If the manner of it he not perfect, it is nt least excellent,” Alexander Hamilton once said of the machinery of the Constitution for electing the President and Vice President of the United States. In making this statement, Hamilton, for all his brilliance, was either committing an egregious error or engaging in eighteenth-century Madison Avenue encomium. On the hasis of historical experience, it can reasonably he contended that the system of presidential election is anything but excellent, that it is in actuality a morass of complexity, indirection, and ambiguity. Nothing indeed could have been more expertly contrived to thrust the nation into periodic crises of uncertainty and strife.

The Constitution establishes the electoral college system to govern the President’s selection, and provides further means ol choue when that system hogs down in inconclusive result. Hut it giants the federal government only limited authority over its most important election, thai ol the President: criticaHy significant powers repose in the slates. My express or implicit (onstilutional authority, federal statutes specily the date ol election day, determine when the electors are to meet and cast their ballots, and establish the procedure for counting those ballots in Congress. Hut at the same lime, the Constitution authorizes the states to decide how the electors are to be chosen and their electoral vote cast. State laws also regulate the conduct of elections, including the presidential contest, and political activity carried on within their borders. This authority and autonomy invite wide variation from state to state in the method, honesty, and freedom of federal elections.

Full Story >>