Download or read book Picking the President written by Eric Burin and published by . This book was released on 2017-02 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2016 presidential election has sparked an unprecedented interest in the Electoral College. In response to Donald Trump winning the presidency despite losing the popular vote, numerous individuals have weighed in with letters-to-the-editor, op-eds, blog posts, videos, and the like, and thanks to the revolution in digital communications, these items have reached an exceptionally wide audience. In short, never before have so many people had so much to say about the Electoral College. To facilitate and expand the conversation, Picking the President: Understanding the Electoral College offers brief essays that examine the Electoral College from different disciplinary perspectives, including philosophy, mathematics, political science, history, and pedagogy. Along the way, the essays address a variety of questions about the Electoral College: Why was it created? How has it changed over time? Who benefits from it? Is it just? How will future demographic patterns affect it? Should we alter or abolish the Electoral College, and if so, what should replace it? In exploring these matters, Picking the President enhances our understanding of one of America's most high-profile, momentous issues.
Download or read book Let the People Pick the President written by Jesse Wegman and published by All Points Books. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Wegman combines in-depth historical analysis and insight into contemporary politics to present a cogent argument that the Electoral College violates America’s ‘core democratic principles’ and should be done away with..." —Publishers Weekly The framers of the Constitution battled over it. Lawmakers have tried to amend or abolish it more than 700 times. To this day, millions of voters, and even members of Congress, misunderstand how it works. It deepens our national divide and distorts the core democratic principles of political equality and majority rule. How can we tolerate the Electoral College when every vote does not count the same, and the candidate who gets the most votes can lose? Twice in the last five elections, the Electoral College has overridden the popular vote, calling the integrity of the entire system into question—and creating a false picture of a country divided into bright red and blue blocks when in fact we are purple from coast to coast. Even when the popular-vote winner becomes president, tens of millions of Americans—Republicans and Democrats alike—find that their votes didn't matter. And, with statewide winner-take-all rules, only a handful of battleground states ultimately decide who will become president. Now, as political passions reach a boiling point at the dawn of the 2020 race, the message from the American people is clear: The way we vote for the only official whose job it is to represent all Americans is neither fair nor just. Major reform is needed—now. Isn't it time to let the people pick the president? In this thoroughly researched and engaging call to arms, Supreme Court journalist and New York Times editorial board member Jesse Wegman draws upon the history of the founding era, as well as information gleaned from campaign managers, field directors, and other officials from twenty-first-century Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns, to make a powerful case for abolishing the antiquated and antidemocratic Electoral College. In Let the People Pick the President he shows how we can at long last make every vote in the United States count—and restore belief in our democratic system.
Download or read book Picking the Vice President written by Elaine C. Kamarck and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Picking the Vice President Has Changed—and Why It Matters During the past three decades, two important things have changed about the U.S. vice presidency: the rationale for why presidential candidates choose particular running mates, and the role of vice presidents once in office. This is the first major book focusing on both of those elements, and it comes at a crucial moment in American history. Until 1992, presidential candidates tended to select running mates simply to “balance” the ticket, sometimes geographically, sometimes to guarantee victory in an must-carry state, sometimes ideologically, and sometimes for all three reasons. Bill Clinton changed that in 1992 when he selected Al Gore as his running mate, saying the experience and compatibility of the Tennessee senator would make him an ideal “partner” in governing. Gore's two immediate successors, Dick Cheney and Joe Biden, played similar roles under Presidents Bush and Obama. Mike Pence seems to also be following in that role as well, although the first draft of history on the Trump Administration is still being written. What enabled this change in the vice presidency was not so much the personal characteristics of recent vice presidents but instead changes in the presidential nomination system. The increased importance of primaries and the overwhelming need to raise money have diminished the importance of “balance” on the ticket and increased the importance of “partnership”—selecting a partner who can help the president govern. This book appears as Joe Biden prepares to choose his own running mate. No matter who wins the November 2020 elections, what Elaine Kamarck writes will be of interest to anyone following current affairs, students of American government, and journalists whose job will be to cover the next administration.
