Government in the United States, National, State and Local

by James Wilford Garner

Qualifications of the President.—The Constitution requires that the President shall be a natural born citizen of the United States,[58] that he must have attained the age of thirty-five years, and must have been fourteen years a resident of the United States. The same qualifications are required of the Vice President.

The Presidential Term.—There was considerable discussion in the convention regarding the term of the President. It was first decided that the term should be seven years and the President made ineligible to a second term, but upon further consideration the convention decided to fix the term at four years and nothing was said in regard to reëligibility. The result is, the President may serve as many terms as the people may see fit to elect him. The following Presidents have been elected to two terms: Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Lincoln, Grant, Cleveland, McKinley, and Wilson.[59] Cleveland, after serving one term, was renominated by his party but was defeated by the Republican candidate. He was then nominated for the third time by his party and was elected. Washington declined a third term and his example has been followed by his successors. The precedent thus established, that the President shall serve only two terms, has become part of our unwritten constitution, and but two attempts have ever been made to break the custom.[60]

Mode of Election.—No question consumed so much of the time of the convention as that relating to the method of choosing the President. Various schemes were proposed. A few members favored election by the people; others urged election by Congress. Against the method of popular choice it was argued that the people were not competent to choose a chief magistrate for the entire country, and besides, under such a system, they would be influenced by demagogues and scheming politicians. Again, the tumults and disorders, the "heats and ferments" of a popular election would convulse the community to the breaking point. Against the method of election by Congress, it was urged that the President would be a mere creature or tool of that assembly and would be under the temptation of making promises or entering into bargains with influential members in order to secure an election. Moreover, such a method was contrary to the great principle upon which all the members were agreed, namely, that the three departments of the national government should be kept separate and independent of one another.

The clause as finally adopted provides that the President shall be chosen, not directly by the voters, but by electors to be appointed in each state in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct, each state to have as many electors as it has senators and representatives in Congress.

Breakdown of the Electoral Plan.—It was at first expected that the electors of the different states, composed of leading citizens presumably well acquainted with the qualifications of the candidates for the chief magistracy, would meet at the state capitals, discuss among themselves the strength and weaknesses of the several candidates, and then exercising their full judgment, cast their votes for the fittest. But the scheme quickly broke down in practice, and instead of a real choice by small bodies of men, we have a system which amounts to direct election by the masses of the voters, though the form of indirect election is still followed. As soon as political parties were thoroughly organized, the electors, who were intended to be men "capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the Presidential office," were reduced to the position of party puppets who no longer exercised their own judgment in choosing the President but merely registered, like automata, the will of their party. As Ex-President Harrison once remarked, an elector who should fail to vote for the nominee of his party would be the object of execration and in times of very high excitement might be the subject of a lynching.[61] So closely do the electors obey the will of their party that we always know at the close of election day, on Tuesday after the first Monday in November, when the electors themselves are chosen, who will be the next President, though in fact the electors do not meet in their respective states until the following January, formally to register the choice of the people.

Choosing Presidential Electors.—In the beginning the presidential electors of each state were chosen by the legislature, either by joint ballot of the two houses sitting together, or by concurrent vote. In the course of time, however, popular election of electors was introduced, South Carolina (1868) being the last state to choose its electors by the legislature.

Choice by General Ticket.—When the system of popular choice of electors was adopted, two different methods were followed: choice by districts, and choice on general ticket from the state at large; but by 1832 all the states except Maryland had adopted the general ticket method, and now there is no state which follows the district method.

Representatives in Congress, as we have seen, are elected by districts, and hence the delegation in Congress from a particular state is often divided between Democrats and Republicans. But not so with Presidential electors; usually the party in the majority in the state, however small the majority, chooses all the electors. Thus when the Democratic party carried New York by a majority of hardly more than 1,000 votes in 1884, the entire electoral vote was counted for Cleveland.[62]

Among the results of the rule which gives the entire electoral vote of the state to one of the candidates, notwithstanding the size of the vote polled by the other candidate, is that each party concentrates its efforts in the large "pivotal" states whose votes are decisive, and thereby bribery and fraud in such states are powerfully stimulated.

Candidates for the office of elector are nominated usually by the state conventions of each party. No senator or representative or any person holding an office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States is eligible to the office of elector. Congress, under the Constitution, has power to fix the day on which the electors shall be chosen, and it has fixed the day as Tuesday after the first Monday in November.