Read Presidential Lottery: The Reckless Gamble in Our Electoral System Page 18


  Section 5. The Congress shall prescribe by law the time, place, and manner in which the results of such elections shall be ascertained and declared.

  Section 6. If, at the time fixed for the counting of the certified vote totals from the respective States, the presidential candidate who would have been entitled to election as President shall have died, the vice presidential candidate entitled to election as Vice President shall be declared elected President.

  The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death or withdrawal of any candidate or candidates for President and Vice President and for the case of the death of both the President-elect and Vice President-elect and, further, the Congress may by law provide for the case of a tie.

  Section 7. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

  Section 8. This article shall take effect on the 1st day of May following its ratification.

  APPENDIX C

  THE BANZHAF STUDIES

  1. THE AUTOMATIC PLAN

  2. THE PROPORTIONAL PLAN

  3. THE DISTRICT PLAN

  4. DIRECT POPULAR VOTE

  APPENDIX D

  APPENDIX E

  PENNSYLVANIA ELECTORAL COLLEGE PROCEDURE

  The Order of Business to be followed at the convening of the electors on Monday, December 16, 1968, at 12:00 o’clock noon in the Hall of the House of Representatives in Harrisburg will be as follows:

  1. Call to order by the Secretary of the Commonwealth

  2. Invocation

  3. Address by Secretary of the Commonwealth

  4. Appointment of temporary officers by the Secretary of the Commonwealth (Parliamentarian, Secretary, Sergeant-at-Arms)

  5. Communications presented from Governor regarding certified lists of persons elected at General Election which are tabled

  6. Resolution presented to have communications read

  7. Communications taken from table and read

  8. Roll call of electors

  9. Resolution presented requesting a Judge to administer oath of office to electors

  10. Oath administered

  11. Election of a President of the Electoral College (by resolution)

  12. Address by President

  13. Announcement of electors who did not answer when roll was called

  14. Resolution to fill vacancies in electoral college (if any)

  15. Resolution to notify Governor of action taken to fill vacancies (if any)

  16. Communication from Governor acknowledging receipt of notification regarding filling of vacancies (if any)

  17. Oath administered to electors elected by the college to fill vacancies (if any)

  18. Election of a Vice President by resolution

  19. Permanent officers appointed by resolution (Secretary, Parliamentarian, Chief Sergeant-at-Arms, Stenographic Reporter, Chief Page and Page

  20. Resolution regarding procedures (the procedure usually follows the preceding college)

  21. Resolution authorizing the President of the Electoral College to appoint a committee to inform the Governor that the Electoral College is organized and to invite him to address the college

  22. Introduction of distinguished guests (if any)

  23. Committee to inform Governor reports and escorts Governor to the college

  24. Address by Governor

  25. Committee escorts Governor to his office

  26. Resolution to proceed to ballot for President of the United States

  27. Appointment of tellers (3) by the President of the Electoral College

  28. Balloting for President of the United States One ballot for President of the United States is distributed by the tellers to each elector. Each elector writes the name of the person whom he or she votes for the Office of President of the United States on the ballot. As the secretary calls the name of the elector he or she comes forward and deposits his or her ballot in the ballot box, marked with the name of his or her choice for President of the United States.

  29. Report of balloting by tellers to the President of the Electoral College

  30. President of the Electoral College announces results of balloting for President of the United States

  31. President of the Electoral College asks Vice President of the Electoral College to preside during balloting for Vice President of the United States

  32. Address by Vice President of the Electoral College

  33. Balloting for Vice President of the United States (same procedure as for President of the United States)

  34. Report of balloting by tellers to the Vice President of the Electoral College

  35. Vice President of the Electoral College announces the result of the balloting for Vice President of the United States

  36. Signing of Certificate of Election of President and Vice President of the United States by the electors Six certificates of election are placed on a table in the front of the Hall of the House of Representatives. As the secretary calls the roll each elector comes to the front of the House and signs the six certificates. The disposition of these certificates are explained later.

  37. Resolution for appointment of a committee to see that the list of Electors and certificates of votes cast for President and Vice President of the United States are enclosed in separate envelopes and that each is sealed, directed, certified and signed.

  38. Resolution appointing one of the electors to take in charge one of the packages containing one list of the Electors originally elected, one certificate of the election filling vacancies in the Electoral College, if any, and one certificate of the votes cast for President and Vice President of the United States, directed to the President of the United States Senate in Washington, D. C., by delivering the same to the Postmaster at the City of Harrisburg, and to have the same registered and mailed.

