IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/publus/v32y2002i4p71-90.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What Role Does the “Federalism Bonus” Play in Presidential Selection?

Author

Listed:
  • Randall E. Adkins
  • Kent A. Kirwan

Abstract

The conflicting outcome of the electoral and popular votes in the 2000 presidential election provoked calls to abolish or alter the electoral college. One prominent criticism is that the institution distorts election outcomes by providing disproportionate influence to small states. If each state receives a number of presidential electors equal to that states' number of members in the U.S. House of Representatives plus the two senators, then the “federalism bonus” represents the two electoral college votes that correspond to the position of each state as an equal entity in the Senate. This research examines how the “federalism bonus” influences presidential selection by addressing three questions. First, why did the framers include a federal component in the electoral college? Second, under what circumstances has the “federalism bonus” played a role in presidential selection? Third, how would the various alternatives for reform affect the federal component of the electoral college, and what is the likelihood of adoption for each? Copyright 2002, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Randall E. Adkins & Kent A. Kirwan, 2002. "What Role Does the “Federalism Bonus” Play in Presidential Selection?," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 32(4), pages 71-90, Fall.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:publus:v:32:y:2002:i:4:p:71-90
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:publus:v:32:y:2002:i:4:p:71-90. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/publius .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.