the Korean Vets suffered.
Back on June 25, 1950 after the UN partition of Korea, the Soviet Union, China and the troops of North Korea invaded South Korea in bloody combat until the armistice was signed on July 27, 1953.
Those who served were maligned and treated as the losers by their fellow Americans, victims of the forgotten war.
KOREA
It seems that those Soldiers, Airmen and Marines who fought in Korea have been forgotten. Was it from the guilt of our leaders making United States Forces subservient to UN control and rules that tarnished the image of true heroes in a war that was never won, only ending in a negotiated stalemate, that plagues us today?
Being young enough to have known friends and relatives who served in both WWII and Korea has given me different perspective on how both groups were treated after the war. One uncle served in both WWII and Korea and received no respect from that second tour of duty. I served with two Korean vets in Vietnam who were outstanding, they kept us kids out of trouble, I wonder if they were also trying to win back some honor lost from their previous service.
VIETNAM
Members of our U.S. Marines took a tremendous pounding defending an outpost that was abandoned and destroyed so that 3 years later the invading NVA had an open path for advancement. Many in that hellhole suffered and died as well as those supplying them. Let's not forget their sacrifices or their hours of peril.
Forgotten too are the Brown water Navy and those small 4 man crews that couldn't fly away, they had to stay and toe to toe fight it out, hardly ever mentioned are the Mobile Riverine Forces, U.S. Army who fought alongside them. This is for you Ernie, it has been my pleasure to know you.
Many of the fighting forces on the ground, infantry, artillery, attack helicopters, close air support aircraft owe their success to those who let it all hang out supplying their water, food, munitions, fuel and heavy ordinance. The supply troops, yeah those REMF's who weren't so REMF.
All those who served in that hell called Vietnam then came home to be shunned by their home town folks, to be spat on, cursed and shunned. They were denied employment for both serving and not yet serving, but the worst was the label leveled upon them by Senator John Kerry and his Winter Soldiers, labels that denigrated them and stole their honor. Lies spread by the media that were never retracted.
FOR THE GIRLS'
How about those truly forgotten heroes that are all but overlooked as veterans, how honoring those who have served in the past as well as those serving now. Thank you ladies.
One of my heroes has always been Col Maggie, she served the troops as a nurse as well as an entertainer, one of many who volunteered to go to dangerous areas to support the troops, I'm blessed to know this one.
These ladies sacrificed too, they suffered casualties and experienced the same mental anguish as their combat counterparts. 59 civilian women died and 8 military women died in Vietnam for a total of 67. One of those. as hospital worker, died on my shift, lst. Lt. Sharon Ann Lane, she was struck down early on June 8, 1969 by those vigilant observers of the Geneva Convention and friends of John Kerry and Jane Fonda, when they shelled the 312th Evac hospital. All these women deserve the same honors as any veteran. Civilian or Military, they gave their all in service to this great nation.
NEVER FORGET
Don't let our current fighting forces face that same stolen honor, we owe them our freedom.
The Electoral College Part 2
posted Saturday, 17 January 2004
The Manner of Choosing Electors
From the outset, and to this day, the manner of choosing its State's Electors was left to each State legislature. And initially, as one might expect, different States adopted different methods.
Some State legislatures decided to choose the Electors themselves.
Others decided on a direct popular vote for Electors either by Congressional district or at large throughout the whole State. Still others devised some combination of these methods. But in all cases, Electors were chosen individually from a single list of all candidates for the position.
During the 1800's, two trends in the States altered and more or less standardized the manner of choosing Electors. The first trend was toward choosing Electors by the direct popular vote of the whole State (rather than by the State legislature or by the popular vote of each Congressional district). Indeed, by 1836, all States had moved to choosing their Electors by a direct statewide popular vote except South Carolina which persisted in choosing them by the State legislature until 1860. Today, all States choose their Electors by direct statewide election except Maine (which in 1969) and
Nebraska (which in 1991) changed to selecting two of its Electors by a statewide popular vote and the remainder by the popular vote in each Congressional district.
Along with the trend toward their direct statewide election came the trend toward what is called the "winner-take-all" system of choosing Electors. Under the winner-take-all system, the presidential candidate who wins the most popular votes within a State wins all of that State's Electors.
