Voting: It’s the law, but it’s not your constitutional right

Today, the American people go to the polls to elect a president. Yet many do not realize their… Today, the American people go to the polls to elect a president. Yet many do not realize their right to vote for the president does not appear in that most cherished document of democracy: the Constitution.

Article II of the Constitution gives states the authority to appoint electors to the Electoral College. On Election Day, citizens vote for the electors, who then elect the president.

But at no point in Article II, or in any subsequent amendment, does it dictate that citizens have the right to vote for those electors. This right is enshrined under Title 3 of the United States Code, which is only a law. There is no Constitutional provision.

According to the Constitution, a state can choose to hold elections, but it is not bound to.

Chris W. Bonneau, a political science professor at Pitt, explained, “Electors in each state can do what they want; there isn’t anything binding them.”

Bonneau added that state legislators could constitutionally decide elections by a coin toss.

“But,” he said, “it is inconceivable they would do it. It is politically impossible.”

Furthermore, there is no law, constitutional or otherwise, that binds electors to the outcome of the popular vote.

Richie Robb, an eight-term Republican mayor of South Charleston, West Virginia, is one of five electors in his state. He has publicly stated in recent weeks that he is not sure he will vote for President George W. Bush, whatever happens at the polls. Robb has also said he was unimpressed with the Democratic nominee, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

If Robb refuses to vote at all, as he has said he might, he would find himself under intense pressure from the White House.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said.

One possible situation may arise if the election, as every poll suggests, is too close to call: a tie.

Each candidate may split the 538 electors exactly in half. According to a computer analysis quoted in The Washington Post, there are 33 different permutations that could make this happen.

Thomas Schaller, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, said a tie remains “the rarest of outcomes.”

If such an event occurs, warned Schaller, “look for stark-raving mad chaos for about a month.”

A draw in the Electoral College, after extended legal wrangling between the two parties, would throw the outcome to the House of Representatives, currently dominated by Republicans.

If the election of 2000 is repeated and Kerry wins the popular vote, as Al Gore did, the decision to award the election to Bush may trigger much protest.

“It would be a constitutional crisis,” Schaller said.

An increased number of states have introduced early voting schemes, so an untold number of votes cast by people who have died since casting them will be counted.

Millions of voters across the country have exercised their right to vote early, and it may be a matter of weeks before information of the deceased reaches local officials.

Yet the issue of the dead voting may be more than an Election Day quirk.

In Florida alone, more than 1.8 million people have voted early or cast absentee ballots during the last two weeks. Trouble could arise from the question of how many of these people will still be alive on Nov. 2.

On average, 455 people of voting-age die every day in Florida. Considering that the 2000 presidential election was decided by only 537 votes, the dead may in fact represent a considerably important voting bloc.