[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 6]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 8109-8110]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



  FENTON HIGH SCHOOL AND JEFFERSON MIDDLE SCHOOL ESSAY CONTEST WINNERS

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. HENRY J. HYDE

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, May 15, 2001

  Mr. HYDE. Mr. Speaker, each year I present a challenge to the 6th 
District high school seniors and to the students attending junior high. 
The challenge is an essay contest I sponsor in which I choose a topic 
and ask the student to write about it. The work is judged on 
originality, creativeness, cohesiveness, writing skills, including 
sentence and paragraph structure, and neatness. The topic for the 
Seniors this year was ``The Necessity of the Electoral College,'' and 
for the junior high students, I asked that they write about James 
Madison.
  I am very pleased to share with my colleagues the essays that won 
first place. In the senior category, the author of the winning entry is 
Jeremy Hawbaker who lives in Bensenville and attends Fenton High 
School. The first place winner in the junior high category is Keith 
Root of Elmhurst who attends Jefferson Middle School. I thoroughly 
enjoyed the writing skills of both these young students and am pleased 
to insert their essays in the Record for your enjoyment.

                 The Necessity of the Electoral College

                          (By Jeremy Hawbaker)

       In the wake of a highly controversial election, in which a 
     candidate won with less popular votes but more electoral 
     votes than the other candidate, the question of whether the 
     Electoral College should be abolished or not has come up. 
     Questions then arise around that. What exactly is the 
     purpose, the original purpose, the Founders put it in place 
     for? What would be the advantage of abolishing it in favor of 
     election by purely popular vote? What other method is there?
       The purpose of the Electoral College, as the Framers of the 
     Constitution made it, was that with this system, more 
     populated states would not be able to dominate over the less 
     populated states in the presidential elections. This was a 
     compromise made between those who favored power in the states 
     and those who favored the power in the people. This was also 
     a precautionary measure. The Founders created the United 
     States of America as a republic, not a democracy as many 
     would have one believe. They knew when they formed the nation 
     that a democracy could quickly lead to mob rule and 
     eventually tyranny, the farthest thing that they wanted 
     having just fought a war to rid themselves of the tyranny of 
     the British government. In a republic, there would be a 
     government of law that would protect the rights of an 
     individual. As James Madison wrote, many important issues 
     ``are too often decided, not according to the rules of 
     justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the 
     superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.'' 
     In other words, people too often vote the way in which they 
     are misled by politicians who claim to have the people's best 
     interests in mind. Decisions are made by emotion rather than 
     intellect. Instead, in the republic that America is 
     currently, decisions are made by close deliberation. The 
     Founding Fathers also knew their history. They were aware 
     that unlimited power could not be trusted to anyone, 
     including the people. As constitutional scholar Dan Smoot 
     pointed out, ``they devised a system to control political 
     power by dispersing it and balancing it so that too much 
     power could not be concentrated in one place.'' The Electoral 
     College system was also made to protect the people from 
     despots. Once again, from their knowledge of history, the 
     Framers knew that in past democracies in which leaders were 
     chosen by the people alone tyrants had quickly arisen. For 
     example. Caesar, elected by the people with promises of more 
     property, quickly seized power. As Benjamin Franklin put it, 
     ``There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he 
     could, follow the example of Pharaoh, get first at the 
     people's money, then all their lands, and then make them and 
     their children servants forever.'' This has also happened 
     since the Founders. One of the more obvious examples is that 
     of Adolf Hilter who was elected by a democratic election. 
     Hilter, after becoming Chancellor of Germany, rapidly pooled 
     up as much power as possible and abolished the independence 
     of the German states. This was not because this is what the 
     German people wanted. They were unfortunately ignorant of 
     what Hilter turly wanted and instead listened to his promises 
     of security and greatness. Perhaps if such an institution 
     such as the Electoral College existed in Germany this would 
     not have happened. As Fisher Ames, one of America's first 
     congressmen aptly put it. ``Every step . . . towards a more 
     complete unmixed democracy is an advance towards destruction: 
     it is treading where the ground is treacherous and excavated 
     for an explosion. Liberty has never lasted long in a 
     democracy; nor has it ever ended in anything better than 
     despotism.''
       Many people today feel however that popular vote is a much 
     better way of determining who the next president should be. 
     What are the advantages of this then? Or rather should I say 
     what are the disadvantages? One possible advantage is that by 
     abolishing the electoral College, the election process is 
     simplified. The principle of ``one person, one vote'' is 
     upheld. However, there are many disadvantages. One problem 
     with this method is that it worsens the problems associated 
     with a two-party system. ``Split votes'' become a serious 
     problem in that if two candidates divide the vote of those 
     who agree with them, a dissimilar third candidate would 
     receive the plurality of the

