The First Four Elections

2020 ◽  
pp. 16-26
Author(s):  
Edward B. Foley
Keyword(s):  
New Hampshire ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Electoral College ◽  
Majority Party

By the time the Jeffersonians redesigned the Electoral College in 1803, they had the experience of four elections, the equivalent of experiencing the elections of 2004 through 2016. During these four elections, the states experimented with different methods for appointing electors. Most common was direct legislative appointment of electors. Some states used district-based systems in which the voters in a district chose an elector. Only a few states held statewide elections to choose all of a state’s electors. By 1796 two-party competition had developed between Federalists and Jeffersonians, and states used methods of appointing electors that would favor the majority party in each state. Massachusetts and New Hampshire explicitly required that an elector receive a majority of votes to be appointed; otherwise, a runoff was necessary for appointment. New Hampshire experimented with both popular and legislative runoffs, while Massachusetts only used legislative runoffs.

Presidential Elections and Majority Rule

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward B. Foley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Electoral College ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Federal Structure

The Electoral College governing America today was adopted by Thomas Jefferson’s supporters, after the 1800 election almost derailed his presidency. The Jeffersonians were motivated by majority rule. Given the emergence of two-party competition between Federalists and themselves, the Jeffersonians intended the Electoral College to award the presidency to the majority party. Given the federal structure of the United States, they envisioned the Electoral College as implementing a compound form of majority rule: a candidate would win by amassing a majority of electoral votes from states where the candidate’s party was in the majority.

scholarly journals Party Competition, Personal Votes, and Strategic Disloyalty in the U.S. States

2020 ◽  
pp. 106591292095321
Author(s):  
Richard Burke ◽  
Justin H. Kirkland ◽  
Jonathan B. Slapin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
State Legislators ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Strong Incentive ◽  
Majority Control ◽  
Party Members ◽  
The U.S

Legislators will sometimes vote against their party’s position on roll-call votes to differentiate themselves from the party mainstream and to accrue a “personal vote.” Research suggests that the use of rebellion to generate a personal vote is more common (1) among majority party members and (2) among ideological extremists. But these majority party extremists only have a strong incentive to rebel in situations where the accrual of a personal vote is electorally useful. In this manuscript, we evaluate variation in rebellion rates of state legislators in the United States conditional on ideological extremism and majority control. Using donation-based measures of ideology and roll call–based measures of party loyalty over a twenty-year period across more than 30,000 legislators, we find that when legislators have little incentive to differentiate themselves from their parties, this “strategic” party disloyalty among majority party ideological extremists is limited. However, when legislators have strong incentives to craft a personal vote, ideological extremists defect from their party more often than their moderate counterparts. In particular, we find greater evidence for this type of strategic party disloyalty in states with high intra-party competition and low inter-party competition and less evidence in states with high inter-party competition.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 169-178
Author(s):  
Edward B. Foley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Civic Culture ◽  
Electoral College ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Winner Take All ◽  
Take All

Election College reform should be considered in the context of overall concerns about American democracy. Civic culture is essential, as is strengthening democratic institutions. While the United States must address other institutional weaknesses, including gerrymandering, the power of the presidency requires urgent attention to the current deficiency of the Electoral College. The problem is that plurality winner-take-all permits the kind of accident that occurred in 1844, where the winner is not the candidate preferred by a majority of voters in enough states for an Electoral College majority. Insofar as this kind of accident may have happened again in 2016, recognizing this institutional problem requires a different analysis and solution than if a majority of Americans want to elect a president with anti-democratic tendencies. Currently, there is a mismatch between America’s expectation of two-party competition and the multicandidate reality of contemporary presidential elections. Majority rule is necessary to realign reality and expectations.

The Jeffersonian Electoral College in the Twentieth Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 89-109
Author(s):  
Edward B. Foley
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Electoral College ◽  
System Operating ◽  
Independent Candidates

For most of the twentieth century, including the 80-year period between 1912 and 1992, the existence of third-party or independent candidates did not prevent the Electoral College from producing majoritarian results consistent with the expectations of its Jeffersonian architects for how two-party competition was supposed to work. 1912 was anomalous for its three-way split among two Republican presidents, one incumbent and one former, running against the Democratic nominee; but its outcome was not clearly different from what the Jeffersonian system, operating properly, would have produced. 1992 involved another three-way split—among Bush, Clinton, and Perot—with a result that is uncertain from a Jeffersonian perspective, since it is debatable what the outcome would have been if there had been runoffs in the states to see which candidate was preferred by a majority. The century ended with an election, 2000, in which the system clearly malfunctioned; Nader’s presence masked Gore’s majority.

Malpractice & Negligence: State Supreme Courts Limit Therapists’ Duties to Third Parties

1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-205
Author(s):  
Megan Cleary
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Child Sexual Abuse ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
New Hampshire ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Recovered Memories ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Repressed Memory ◽  
University Of Colorado

In recent years, the law in the area of recovered memories in child sexual abuse cases has developed rapidly. See J.K. Murray, “Repression, Memory & Suggestibility: A Call for Limitations on the Admissibility of Repressed Memory Testimony in Abuse Trials,” University of Colorado Law Review, 66 (1995): 477-522, at 479. Three cases have defined the scope of liability to third parties. The cases, decided within six months of each other, all involved lawsuits by third parties against therapists, based on treatment in which the patients recovered memories of sexual abuse. The New Hampshire Supreme Court, in Hungerford v. Jones, 722 A.2d 478 (N.H. 1998), allowed such a claim to survive, while the supreme courts in Iowa, in J.A.H. v. Wadle & Associates, 589 N.W.2d 256 (Iowa 1999), and California, in Eear v. Sills, 82 Cal. Rptr. 281 (1991), rejected lawsuits brought by nonpatients for professional liability.

A Unified Theory of Party Competition

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
James F. Adams ◽  
Samuel Merrill III ◽  
Bernard Grofman
Keyword(s):  
Party Competition ◽  
Unified Theory
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document