Question 1:
State party organizations choose people as electors because of their demonstrated loyalty to the party. Even so, some electors fail to cast their electoral votes as pledged. In 1956, W. F. Turner, an Alabama elector pledged to Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, cast his vote for a local judge. (Who knows? Maybe they were fishing buddies.) In the 2000 election, Barbara Lett-Simmons, an elector from Washington, DC, pledged to Al Gore, cast a blank ballot to protest the fact that the District of Columbia has no vote in Congress.
What do you think could happen between the general election in November and the casting of electoral votes in December that might lead the electors to install as president the candidate everyone thought had lost the election? Think of an event so significant that it would break the ties of the electors' party loyalty.
Question 2:
In setting up the Electoral College, the framers made a mistake. They assigned each elector two votes but did not require the electors, when casting their two votes, to specify whether they were voting for a candidate to be president or vice president. When the votes were tallied, the candidate with a majority became president and the runner-up became vice president. The framers apparently didn't anticipate that a president elected under this system might have as his vice president his opponent in the election. That is exactly what happened in the election of 1796, when John Adams, a Federalist, became president and Thomas Jefferson, a Democratic Republican, became vice president The Twelfth Amendment (1804) eliminated this politically difficult possibility by requiring that electors cast separate ballots for president and vice president. But the possibility remains that the electoral vote could install a president from one party and a vice president from another.
Explain a sequence of events that would be required to produce that result. Begin with a situation where the candidates for president and vice president each receive fewer than 270 electoral votes, the Democratic Party has a significant majority in the House, and the Republican Party has a significant majority in the Senate.
Question 3:
a. According to the rules for awarding electoral college votes, how would NY's 41 votes be awarded?
b. Suppose you knew nothing about the rules for awarding EC votes and did not have access to the popular vote in the state. What does the distribution of votes among the three candidates seem to indicate about each candidate's support in NY?
Question 4:
Use the information provided in #5 (and table 7.1.2) to answer the following questions:
a. In what other state besides Florida did Bush have the smallest margin of victory?
b. What is the minimum number of popular votes that, if shifted from Bush's column to Gore's, would have made Gore the winner of the state's electoral votes?
C. Would winning this state's electoral college votes have made Gore president?
Question 5:
Research carried out by Barack Obama's campaign in the months leading up to the 2008 presidential election showed conclusively-barring some unforeseeable event-that whatever re- sources he might commit to the state, Obama had no chance of winning the popular vote in Texas on November
Question 6:
Obama's research was confirmed by independent public opinion polls, one of which showed Obama trailing John McCain by 19 percentage points in early October, There was precedent: No Democratic Party presidential nominee had won Texas's electoral votes since Jimmy Carter in 1976. Assume the role of chief campaign adviser to Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential election.
Question 7:
Recognizing that Obama is likely to meet defeat at the hands of voters in this solidly Republican state, would you direct a substantial amount of the campaign's resources to Texas in the month before the election in an attempt to improve Obama's position? Cite specific features of the Electoral College to explain and support your reasoning.
Question 8:
Dispense with the Electoral College. Assume that the president is directly elected by a plurality of the popular vote nationwide. Under this system, every popular vote counts, whatever a candidate's prospects of winning a plurality of the popular vote in any particular state. Consider again the situation posed in question #8. would you direct a substantial amount of the campaign's resources to Texas in the month before the election in an attempt to improve Obama's position? Explain and support your answer.
Question 9:
Return to the Electoral College system for electing the president and assume that you are managing Barack Obama's campaign in California. Early in October, about a month before the election, your polls show Obama with 60 percent support in the state and John McCain with 36 percent. This is no surprise: California has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1992. At a meeting on October 10, the campaign's director of political advertising announces that he has developed and tested a series of television advertisements designed to boost Obama's standing in California over the next three weeks. He claims that the ads will increase Obama's lead to 70 percent by the day of the election, reducing McCain's standing to 28 percent.
The ads will cost $5 million. Assume that the polling projections are accurate, that the campaign can afford the $5 million expenditure, and that you have it on good authority that McCain will not be presenting you with any surprises in Cal ifornia before the election.
Should you authorize the $5 million expenditure for the ads? Cite specific features of the Electoral College to explain and support your reasoning.
Question 10: Dispense again with the Electoral College and assume that the president is directly elected by a plurality of the popular vote nationwide. Should you authorize the $5 million expenditure described in question 10? Explain and support your answer.
Question 11: Read the scenario in and answer the following questions:
a. How would the proportional system of awarding votes to a candidate change the prospects of minor party candidates?
b. How would the proportional system of awarding votes to a candidate change the extent to which candidates target states like California and Texas?
c. How would the proportional system of awarding votes to a candidate affect the likelihood that an election would need to be decided in the House of Representatives?
Question 12: Read the instructions in and answer the following questions:
a. Summarize the National Popular Vote bill and explain how it would work.
b. How would the National Popular Vote bill change current Electoral College-based campaign strategies that emphasize the importance of competitive (swing) states?
c. Click on "Answering Myths" and read "10.1 MYTH: Faithless presidential electors would be a problem under the National Popular Vote compact" California has voted for the Democratic candidate in every presidential election since 1992.
Question 13:
Assume that the National Popular Vote bill is enacted and in place for the 2016 presidential election.
The Democratic presidential candidate in 2016 receives a plurality of the popular vote in California and that the Republican candidate receives a plurality of the popular vote nationwide.
Explain how California would cast its 55 electoral votes under the system established by the National Popular Vote bill.