Download or read book No Way to Pick A President written by Jules Witcover and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-23 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the United States marks its first presidential election of a new century, Witcover shows us how professional mercenaries -- with little party loyalty and diminished political principles, driven by an insatiable need for money -- are poisoning public life. At the same time, politicians themselves have condoned and even encouraged these developments, responding to the demands of a media-driven age in which the press corps pursues its own quest for celebrity and financial reward. Sharp, revealing, and rich with anecdotes, No Way to Pick a President offers a wealth of presidential history, from the role of the vice president's office to campaign funds, television and the electoral college.
Download or read book Predicting the Next President written by Allan J. Lichtman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2024-07-01 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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!
Download or read book Selecting the President written by Charles C. Euchner and published by CQ-Roll Call Group Books. This book was released on 1992 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With material drawn from CQ's Guide to the presidency, delineates how the presidency came to be and has endured for two centuries, following the major developments that have shaped presidential power, and the struggles over the definition of authority that have resulted in institutional changes. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Election written by Dan Gutman and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2012-08-21 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fun, funny, and informative guide to the weird world of American politics How does the president get his job? How do people know who will win an election before everybody’s voted? Do the candidates hate each other? Dan Gutman takes on his strangest subject ever: the American political system. Reaching through history from the days of the founding fathers to today’s voting system, Gutman tackles complex subjects in a clear, easy-to-understand way. Even grown-ups will find something in here that they’ve never learned before. Politics are a crazy game, and with Dan Gutman teaching you the rules, you’re going to have a blast learning how to play.
Download or read book Choosing The President written by James David Barber and published by The American Assembly. This book was released on 1974 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Election Book written by Carolyn Jackson and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Find out the answers to all your questions about the presidential election race.
Download or read book Choosing the President written by League of Women Voters (U.S.) and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Reforming the Presidential Nomination Process written by Steven S. Smith and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2009-11-01 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2008 U.S. presidential campaign has provided a lifetime's worth of surprises. Once again, however, the nomination process highlighted the importance of organization, political prowess, timing, and money. And once again, it raised many hackles. The Democratic contest in particular generated many complaints—for example, it started too early, it was too long, and Super Tuesday was overloaded. This timely book synthesizes new analysis by premier political scientists into a cohesive look at the presidential nomination process—the ways in which it is broken and how it might be fixed. The contributors to Reforming the Presidential Nomination Process address different facets of the selection process, starting with a brief history of how we got to this point. They analyze the importance—and perceived unfairness—of the earliest primaries and discuss what led to record turnouts in 2008. What roles do media coverage and public endorsements play? William Mayer explains the "superdelegate" phenomenon and the controversy surrounding it; James Gibson and Melanie Springer evaluate public perceptions of the current process as well as possible reforms. Larry Sabato (A More Perfect Constitution) calls for a new nomination system, installed via constitutional amendment, while Tom Mann of Brookings opines on calls for reform that arose in 2008 and Daniel Lowenstein examines the process by which reforms may be adopted—or blocked.
Download or read book Selecting a President written by Eleanor Clift and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-05-22 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The debut of a brand-new civics series for high school seniors and college freshmen, that clearly, concisely and cleverly explains how the United States elects its president Selecting a President explains the nuts and bolts of our presidential electoral system while drawing on rich historical anecdotes from past campaigns. Among the world's many democracies, U.S. presidential elections are unique, where presidential contenders embark on a grueling, spectacular two-year journey that begins in Iowa and New Hampshire, and ends at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Modern presidential campaigns are a marked departure from the process envisioned by America's founders. Yet while they've evolved, many of the basic structures of our original electoral system remain in place—even as presidential elections have moved into the modern era with tools like Twitter and Facebook at their disposal—they must still compete in an election governed by rules and mechanisms conceived in the late eighteenth century. In this book, Clift and Spieler demonstrate that presidential campaigns are exciting, hugely important, disillusioning at times but also inspiring.
Download or read book Summary of Jesse Wegman s Let the People Pick the President written by Everest Media, and published by Everest Media LLC. This book was released on 2022-05-18T22:59:00Z with total page 31 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 On October 4, 1779, a group of radical revolutionaries gathered at Paddy Byrne’s Tavern in Philadelphia to drink and plot an attack. They had good reason to be upset. The city’s economy was in bad shape, and merchants were gouging their customers on essential goods. #2 The Fort Wilson Riot in Philadelphia in 1778 demonstrated to the founding fathers how fragile their new government was, and they began to fear that the people might destroy it. #3 The American electorate in 1787 was made up of wealthy, well-educated landowning white men. These were the framers’ beliefs about the American people, and they wanted to keep the government far away from them in order to protect the nation’s economy. #4 James Wilson was one of the main architects of our national charter, along with James Madison. He was a radical political philosopher who wanted to give more power to the people themselves.
