Note 124 — Chapter XV · THE PRESIDENT AND HIS CABINET

If the original plan were now followed, this is about what would happen: After the presidential election in November the people and the newspapers would be discussing the probable attitude of the electors, wondering whom they would choose and making various suggestions to them. Some electors would be announcing their preferences; others would be keeping silent. With great interest we should await the meetings of the electors in January; the newspaper reporters would crowd outside the door to gain the first inkling of their decisions in each state; the returns would come in one by one from the forty-eight state capitals and would be figured up with breathless interest. But what actually does happen is very different from this. On the evening of the presidential election the fight is all over. Nobody knows, and nobody cares who the electors are. We only know that a majority of them will vote for the Republican or for the Democratic candidate when the time comes. In January they meet, almost unnoticed, cast their votes as a matter of form, and get a small paragraph somewhere on the inside pages of the newspapers.