Show THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE the following paper on the present system of electing a president is is an able criticism worthy of perusal and comes from the pen of a student of the brigham young college it was published in the college record from whose pages we take the liberty to reproduce it our present system of electing the president of tile the united states is open to severe criticism according to our method of electing this official it is possible that a very small minority of tho the popular vote of the whole country could legally elect the man of their choice aga against in st the will of the great majority to illustrate how bow that is possible let us take the extreme test suppose the people to be divided into two parties only and that there were no scattering votes votee the election returns for 1892 1802 show that votee were polled As in an example of what I 1 stated above ailiese these voters could be so arranged in in the states that if should vote for one man and 9 should vote for another the man receiving the would be legally elected at the first glance this may be doubted but upon investigation it will be found to be correct under tile the new based upon the census of 1890 there are electoral votes for I 1 president resi Oft of these liese votes 23 are necessary to a choice these votes are divided among the states according to their population new york for instance having C 36 ID 11 new york there are voters if a majority of the thesa 0 o were to vote solidly for one man and the remaining GGS were to vote for another tile the candidate fo whom the th majority voted would receive tile entire ag electoral votes and tha minority would not be represented at all in the E electoral lec toral collece colleas Col leee leac it is the samo same with all the states let all the people of illinois indiana iowa Ien lien kentucky tucky massachusetts michigan missouri new camphire Hamp hire new york ohio penn sylvania anil and texas lexas vota vot solidly foa the same candidate and that eliat candidate would carry tho the electoral votes of those states but on the other band handy let a bare majority in eiichii of tile the other 32 tates vote for another candidate can didat the latter would receive electoral votes enough to legally elect the latter candidate needs only to receive a majority in pach each of the states not enumerated above to carry the electoral vote of those states and this electoral vote is is sufficient to elect according to law by receiving 0 a rn majority ajor ity vote of these 32 states he be would have only 2378 of the popular vote while the candidate who received the entire vote of the 12 states mentioned and also the minority vote in the remaining 32 states would re receive acl i of the popular vote notwithstanding this enormous difference the candidate receiving the votes would be legally elected president of the united states he would receive out the electoral votes I 1 A B |