Download or read book Do Running Mates Matter written by Christopher J. Devine and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2020-05-15 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American vice presidency, as the saying goes, “is not worth a bucket of warm spit.” Yet vice presidential candidates, many people believe, can make all the difference in winning—or losing—a presidential election. Is that true, though? Did Sarah Palin, for example, sink John McCain’s campaign in 2008? Did Joe Biden help Barack Obama win? Do running mates actually matter? In the first book to put this question to a rigorous test, Christopher J. Devine and Kyle C. Kopko draw upon an unprecedented range of empirical data to reveal how, and how much, running mates influence voting in presidential elections. Building on their previous work in The VP Advantage and evidence from over 200 statistical models spanning the 1952 to 2016 presidential elections, the authors analyze three pathways by which running mates might influence vote choice. First, of course, they test for direct effects, or whether evaluations of the running mate influence vote choice among voters in general. Next, they test for targeted effects—if, that is, running mates win votes among key subsets of voters who share their gender, religion, ideology, or geographic identity. Finally, the authors examine indirect effects—that is, whether running mates shape perceptions of the presidential candidate who selected them, which in turn influence vote choice. Here, in this last category, is where we see running mates most clearly influencing presidential voting—especially when it comes to their qualifications for holding office and taking over as president, if necessary. Picking a running mate from a key voting bloc probably won’t make a difference, the authors conclude. But picking an experienced, well-qualified running mate will make the presidential candidate look better to voters—and win some votes. With its wealth of data and expert analysis, this finely crafted study, the most comprehensive to date, finally provides clear answers to one of the most enduring questions in presidential politics: can the running mate make a difference in this election?
Download or read book All the President s Spin written by Ben Fritz and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2004-08-03 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Certainly all presidents and prime ministers have engaged in spin to a certain extent, but in the past the media - and the public - checked the extent to which our leaders were able to fudge the truth. However, President Bush has repeatedly used deception, told outright lies, and rewritten history to sell his policy agenda. And thanks to one of the most aggressive public relations teams ever assembled, he has been able to get away with it since he began his campaign. In the wake of September 11, the administration has taken its questionable conduct to a new level by attempting to intimidate critics and has tried to connect virtually every policy initiative to the war on terrorism. Bush has used the same tactics to mislead the public on a wide range of other major policy initiatives, from the environment to homeland security to Social Security - all with little scepticism from the media.
Download or read book Red State Blues written by Martha Bayne and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2018-06-01 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much has been made of the 2016 electoral flip of traditionally Democratic states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Ohio to tip Donald Trump into the presidency. Countless think pieces have explored this newfound exotic constituency of blue voters who swung red. But what about those who remain true blue? Red State Blues speaks to the lived experience of progressives, activists, and ordinary Democrats pushing back against simplistic narratives of the Midwest as "Trump Country." They've been there all along, and as the essays in this collection demonstrate, they're not leaving anytime soon. With contributions by journalist and scholar Sarah Kendzior, Kenyon College president Sean Decatur, Pittsburgh city councilman Dan Gilman, and more.
Download or read book Picking a President Or Any Other Elected Official written by Marty Schoenleber Jr and published by CrossBooks Publishing. This book was released on 2012-06 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: None of us wants the status quo when it comes to politics; that's why we have elections. Even so, there are few people in America satisfied with the candidates we are given year after year by either party for any governmental position. In Picking a President, author Marty Schoenleber, Jr. proposes a grand reimagining of the process. Examining the book of Proverbs and its wisdom, he proposes selecting candidates not by party affiliation, money raised, or experience but by character, integrity, vision, and justice. Picking a President highlights these qualities as the vital center of sound political leadership. This thirty-one-day devotional examines the counsel of Solomon to his son on how to rule well. For each chapter, verses are selected from Proverbs that speak directly to the issue of ruling well or to the character of the man or woman who desires to rule well. Each chapter also includes a prayer, questions for reflection or discussion, and a short anecdotal story about the difference one vote made in an election somewhere in America. Take a thirty-one day journey in Picking a President and allow your perspective to be challenged and perhaps changed.
