POLI 309                                                                                                                                      10/20/06

RULES FOR GAMES THAT WERE NEVER PLAYED

            Make sure you can fully and accurately describe how the framers’ Presidential selection system (including selection of the Vice President) would work in all contingencies. In class, we will work with these numbers: 13 states with a total of 65 seats in the House of Representatives (as given by the temporary apportionment specified in the Constitution). (Note: these numbers were never actually used in a Presidential election, because North Carolina and Rhode Island had not ratified the Constitution at the time of the first election in 1789 and, prior to the 1792 election, Vermont and Kentucky had been admitted to the union and the apportionment bill following the Census of 1790 expanded the size of the House to 120.)

            Let us consider abstractly (through “thought experiments”) how the variants of the original Electoral College voting rule might work under varying circumstances.

            First, the Electoral College voting rule could have been a standard single vote system, or an optional double vote system, or a mandatory double-vote system (the actual provision). [It could also have been a full-fledged Approval Voting system.] Second, the Vice President could have been separately elected [or the office not created] or the Presidential runner-up becomes Vice President (the actual provision).

            Remember that the Framer’s Presidential selection system was intended to operate in a non-partisan environment. We might then distinguish among three types of potential Presidential candidates for the Elector College to choose among: (i) a factional candidate (or “favorite son”), who is intensely supported by a single state (or a couple of adjacent states) and has little support elsewhere; (ii) a sectional candidate, who is strongly supported by a large region or section of the country but has little or no support in other sections, and (iii) a national candidate, who has considerable (perhaps “second preference”) support throughout the country.

            Given these different candidate types, we can consider the operation of the different Electoral College voting rules given different configurations of candidates:

            (i)        a number of factional and/or sectional candidates;

            (ii)       a number of factional and/or sectional candidates and one or two national candidates;

            (iii)      two national candidates and few if any other candidates; and

            (iv)      three or more national candidates and few if any other candidates.

            In the event the Vice President is the runner-up in the Presidential voting, there is the further question as to candidates will “team up” in (prospective) Presidential/Vice-Presidential pairs.