How America Chooses Its Presidents

How America Chooses Its Presidents addresses in a simple manner the whole spectrum of issues relating To The Electoral College from the perspective of its logical foundations. This is the first book to question the applicability of the Presidential Succession Act, a Federal Statute, In certain extreme but possible situations. The book argues that the act may not protect the country from election stalemates. Today, 50 states and DC rather than a college of electors award electoral votes in presidential elections. This appears to violate the "one state, one vote" principle, The constitutional norm governing the electing of a President by states, since a state's electoral vote quota is based on the size of its population. Despite the counting of the nationwide popular vote since the 1824 election, its tally does not have any constitutional status, since the popular vote in every state is no more than a means for determining the winning slate of presidential electors in the state. The "winner-take-all" principle of awarding electoral votes makes many states "safe" for either major party candidate. This narrows election campaigns to a "battleground minority" of the states and contributes to keeping more than 40% of the electorate uninterested in voting in presidential elections. Abolishing the existing election system in favor of a direct popular presidential election—by means of a constitutional amendment—seems unlikely. Seventeen small states—with five and fewer electoral votes each—have no reason to voluntarily surrender the "one state, one vote" principle in electing a President in the House of Representatives, As well as the chance of having a say in the Electoral College. The book analyzes a controversial proposal to "circumvent" the small states by introducing a direct popular presidential election without a constitutional amendment and argues that this proposal is unlikely to prevail either. The book proposes a modification of the existing election system to allow the country to choose a ticket carrying two mandates that the electorate can give in the election—from the nation as a whole and from the states and DC as equal members of the Union. If any two tickets carry one mandate each, The number of electoral votes won by each ticket helps determine the election outcome. If neither a majority of voting voters nor a majority of 51 members of the Union favor any ticket, The Electoral College mechanism takes over as a backup, and if it fails, The election is thrown into the US Congress. The book, written for a general readership, provides an overview of original election rules, determined by Article 2 of the US Constitution, and contemporary ones, determined by the Twelfth Amendment. Understanding the book does not require any special knowledge, making it accessible to people of all walks of life at any age. At the same time, The readers of How America Chooses Its Presidents will undoubtedly improve their ability to think logically, making them more critical of statements about the Electoral College and about election campaigns.

A fun and snappy look at how the world's most important job is filled each year - published in time for the 2020 election. Written in a conversational style, former ESPN columnist Brian Church looks at the electoral college, the history of dirty campaigns and more.

A detailed study of presidential election news coverage and its effect on voters focuses on the news audience and the images of candidates.

A New Statesman Book of the Year “America’s greatest historian of democracy now offers an extraordinary history of the most bizarre aspect of our representative democracy—the electoral college...A brilliant contribution to a critical current debate.” —Lawrence Lessig, author of They Don’t Represent Us Every four years, millions of Americans wonder why they choose their presidents through an arcane institution that permits the loser of the popular vote to become president and narrows campaigns to swing states. Congress has tried on many occasions to alter or scuttle the Electoral College, and in this master class in American political history, a renowned Harvard professor explains its confounding persistence. After tracing the tangled origins of the Electoral College back to the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Keyssar outlines the constant stream of efforts since then to abolish or reform it. Why have they all failed? The complexity of the design and partisan one-upmanship have a lot to do with it, as do the difficulty of passing constitutional amendments and the South’s long history of restrictive voting laws. By revealing the reasons for past failures and showing how close we’ve come to abolishing the Electoral College, Keyssar offers encouragement to those hoping for change. “Conclusively demonstrates the absurdity of preserving an institution that has been so contentious throughout U.S. history and has not infrequently produced results that defied the popular will.” —Michael Kazin, The Nation “Rigorous and highly readable...shows how the electoral college has endured despite being reviled by statesmen from James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson to Edward Kennedy, Bob Dole, and Gerald Ford.” —Lawrence Douglas, Times Literary Supplement

This is the first book on the U.S. presidential election system to analyze the basic principles underlying the design of the existing system and those at the heart of competing proposals for improving the system. The book discusses how the use of some election rules embedded in the U.S. Constitution and in the Presidential Succession Act may cause skewed or weird election outcomes and election stalemates. The book argues that the act may not cover some rare though possible situations which the Twentieth Amendment authorizes Congress to address. Also, the book questions the constitutionality of the National Popular Vote Plan to introduce a direct popular presidential election de facto, without amending the Constitution, and addresses the plan’s “Achilles’ Heel.” In particular, the book shows that the plan may violate the Equal Protection Clause from the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. Numerical examples are provided to show that the counterintuitive claims of the NPV originators and proponents that the plan will encourage presidential candidates to “chase” every vote in every state do not have any grounds. Finally, the book proposes a plan for improving the election system by combining at the national level the “one state, one vote” principle – embedded in the Constitution – and the “one person, one vote” principle. Under this plan no state loses its current Electoral College benefits while all the states gain more attention of presidential candidates.

In the days after Donald Trump’s unexpected victory on election night 2016, The New York Times, CNN, and other leading media outlets reached out to one of the few pundits who had correctly predicted the outcome, Allan J. Lichtman. While many election forecasters base their findings exclusively on public opinion polls, Lichtman looks at the underlying fundamentals that have driven every presidential election since 1860. Using his 13 historical factors or “keys” (four political, seven performance, and two personality), Lichtman had been predicting Trump’s win since September 2016. In the updated 2024 edition, he applies the keys to every presidential election since 1860 and shows readers the current state of the 2024 race. In doing so, he dispels much of the mystery behind electoral politics and challenges many traditional assumptions. An indispensable resource for political junkies!

Probably no feature of the American political system has been subject to more sustained criticism over the last twenty-five years than the process by which we choose our presidents. In Choosing Our Choices, Robert E. DiClerico and James W. Davis debate the question: should we retain the present, primary centered 'direct democracy' method in selecting presidential candidates or should we return to a representative decision-making process to nominate our candidates? This timely and thought-provoking text offers the reader a concise yet comprehensive analysis of the presidential nominating system, arguments for and against the current system, and supplemental documents and essays for further reading. Choosing Our Choices will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars interested in exploring how Americans choose their leaders.