This brings up an important question: Why are voters denied the chance to vote for a president of one party and a vice president of the other? After all, voters often split their votes in other ways: between a president of one party and a House member or senator of the other; between federal representatives of one party and state representatives of the other. Why not let voters consider making Biden’s offhand comment during the primaries this spring — that he could envision serving as John McCain’s vice president — a reality?
In fact, nothing in the U.S. Constitution or in federal election law requires that voters in each state must choose between unified president/vice president party tickets. In early American history, the men serving in the top and second jobs came from opposing parties. In 1796, Thomas Jefferson served as John Adams’ vice president, even though the two bitter rivals represented and headed opposing parties. At the time, some even thought a “split” executive promoted checks and balances and was thus something to be embraced, not lamented.
For example, almost every state awards its electoral college votes on a winner-take-all basis rather than proportionally. So, if Barack Obama wins California 55% to 45%, he still gets 100% of the state’s electoral college votes — the biggest possible reward for taking California’s concerns and issues seriously during the campaign and in the future. Those few states that allocate electors proportionately are at a competitive disadvantage relative to the others.
But states could stop tying the vice president into the deal without changing the winner-take-all approach, so there wouldn’t be obvious harm to their relative influence. And even if a president resented serving with a vice president from an opposing party, why not leave it up to the voters whether to take that risk or avoid it, as they already do in deciding whether to split their tickets in other ways?
This suspiciously sounds like the now defunct Unity 08. I am sure the the LA Times knew that already when they wrote the opinion piece.
Would you want to be a Republican president if Hillary was elected vice-president? I wouldn’t, and I am not a Republican.
Good question and no I would not. But I think that if they ran separately for the offices of Pres and vp that it would make for a more interesting election season. Right it is damn boring. BTW, thanx for the visit and please come back again.
Very interesting… I can’t remember when we switched the system to the Pres-VP ticket by Party. Yes, I remember that back in the day, the runner-up in a presidential election became the VP. I think we may have changed that in the first half of the 19th C.? It would be something to consider… I know many Democrats who like McCain+Biden. There are many disappointed Democrats/Hillary supporters who have decided to back Palin, just because she has a vagina. Maybe they would’ve elected Obama with Palin?
In the election process what I really dislike is the inner-take-all, electoral college process. Personally, I think the current proportions of state population to electoral votes is generally “fair.” CA’s population is about 70 times that of WY, but CA gets 55 electoral votes and WY gets 1. It’s fair to skew it slightly towards the less populous states, because otherwise, NY, CA, and IL would always get their way. But instead of winner-take-all, I think they should disperse the electoral votes according to that state’s popular vote. Anyway, I know there’s been talk about this before and it’s not a “new” concept in any way, but I’m just complaining about it… 🙂
(I meant winner-take-all, of course, not “inner”)
The original design for the constitution did not account for political parties which was intentional. Many of the founders did not want them but guess what, parties formed anyways. VP used to be nothing more than a booby prize for the runner up. It’s safe to say things have changed.
On the electoral college thing, the electoral college is not the problem, the problem is how the votes are split (or lack of as the case may be). Splitting them on a prorated basis is one way. My favorite would be to have the votes split based on how each congressional district voted (with 2 of them being at large). We have the technology to do that now. Good luck in trying to get all 50 states to agree to break from tradition though.
culture–always a pleasure to hear from you and I agree with Terrant on this…it will virtually impossible to get all 50 states to agree on this or anything.
Hi Lobotero, and Terrant–Terrant made a point about splitting by district. That’s a great thought, great idea. But, yes, a good chunk of this country doesn’t like change, so it would be like pulling teeth to try to get that to fly in all 50.
(Lobotero, an aside — is your leg feeling better now?)
UNity o8 tried this…but they were just a shill for Bloomberg for president.