This winner-take-all system was really the logical consequence of the direct statewide vote for Electors owing to the influence of political parties. For in a direct popular election, voters loyal to one political party's candidate for
president would naturally vote for that party's list of proposed Electors. By the same token, political parties would propose only as many Electors as there were electoral votes in the State so as not to fragment their support and thus permit the victory of another party's Elector.
There arose, then, the custom that each political party would, in each State, offer a "slate of Electors" -- a list of individuals loyal to their candidate for president and equal in number to that State's electoral vote.
The voters of each State would then vote for each individual listed in the slate of whichever party's candidate they preferred. Yet the business of presenting separate party slates of individuals occasionally led to confusion. Some voters divided their votes between party lists because of personal loyalties to the individuals involved rather than according to their choice for president. Other voters, either out of fatigue or confusion, voted for fewer than the entire party list. The result, especially in close elections, was the occasional splitting of a State's electoral vote. This happened as late as 1916 in West Virginia when seven Republican Electors and one Democrat Elector won.
Today, the individual party candidates for Elector are seldom listed on the ballot. Instead, the expression "Electors for" usually appears in fine print on the ballot in front of each set of candidates for president and vice president (or else the State law specifies that votes cast for the candidates are to be counted as being for the slate of delegates pledged to those
candidates). It is still true, however, that voters are actually casting their votes for the Electors for the presidential and vice presidential candidates of their choice rather than for the candidates themselves.
The Time of Choosing Electors
The time for choosing Electors has undergone a similar evolution.
For while the Constitution specifically gives to the Congress the power to "determine the Time of chusing the Electors", the Congress at first gave some latitude to the States.
For the first fifty years of the Federation, Congress permitted the States to conduct their presidential elections (or otherwise to choose their Electors) anytime in a 34 day period before the first Wednesday of December which was the day set for the meeting of the Electors in their respective States. The problems born of such an arrangement are obvious and were intensified by improved communications. For the States which voted later could swell, diminish, or be influenced by a candidate's victories in the States which voted earlier. In close elections, the States which voted last might well determine the outcome. (And it is perhaps for this reason that South Carolina, always among the last States to choose its Electors, maintained for so long its tradition of choosing them by the State legislature. In close elections, the South Carolina State legislature might well decide the presidency!).
The Congress, in 1845, therefore adopted a uniform day on which the States were to choose their Electors. That day -- the Tuesday following the first Monday in November in years divisible by four -- continues to be the day on which all the States now conduct their presidential elections.
Historical Curiosities
In the evolution of the Electoral College, there have been some interesting developments and remarkable outcomes. Critics often try to use these as examples of what can go wrong. Yet most of these historical curiosities were the result of profound political divisions within the country which the designers of the Electoral College system seem to have anticipated as needing resolution at a higher level.
In 1800, as previously noted, the Democratic-Republican Electors gave both Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr an equal number of electoral votes.
The tie, settled in Jefferson's favor by the House of Representatives in accordance with the original design of the Electoral College system, prompted the 12th Amendment which effectively prevented this sort of thing from ever happening again.
In 1824, there were four fairly strong contenders in the presidential contest (Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William Crawford, and Henry Clay) each of whom represented an important faction within the now vastly dominant Democratic-Republican Party. The electoral votes were so divided amongst them that no one received the necessary majority to become president (although the popular John C. Calhoun did receive enough electoral votes to become vice president). In accordance with the provisions of the 12th Amendment, the choice of president devolved upon the House of Representatives who narrowly selected John Quincy Adams despite the fact that Andrew Jackson had obtained the greater number of electoral votes. This election is often cited as the first one in which the candidate who obtained the greatest popular vote (Jackson) failed to be elected president. The claim is a weak one, though, since six of the twenty
four States at the time still chose their Electors in the State legislature.
Some of these (such as sizable New York) would likely have returned large majorities for Adams had they conducted a popular election.
The 1836 presidential election was a truly strange event. The developing Whig Party, for example, decided to run three different presidential candidates (William Henry Harrison, Daniel Webster, and Hugh White) in separate parts of the country. The idea was that their respective regional popularities would ensure a Whig majority in the Electoral College which would then decide on a single Whig presidential ticket. This fairly inspired scheme failed, though, when Democratic-
Republican candidate Martin Van Buren won an absolute majority of Electors. Nor has such a strategy ever again been seriously attempted. Yet Van Buren himself did not escape the event entirely unscathed. For while he obtained an electoral majority, his vice presidential running mate (one Richard Johnson) was considered so objectionable by some of the Democratic-Republican Electors that he failed to obtain the necessary majority of electoral votes to become vice president. In accordance with the 12th Amendment, the decision devolved upon the Senate which chose Johnson as vice president anyway. A really bizarre election, that one.
