SUPER TUESDAY

Just what was so super about Tuesday?  Primaries are strange beasts.  People vote to see who they can vote for in November.  Actually, you can vote for whomever you damn well please.  You see, Primaries are about the two-party system.  

When George Washington was elected this country's first president, who else was on the ballot?  Think about that.

The framer's of our Constitution did not envision political parties.  Nor did they envision every Tom, Dick and Harry voting (of course, they never envisioned women voting either).   There was a lot of infighting about how to do this process properly.  They were sure that it should be the states which elect the president and the larger, more populated states should have a greater vote.  In the end, it was decided to leave it up to each state to determine how they select their electors.  These electors would then be sent to Washington to do the electing.   I might be getting into this too deeply for you, so I'll stop it here.  

Each of the electors that the states sent to Washington (there were 67 of them) had two votes to cast.  Everyone used one of their votes for Washington. That gave him 67 votes. He was the unanimous choice.  At that time, most people thought of the President as the one who would be the Commander in Chief of the army.   They didn't care if the President had teeth or not.  

Washington's main opponent in the first election, was John Adams.  He received 34 votes.  Here are the others:  John Jay 9 votes, Robert Harrison 6 votes,  John Rutledge 6 votes, John Hancock 4 votes, George Clinton 3 votes, and five others got 1 vote each.  John Adams became the first Vice President because he got the second most votes.  No parties were involved.  No President and Vice-President combinations.  

So, are we better off now that we have a Super Tuesday?  Yes, it's more democratic.  I guess that's a good thing.