ON CRITICIZING THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE
Dobius, Egor Q.
O n Criticizing t h e E l e c t o r a l C o l l e g e by Egor Q. Dobius There is no proven need to abolish the Electoral College; indeed to do so might prove harmful. Advocates of direct...
...Indiana University's last Homecoming Queen Annoimces the: MEN'S LIBERATION F R O N T Sponsored by (Partial listing) York Barbells Ellettsville Athletic Association Non-Chalant Athletic Association Saturday Evening Club Moon Mullins Study Group and Choral Society Ripon Society Dear Fellow Male: For over a lot of years now, women have exploited our brawn in making this, as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr...
...Unmindful of his mentor's words of wisdom, Indiana's junior senator — joined by Senators Margaret Chase Smith and Quentin Burdick — continues to agitate for abolition of the Electoral College and establishment of direct popular election...
...Consider the present Jordanian monarch, Hussein...
...Herein is another political virtue of the Electoral College system: it would be necessary to tamper with the votes on a nationwide scale in order to elect an unpopular candidate...
...From this brief discussion of arab life, it must appear obvious that a) they are no match for the Israeli and b) they do not deserve one granule more territory...
...Direct election would break down that federal system by making the states almost irrelevant in a presThose advocating direct election point next to the election of 1876...
...Rarely do they choose the most enlightened of the tribe, but rather the most ignorant and therefore the most entertaining...
...A bipartisan Congressional commission reviewed the returns and selected one for each state...
...With direct election, however, a monumental vote fraud in one state or even one metropolis might conceivably elect an unpopular candidate...
...N o one can divine how these citizens would have voted, and no one can use 1824 as proof of electoral malevolence on the part of the College...
...What can we do to put them out of our has always held great fascination for this kind of Evil...
...D P.M...
...But how delightfully amusing...
...misery...
...Clearly, direct election lends itself to corruption...
...And there is their style of choosing leaders...
...Indeed, the arab form of government is a delight that might profitably be adopted by all mankind...
...They cannot be gerrymandered...
...Direct election is incompatible with our American governmental system...
...n 13...
...the populace in six states did not vote...
...Nixon now advocates a constitutional amendment for a headlong plimge into the centralized statism which he so recently deplored...
...they are the prime political entities...
...Bayh seems dedicated to illusive interests antipodal to those of Indiana, for to abolish the Electoral College would be to mute drastically the voices of smaller states...
...This fear is reinforced by the realization that under the direct election system a candidate could conceivably be repudiated overwhelmingly in fortyfive states yet be elected to the presidency oft "supposed" popular support from the right five states...
...Come sin with us...
...Meyer to much to destroy...
...Opponents of the Electoral College seem to have forgotten that state boundaries exist as something more than mere scratchings on a map...
...Primary litigation alone could last months, with the appeals stretching into years...
...said, "the most violent nation on earth...
...they communibate I. U.'s Professor Morris on 13 November at 7:30 cate so well with the lower organism...
...And consider their ridiculous U. N. representatives who in the foolish attire of dirty bed sheets and sandals sempiternally outdo even the native New Yorker...
...If President Nixon truly favors a "New Federalism," then he should again eschew the direct election plan as he did in 1967...
...The N e w Republic employed similar reasoning in attacking direct election when, in the 27 September issue, the editors described the American system as one where ". . . minorities rule...
...Advocates of direct election try to ascribe to the Electoral College a history of insentient disregard for the voters' will...
...The U. S. increases in size only by adding a new state...
...For instance there is the arab's distaste for government...
...Unfortunately he has not, and on 6 October the redoubtable editors of the Chicago Tribune wrote: "It is impossible to reconcile Mr...
...The nation is a union of these semisovereign states fitting into the pattern of the federal system...
...In fact, the very word has been pirated from their simian mode of communication...
...This they felt was "so that government may rest on widespread consent rather than teetering on the knifeedge of a transient fifty-one per cent...
...This is a fabricated history...
...Nixon had cried 'foul' in Chicago and Cook County Senator Birch Bayh's plan, now being discussed in the U. S. Senate, would allow victory to a candidate less popular than either of the two former Vice-Presidents in the last election...
...And now we shall dive arab sand pile, but there just does not seem to be even deeper into Hades, we have invited Mr...