In the 1872 election, Democratic candidate Horace Greeley (he of earlier "Go West, young man, go West" journalistic fame whose nomination makes a good story in itself) thoughtlessly died during that period between the popular vote for Electors and the meeting of the Electoral College. The Electors who were pledged to him, clearly unprepared for
such an eventuality, split their electoral votes amongst several other Democratic candidates (including three votes for Greeley himself as a possible comment on the incumbent Ulysses S. Grant). That hardly mattered, though, since the Republican Grant had readily won an absolute majority of Electors. Still, it was an interesting event for which the political
parties are now prepared.
In 1876, the country once again found itself in serious political turmoil echoing, in some respects, both the economic divisions of 1824 and the impending political party realignments of 1836, but with the added bitterness of Reconstruction. A number of deep cross currents were in play.
After a vast economic expansion, the country had fallen into a deep depression. Monetary and tariff issues were eroding the Union Republican coalition of East and West while a solid Republican black vote eroded the traditional Democratic hold on the South. The incumbent Republican administration of Grant had suffered a seemingly endless series of scandals involving graft and corruption on a scale hitherto unknown. And the South was eager to put an end to Radical Reconstruction which was, after all, a kind of vast political mugging. Against this backdrop, the resurging Democratic Party easily nominated Samuel J. Tilden, the popular Governor of New York, and Thomas A. Hendricks of Indiana
(shrewd geographic choices under the circumstances). The Republicans, in a more turbulent convention, selected Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes and William A. Wheeler of New York. A variety of fairly significant third parties also cropped up, further shattering the country's political cohesion.
This is about as good a prescription for electoral chaos as anyone might hope for. Indeed, it is almost surprising that things did not turn out worse than they did. For on election night, it looked as though Tilden had pulled off the first Democratic presidential victory since the Civil War -- although the decisive electoral votes of South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana remained in balance. Yet these States were as divided internally as was the nation at large. Without detailing the machinations of the vote count, suffice it to say that each State finally delivered to the Congress two sets of electoral votes --one set for Tilden and one set for Hayes. Because the Congressional procedures for resolving disputed sets of Electors had expired, the Congress established a special 15-member commission to decide the issue in each of the three States. After much partisan intrigue, the special commission decided (by one vote in each case) on Hayes' Electors from all three States. Thus, Hayes was elected president despite the fact that Tilden, by everyone's count, had obtained a slight majority of popular votes (although the difference was a mere 3% of the total vote cast). As a final note, the Congress enacted in 1887 legislation that delegated to each State the final authority to determine the legality of its choice of Electors and
required a concurrent majority of both houses of Congress to reject any electoral vote. That legislation remains in effect to this day so that the events of 1876 will not repeat themselves.
Benjamin Harrison's election in 1888 is really the only clearcut instance in which the Electoral College vote went contrary to the popular vote. This happened because the incumbent, Democrat Grover Cleveland, ran up huge popular majorities in several of the 18 States which supported him while the Republican challenger, Benjamin Harrison, won only slender majorities in some of the larger of the 20 States which supported him (most notably in Cleveland's home State of New York). Even so, the difference between them was only 110,476 votes out of 11,381,032 cast -- less than 1% of
the total. Interestingly, in this case, there were few critical issues (other than tariffs) separating the candidates so that the election seems to have been fought -- and won -- more on the basis of superior party organization in getting out the vote than on the issues of the day.
These, then, are the major historical curiosities of the Electoral College system. And because they are so frequently cited as flaws in the system, a few observations on them seem in order.
First, all of these events occurred over a century ago. For the past hundred years, the Electoral College has functioned without incident in every presidential election through two world wars, a major economic depression, and several periods of acute civil unrest. Only twice in this century (the States' Rights Democrats in 1948 and George Wallace's American Independents in 1968) have there been attempts to block an Electoral College victory and thus either force a negotiation for the presidency or else force the decision into the Congress. Neither attempt came close to succeeding. Such stability, rare in human history, should not be lightly dismissed.
