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116 Pol. Sci. Q. 1 (2001-2002)

handle is hein.journals/pclscceqry116 and id is 1 raw text is: Editor's Opinion: Why Americans Deserve a Constitutional Right to Vote for Presidential Electors DEMETRIOS JAMES CARALEY Americans deserve the constitutional right to vote for president. We do not have it now. Last year's presidential election showed that our Con- stitution should be amended to declare explicitly that every citizen of requisite age has a constitutional right to vote for presidential electors and that the popu- lar vote in each state determines the allocation of electoral votes. This kind of amendment would retain the electoral vote system of choosing the president and not alter the balance of power between large and small states, among re- gions, or between parties. Political scientists, constitutional law experts, and other careful readers were stunned to read in the U.S. Supreme Court's Bush v. Gore majority opin- ion the declaration that the individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for President unless and until the state legislature chooses statewide election.' All of us knew that was literally true in the origi- nal 1787 constitutional language. But the actuality since Andrew Jackson's day was that state legislatures had enfranchised essentially all white, adult, male citizens to vote for presidential electors.2 Then various constitutional amend- ments prohibited discrimination in voting on the basis of race, gender, or age above eighteen. Most Americans who even thought about it thus assumed that the long-term de facto right to vote for presidential electors had become through custom and tradition a de jure right and was sufficient to make our 'George W. Bush and Richard Cheney, Petitioners v. Albert Gore, Jr. et al., 12 December 2000. 2 The exceptions were South Carolina, which held out until 1852, and Florida, which in 1868 briefly went back to having the legislature appoint electors. DEMETRIOS JAMES CARALEY, the editor of Political Science Quarterly, is professor of political science and the Janet Robb Professor of Social Sciences at Barnard College and the Graduate Faculty of Columbia University. Political Science Quarterly Volume 116 Number 1 2001 1

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