  39. Resolution appointing one of the electors to take in charge one of the packages containing two lists of the Electors originally elected, two certificates of the election filling vacancies in the Electoral College, if any, and two certificates of the votes cast for President and Vice President of the United States, to be delivered to the Secretary of the Commonwealth, one of which shall be held subject to the order of the President of the United States Senate, the other to be preserved by the Secretary of the Commonwealth for one year and shall be a part of the public records of his office and shall be open to public inspection. The resolution also provides for the filing of the proceedings of the Electoral College with the Secretary of the Commonwealth.

  40. Resolution appointing one of the Electors to take in charge one package containing two lists of Electors originally elected, two certificates of election filling vacancies in the Electoral College, if any, and two certificates of the votes cast for President and Vice President of the United States, which shall be for-warded by registered mail, through the Postmaster of Harrisburg, to the Administrator of General Services of the United States on the day following the meeting of the Electoral College.

  41. Resolution appointing one of the Electors to take in charge one package containing one list of the electors originally selected, one certificate of the election filling vacancies in the electoral college, if any, and one certificate of the votes cast for the President and Vice President of the United States, and forward the same by registered mail through the Postmaster at Harrisburg, to the Chief Judge of the District Court of the United States for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.

  42. President of the Electoral College requests the persons appointed pursuant to the foregoing resolutions dealing with the disposition of the certificates to meet immediately after adjournment with the Secretary and Assistant Secretary for further instructions

  43. Resolution appointing three Electors as a Committee on Accounts and Expenses

  44. Resolution ordering the publication of the proceedings of the Electoral College. Said publication to be delivered to and distributed by the Secretary of the Commonwealth

  45. Resolution thanking the officers
of the College

  46. Closing remarks by the President of the Electoral College

  47. Resolution for adjournment

  48. Benediction

  49. Adjournment

  If the certificate of electoral votes is not received by the President of the United States Senate or by the Administrator of General Services by the fourth Wednesday in December after the meeting of the state’s electors, this falling on Christmas Day this year, the President of the United States Senate or, in his absence, the Administrator of General Services must ask the Secretary of the Commonwealth to send these documents. Upon receipt of such request, the Secretary of the Commonwealth must immediately transmit the documents to the President of the United States Senate in Washington.

  When the President of the U. S. Senate or the Administrator of General Services makes his request to the Secretary of the Commonwealth, he (the President of the U. S. Senate or the Administrator of General Services) must also send a special messenger to the district judge, who has custody of one certificate of the votes. The district judge must forthwith give that certificate to the messenger.

  To

  John C. Calhoun

  His fierce integrity was an inspiration

  His wrongheadedness, a lesson

  BY JAMES A. MICHENER

  Tales of the South Pacific

  The Fires of Spring

  Return to Paradise

  The Voice of Asia

  The Bridges at Toko-Ri

  Sayonara

  The Floating World

  The Bridge at Andau

  Hawaii

  Report of the County Chairman

  Caravans

  The Source

  Iberia

  Presidential Lottery

  The Quality of Life

  Kent State: What Happened and Why

  The Drifters

  A Michener Miscellany: 1950–1970

  Centennial

  Sports in America

  Chesapeake

  The Covenant

  Space

  Poland

  Texas

  Legacy

  Alaska

  Journey

  Caribbean

  The Eagle and the Raven

  Pilgrimage

  The Novel

  James A. Michener’s Writer’s Handbook

  Mexico

  Creatures of the Kingdom

  Recessional

  Miracle in Seville

  This Noble Land: My Vision for America

  The World Is My Home

  with A. Grove Day

  Rascals in Paradise

  with John Kings

  Six Days in Havana

  About the Author

  JAMES A. MICHENER, one of the world’s most popular writers, was the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Tales of the South Pacific, the best-selling novels Hawaii, Texas, Chesapeake, The Covenant, and Alaska, and the memoir The World Is My Home. Michener served on the advisory council to NASA and the International Broadcast Board, which oversees the Voice of America. Among dozens of awards and honors, he received America’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1977, and an award from the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities in 1983 for his commitment to art in America. Michener died in 1997 at the age of ninety.

  Read on for an excerpt from James A. Michener’s

  Hawaii

  I

  FROM THE

  BOUNDLESS DEEP

  MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS OF YEARS AGO, WHEN THE CONTINENTS were already formed and the principal features of the earth had been decided, there existed, then as now, one aspect of the world that dwarfed all others. It was a mighty ocean, resting uneasily to the east of the largest continent, a restless ever-changing, gigantic body of water that would later be described as pacific.

  Over its brooding surface immense winds swept back and forth, whipping the waters into towering waves that crashed down upon the world’s seacoasts, tearing away rocks and eroding the land. In its dark bosom, strange life was beginning to form, minute at first, then gradually of a structure now lost even to memory. Upon its farthest reaches birds with enormous wings came to rest, and then flew on.

  Agitated by a moon stronger then than now, immense tides ripped across this tremendous ocean, keeping it in a state of torment. Since no great amounts of sand had yet been built, the waters where they reached shore were universally dark, black as night and fearful.