[[Page 8110]]

     votes even if the electorate sides more with the pair. A 
     larger problem though is that this would require an 
     amendment, an amendment that would most likely never be able 
     to be passed. An amendment requires three-fourths of the 
     states to support it. In an amendment such as this, most 
     states would lose their influence in presidential politics. 
     Few states would endorse this.
       What then is there to do? I suggest retaining the Electoral 
     College but reforming it. Instead of the ``winner-takes-all`` 
     system that the Electoral College runs under now, electors 
     should instead be chosen by congressional districts, with two 
     electors-at-large for the senators in each state. With this 
     idea, candidates would receive an electoral vote from each 
     district they win. This would much more accurately reflect 
     popular mandate. An advantage of this is that it would not 
     take a Constitutional amendment. States can already do this 
     if they wish, a couple of states already do. In this last 
     election, the results would have been much more simplified as 
     well. Bush won counties with an aggregate population of 143 
     million, compared to the 127 million that Gore would have 
     won. This system would preserve then the weighting of votes 
     in favor of the less populous states instead of letting the 
     more populous states totally dominate over presidential 
     elections.
       To keep our country secure and free then, the Electoral 
     College should by all means stay as part of our government. 
     However, I do believe that the process should be looked at 
     due to the amount of controversy recently surrounding it.

                                  ____
                                  

             James Madison, the Father of the Constitution

                            (By Keith Root)

       James Madison, the president of the United States from 
     1809-1817, is known today as the Father of the Constitution 
     because of his major role in the Constitutional Convention. 
     His many other accomplishments include serving as Thomas 
     Jefferson's secretary of state from 1801-1809 and sponsoring 
     the Bill of Rights.
       James Madison was born on March 16, 1751 in Port Conway, 
     Virginia. He was the son and heir to a wealthy planter. He 
     received a full education, and graduated from the College of 
     New Jersey (which is now Princeton University) in 1771. In 
     1776, he was elected to the Virginia Convention, a convention 
     that was called to urge independence from Britain. He was 
     elected in 1780 to the Continental Congress, of which he was 
     the youngest member. Despite this potential drawback, he 
     gained much respect and rose to a position of leadership. 
     During his term he worked with Alexander Hamilton 
     (unsuccessfully) to give Congress the power to tax and 
     regulate trade.
       Madison was instrumental in persuading Congress to revise 
     the Articles of Confederation (the current constitution at 
     that time) and, ultimately, create the Constitution that we 
     have today. The Constitutional Convention met in May 1787 in 
     Philadelphia. Madison played a huge role. He drafted the 
     Virginia Plan, the basis for the new government's structure. 
     He also created the checks and balances system, which insures 
     that none of the branches of government become too powerful. 
     Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay created the 
     Federalist Papers, essays that defended the Constitution 
     against people who feared a strong central government. 
     Madison then shepherded the new Constitution through the 
     ratification process through 1787 and 1788.
       Madison was elected to the House of Representatives in 
     1789, where he sponsored the Bill of Rights, the first ten 
     amendments to the Constitution. He broke with Alexander 
     Hamilton and the Federalist Party in 1791 and joined Thomas 
     Jefferson and James Monroe in creating the Democratic-
     Republican, or Jeffersonian Republican, Party. In 1794, 
     Madison married Dolley Payne Todd, who was a widow.
       In 1801 Madison was appointed secretary of state under 
     Thomas Jefferson, where he failed to persuade the British to 
     stop interfering with American trade. In 1809, he ran in the 
     presidential election and defeated Charles Pickney, the 
     Federalist Candidate with 122 electoral votes to 47. He 
     repealed the embargo by which Thomas Jefferson (who was 
     President before him) tried to avoid war with Europe by 
     banning trade with them. (The major European powers were at 
     war themselves.) However, this didn't stop tensions between 
     Britain and America. Madison declared the War of 1812 on June 
     12. In 1814, Madison replaced Secretary of War John Armstrong 
     (who wasn't managing the war very well) with James Monroe 
     when Washington was captured. A peace treaty was signed in 
     Belgium in December 1814, but it didn't solve any of the 
     outstanding issues between the U.S. and Britain.
       After the war, Madison chartered a national bank and 
     negotiated an agreement (called the Rush-Bagot Agreement) for 
     demilitarization of the frontier between the U.S. and Canada. 
     However, this agreement wasn't ratified until Madison had 
     left office.
       When Madison left office, he retired to his estate in 
     Orange County, Virginia. He avoided further participation in 
     politics, and helped Thomas Jefferson found the University of 
     Virginia in 1826. Ten years later, at his estate, James 
     Madison died. That night, American lost one of the most 
     important men in its development as a country.

     

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