...continued on page 13) r barrassingly ignorant as exhibited by their suggestion that our Vietnam syndrome will be relieved if President Nixon will just put his army onto little boats and sail away...
...Likwise concerned with the miasma of uncertainty, John S. Knight, editor of Knight Newspapers, wrote, "Had the direct popular vote system been in effect in the extremely close Nixon-Humphrey election, demands for recoimts, court suits and absentee ballots might have delayed the official result for days or even weeks . . . Suppose, for instance, that (in 1960) Mr...
...Its fabricators point to the 1824 election in which John Quincy Adams was elected with fewer popular votes than Andrew Jackson, but they ignore the fact that there was no complete popular vote tally...
...Sadly I admit that even I am in the dark...
...History cannot be used as evidence by anyone idential election...
...It requires only a 4 0 % plurality as a minimum for election — at least Burdick's plan demands 4 5 % — and directs that if no candidate attains that percentage Congress, voting as individuals, select the President from the top two vote-winners...
...in Business 223...
...but they neglect to mention that the officials in four states filed two different sets of returns...
...Throw off the shackles of female exploitation...
...Join the M L F and work for these demands: NO MORE athletic undershirts NO MORE work „„„,, NO MORE holding doors for THEM NO MORE stingy deodorants NO MORE demeaning proposals NO MORE women's liberation fronts For further information write Dr...
...n PLUNKITT (continued from page 4) Yet, it is not m y intent to pass unfair judgment on the arab...
...The late John F. Kennedy favorably described the Electoral College as a system "imder which we have, on the whole, obtained able presidents capable of meeting the increased demands upon our executive . . ." He saved special trenchancy for the direct popular election plan, calling it "an unknown, imtried, but obviously precarious system which was abandoned in this country long ago, which previous Congresses have rejected, and which has been thoroughly discredited in Europe...
...Certain of his traits are admirable and the civilized world might profit munificently by acquiring them...
...Further it would destroy the heart of our system of federalism...
...But still they continue to cavil and annoy the Jew...
...Robert Galm, Governor's Youth Council...
...Its facts are counterfeit...
...Hayes was elected but not through any supposed electoral chicanery on the part of the College...
...Surely even among arabs he is a certifiable cretin...
...seeking to abolish the Electoral College...
...Actually in spite of all their delightful foolishness they have become an annoyance to most civilT Y R R E L L (continued from page 7) ized men...
...Perhaps we will have to rely on Alternative Week (11-14 November) where he will deHuntley and Bunkley to solve this one...
...W e have striven, perhaps it m a y be said, not for a majoritarian, but for a participatory democracy, in which access to the process of government is continuously available to all groups...
...O n Criticizing t h e E l e c t o r a l C o l l e g e by Egor Q. Dobius There is no proven need to abolish the Electoral College...
...And finally direct election would increase the threat of a tyranny of the majority's disregard for minority rights...
...Each of those states filed one return favorable to Rutherford Hayes and another return favorable to Samuel Tilden...
...The Constitution can be amended only in state legislatures or conventions...
...W e have gladly advertised this book as a selection of For awhile I contemplated nuclear destruction of the the Conservative Book Club...
...Some partisans have been thwarted but the nation has survived without demonstrable harm...
...That the Senate will ignore Senator Bayh and his nesciently idealistic plan is, to paraphrase Shakespeare, a consummation devoutly to be wished...
...Repelled by government in the indignities of politicians, they have made a national pastime of assassinating public officials...
...This plan changes presidential elections to something like a fifty-state governor's race...
...DOBIUS (continued from page 5) where the counting of nonexistent votes from graveyards, unoccupied buildings and phony addresses is not an imcommon practice...
...Nixon's support of this revolutionary proposal with his commitment to a 'new federalism' to reverse what he has called 'the trend toward ever more centralization of government in Washington' . . . Mr...
...There is a Constitutional primacy of states...
...John F. Kennedy pointed out that ". . . while purporting to be more democratic, (direct election) would increase the power of and encourage splinter parties, and I believe it would break down the federal system under which most states entered the union, which provides a system of checks and balances to insure that no one area or one group shall obtain too much power...
Vol. 3 • November 1969 • No. 3