  Scores of millions of years before man had risen from the shores of the ocean to perceive its grandeur and to venture forth upon its turbulent waves, this eternal sea existed, larger than any other of the earth’s features, vaster than the sister oceans combined, wild, terrifying in its immensity and imperative in its universal role.

  How utterly vast it was! How its surges modified the very balance of the earth! How completely lonely it was, hidden in the darkness of night or burning in the dazzling power of a younger sun than ours.

  At recurring intervals the ocean grew cold. Ice piled up along its extremities, and so pulled vast amounts of water from the sea, so that the wandering shoreline of the continents sometimes jutted miles farther out than before. Then, for a hundred thousand years, the ceaseless ocean would tear at the exposed shelf of the continents, grinding rocks into sand and incubating new life.

  Later, the fantastic accumulations of ice would melt, setting cold waters free to join the heaving ocean, and the coasts of the continents would lie submerged. Now the restless energy of the sea deposited upon the ocean bed layers of silt and skeletons and salt. For a million years the ocean would build soil, and then the ice would return; the waters would draw away; and the land would lie exposed. Winds from the north and south would howl across the empty seas and lash stupendous waves upon the shattering shore. Thus the ocean continued its alternate building and tearing down.

  Master of life, guardian of the shorelines, regulator of temperatures and heaving sculptor of mountains, the great ocean existed.

  Millions upon millions of years before man had risen upon earth, the central areas of this tremendous ocean were empty, and where famous islands now exist nothing rose above the rolling waves. Of course, crude forms of life sometimes moved through the deep, but for the most part the central ocean was marked only by enormous waves that arose at the command of moon and wind. Dark, dark, they swept the surface of the empty sea, falling only upon themselves terrible and puissant and lonely.

  Then one day, at the bottom of the deep ocean, along a line running two thousand miles from northwest to southeast, a rupture appeared in the basalt rock that formed the ocean’s bed. Some great fracture of the earth’s basic structure had occurred, and from it began to ooze a white-hot, liquid rock. As it escaped from its internal prison, it came into contact with the ocean’s wet and heavy body. Instantly, the rock exploded, sending aloft through the 19,000 feet of ocean that pressed down upon it columns of released steam.

  Upward, upward, for nearly four miles they climbed, those agitated bubbles of air, until at last upon the surface of the sea they broke loose and formed a cloud. In that instant, the ocean signaled that a new island was building. In time it might grow to become an infinitesimal speck of land that would mark the great central void. No human beings then existed to celebrate the event. Perhaps some weird and vanished flying thing spied the escaping steam and swooped down to inspect it; more likely the roots of this future island were born in darkness and great waves and brooding nothingness.

  For nearly forty million years, an extent of time so vast that it is meaningless, only the ocean knew that an island was building in its bosom, for no land had yet appeared above the surface of the sea. For nearly forty million years, from that extensive rupture in the ocean floor, small amounts of liquid rock seeped out, each forcing its way up through what had escaped before, each contributing some small portion to the accumulation that was building on the floor of the sea. Sometimes a thousand years, or ten thousand, would silently pass before any new er
uption of material would take place. At other times gigantic pressures would accumulate beneath the rupture and with unimaginable violence rush through the existing apertures, throwing clouds of steam miles above the surface of the ocean. Waves would be generated which would circle the globe and crash upon themselves as they collided twelve thousand miles away. Such an explosion, indescribable in its fury, might in the end raise the height of the subocean island a foot.

  But for the most part, the slow constant seepage of molten rock was not violently dramatic. Layer upon layer of the earth’s vital core would creep out, hiss horribly at the cold sea water, and then slide down the sides of the little mountains that were forming. Building was most sure when the liquid rock did not explode into minute ashy fragments, but cascaded viscously down the sides of the mountains, for this bound together what had gone before, and established a base for what was to come.

  How long ago this building took place, how infinitely long ago! For nearly forty million years the first island struggled in the bosom of the sea, endeavoring to be born as observable land. For nearly forty million submerged years its subterranean volcano hissed and coughed and belched and spewed forth rock, but it remained nevertheless hidden beneath the dark waters of the restless sea, to whom it was an insignificant irritation, a small climbing pretentious thing of no consequence.

  And then one day, at the northwest end of the subocean rupture, an eruption of liquid rock occurred that was different from any others that had preceded. It threw forth the same kind of rock, with the same violence, and through the same vents in the earth’s core. But this time what was thrown forth reached the surface of the sea. There was a tremendous explosion as the liquid rock struck water and air together. Clouds of steam rose miles into the air. Ash fell hissing upon the heaving waves. Detonations shattered the air for a moment and then echoed away in the immensity of the empty wastes.