Second, each of these events (except 1888) resulted either from political inexperience (as in 1800, 1836, and 1872) or from profound political divisions within the country (as in 1824, 1876, and even 1948 and 1968) which required some sort of higher order political resolution. And all of them were resolved in a peaceable and orderly fashion without any public uprising and without endangering the legitimacy of the sitting president.
Indeed, it is hard to imagine how a direct election of the president could have resolved events as agreeably.
Finally, as the election of 1888 demonstrates, the Electoral College system imposes two requirements on candidates for the presidency:
� that the victor obtain a sufficient popular vote to enable him to govern (although this may not be the absolute majority), and
� that such a popular vote be sufficiently distributed across the country to enable him to govern.
Such an arrangement ensures a regional balance of support which is a vital consideration in governing a large and diverse nation (even though in close elections, as in 1888, distribution of support may take precedence over majority of support).
Far from being flaws, then, the historical oddities described above demonstrate the strength and resilience of the Electoral College system in being able to select a president in even the most troubled of times.
Current Workings of the Electoral College
The current workings of the Electoral College are the result of both design and experience. As it now operates:
Each State is allocated a number of Electors equal to the number of its U.S. Senators (always 2) plus the number of its U.S. Representatives (which may change each decade according to the size of each State's population as determined in the Census).
The political parties (or independent candidates) in each State submit to the State's chief election official a list of individuals pledged to their candidate for president and equal in number to the State's electoral vote.
Usually, the major political parties select these individuals either in their State party conventions or through appointment by their State party leaders while third parties and independent candidates merely designate theirs.
Members of Congress and employees of the federal government are prohibited from serving as an Elector in order to maintain the balance between the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.
After their caucuses and primaries, the major parties nominate their candidates for president and vice president in their national conventions -- traditionally held in the summer preceding the election. (Third parties and independent candidates follow different procedures according to the individual State laws). The names of the duly nominated candidates are then officially submitted to each State's chief election official so that they might appear on the general election ballot.
On the Tuesday following the first Monday of November in years divisible by four, the people in each State cast their ballots for the party slate of Electors representing their choice for president and vice president (although as a matter of practice, general election ballots normally say "Electors for" each set of candidates rather than list the individual Electors on each slate).
Whichever party slate wins the most popular votes in the State becomes that State's Electors -- so that, in effect, whichever presidential ticket gets the most popular votes in a State wins all the Electors of that State. [The two exceptions to this are Maine and Nebraska where two Electors are chosen by statewide popular vote and the remainder by the popular vote within each Congressional district].
On the Monday following the second Wednesday of December (as established in federal law) each State's Electors meet in their respective State capitals and cast their electoral votes -- one for president and one for vice president.
In order to prevent Electors from voting only for "favorite sons" of their home State, at least one of their votes must be for a person from outside their State (though this is seldom a problem since the parties have consistently nominated presidential and vice presidential candidates from different States).
The electoral votes are then sealed and transmitted from each State to the President of the Senate who, on the following January 6, opens and reads them before both houses of the Congress.
The candidate for president with the most electoral votes, provided that it is an absolute majority (one over half of the total), is declared president. Similarly, the vice presidential candidate with the absolute majority of electoral votes is declared vice president.
In the event no one obtains an absolute majority of electoral votes for president, the U.S. House of Representatives (as the chamber closest to the people) selects the president from among the top three contenders with each State casting only one vote and an absolute majority of the States being required to elect. Similarly, if no one obtains an absolute
majority for vice president, then the U.S. Senate makes the selection from among the top two contenders for that office.
At noon on January 20, the duly elected president and vice president are sworn into office.
Occasionally questions arise about what would happen if the presidential or
vice presidential candidate died at some point in this process. For answers to these, as well as to a number of other "what if" questions, readers are advised to consult a small volume entitled After the People Vote: Steps in Choosing the President edited by Walter Berns and
published in 1983 by the American Enterprise Institute. Similarly, further details on the history and current functioning of the Electoral College are available in the second edition of Congressional Quarterly's Guide to U.S. Elections, a real goldmine of information, maps, and statistics.
The Pro's and Con's of the Electoral College System
There have, in its 200-year history, been a number of critics and proposed reforms to the Electoral College system -- most of them trying to eliminate it. But there are also staunch defenders of the Electoral College who, though perhaps less vocal than its critics, offer very powerful arguments in its favor. Continued Part 3