The Electoral College has been broken ever since it was put into the cConstitution and it has only gained more problems as political parties grew. The Electoral College is the system that the United States uses to elect their presidents every four years. The system is setup in a way where the popular vote does not determine who wins the election but the amount of electoral votes you get does. Each state is given one vote per Senator and Representative they have in the House of Representatives. Whichever presidential candidate wins more electoral votes in the states wins the entire election, no matter what the popular vote is. The Electoral College should not be completely abolished, but it does need to be changed from its original format. The popular vote should have more influence on the election, political parties should be eliminated, and each state should be given the same amount of votes per population rather than votes per Senator and Representatives. The popular vote of the election process has never been the reason that a president wins an election, and that needs to change. In the 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, the popular vote was won by Al Gore by …show more content…
Instead of having the normal way of determining electoral votes per state, there should be a set number of population per electoral. For example every state should get one electoral vote for every 200,000 residents that live in that state. In document 2 it shows the current Population per Electoral (PPE) in every single state in column 4. The PPE for the state of Wyoming is one electoral vote for every 187,875 people while in the state of California the PPE is one electoral vote for every 677,345 people. Even though there are nearly 37 million more people that live in California, it would still make a lot more sense if there was one single PPE for every state in the United
The result is that in 1988, for example, the combined voting age population (3,119,000) of the seven least populous jurisdictions of Alaska, Delaware, the District of Columbia, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming carried the same voting strength in the Electoral College (21 Electoral votes) as the 9,614,000 persons of voting age in the state of Florida.(Longley) Each Floridian's potential vote, then, carried about one third the weight of a potential vote in the other states listed. Shouldn't each individuals vote carry the same amount of weight regardless of where they live? Another result of the Electoral College is that it tends to give a false representation of victory. In 1980 Ronald Reagan won just 50.7 percent of the popular vote but won the electoral vote by more than 90 percent making it appear as a landslide.(Gregg) Is this fair representation for the American people to believe?
One of the reason why the Electoral College should not be destroyed, is that it helps the candidates who may struggle with the popular vote. In 1980, for Presidential Election, candidate Ronald Reagan barely won the popular vote (50.7%). With the help of the Electoral Vote, Reagan took 91% of it, which then made him the winner (Doc B). Also in 1992, Candidate Bill Clinton, did not even have half the country on his side (43%). With the help of the Electoral Vote, Clinton
What would you do if you didn't have a say in who runs America and how it is ran. What if you were promised freedom, and told that you had a government ran by the people but you didn’t get any input in the decisions? The direct popular vote doesn’t give the smaller parties a chance, but the electoral college does. Some people believe that the electoral college should be abolished; however, it gives people in rural communities a stronger voice, it allows the President a mandate to meet people’s needs in every state, and it reflects the political opinions of more Americans. Therefore, America should keep the electoral college.
Your vote should mainly matter! Yes, the electoral college should be abolished. The delegates did not believe the president should be chosen by a direct population vote (of the people). They didn’t trust voters would have enough information to make a good choice. The Electoral College is where the president and vice president are chosen indirectly. This system is where all states and the District of Columbia get one electoral vote for each of their US senators and representatives. Also, each state has a slate of electors for each presidential candidate. Another way this system works is by winner-take all method. The winner-take all method is where whichever candidate wins the most votes in the state, wins the state electoral votes. Lastly a candidate must receive a majority (one more than a half) of the electoral votes to be declared president. That is how everything goes in the electoral college. The electoral college should be abolished because 12 states and D.C. total have double the amount of electoral votes but less people than Illinois. Also, the winner of the 1876 presidential election isn’t what people wanted, it was based on the number of electoral votes. Another reason the electoral college should be abolished is that the states with the same representatives dont have the same number of voters. All these issues that continue to happen, need to be resolved by getting rid of this system.
A change in the Electoral college should be the number of electoral votes for each state's. Now they are based on the population, for example the Electoral Vote chart shows the higher the population in each state the more electoral votes that state has. The less populated states have less Electoral votes than the bigger more populated states. (Doc. 2) This shows that the less populated a state is the less say the have with the voting. Each state needs to have the same number so that it is appointed accurately. This majority would help with which state and show that more of the population chose a certain candidate.
I believe that the United States should abolish the Electoral College. One reason the Electoral College should be abolished is it makes it look like candidates win by a lot more than they actually do, because of the electoral votes. Document B proves that the Electoral College should be abolished because it provides two different elections pie charts, comparing the popular vote and the electoral vote. In the first elections pie chart, the election is between Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and John B. Anderson. For the popular votes Ronald Reagan gets 50.7 % of the votes, Jimmy Carter gets 41% of the votes, and John B. Anderson gets 6.6% of the votes. It is easily seen that Ronald Reagan had won the popular vote but by very little in comparison to Jimmy Carter. Then in the pie chart for the electoral vote, Ronald Reagan had 91% of the votes, Jimmy Carter had 9% of the votes, and John B. Anderson had 0% of the
But the result of the Electoral College today is to give too much power to the small states. In fact, they have more power than the largest states in the union. For instance, California's population (the largest) is approximately 70 times that of Wyoming's (the smallest). But California only has about 18 times the Electoral College votes (55 to 3) (Raasch 1). According to writer Chuck Raasch, that means a vote in Wyoming has potentially four times the impact in the Electoral College (1). Also, in 1988, the combined voting age population (3,119,000) of the seven least populous states (Alaska, Delaware, D.C., North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, Wyoming) had the same number of Electoral votes (21) as the 9,614,000 voters in Florida (Kimberling 1).
This system needs to be put to an end. The American people are well enough informed to elect their own president without the aide of an Electoral College. The electors in the Electoral College do not actually make decisions anyway. They are just figurative for they should vote along their state’s popular vote, even though most are not legally bound to do so. Even though the electors’ votes reflect that of their state’s popular vote, the views of the people are not always represented. If one candidate receives 50.1 percent of the popular vote, and the other candidate receives 49.9 percent, the candidate with only .2 percent more of the popular vote receives all of that states electoral votes. This system is also very unfair to the third party candidate. He/she has very little chance of receiving any electoral votes. In 1992, Ross Perot won 19 percent of the national
The Electoral College was created 200 years ago and times have definitely changed. People are well educated these days, and have a better understanding of the whole election process. Two centuries ago people didn't have TV, radio, news broadcasting, or the internet. These are all good sources that to supply us with more than enough coverage of the elections at hand. The whole system makes no sense, because depending on how big a state is, depends on how many electors that state has. The smaller the state, the more electors it has. It should be the other way around. Also population density has changed over time.
Although this is true, the wide selection of canidates would also allow the American people to have a better selection of canidates. Instead of selecting two canidates which the electoral college promotes, they can choose from a lot more, selecting a canidate which they can identify with, and supports the issues they also support. The popular vote system presents a flawless way of electing a president, with absolutely not threat of electing a minority president. It is the best voting system for the United States and should be instated in place of the outdated electoral college.
The electoral college is made up of 538 members and to win the election you are going to need half of that plus one so 270. I don’t think this system of voting is fair at all and it should be the people that make up a majority of the decision. But at the same time it is also kind of fair in terms of how large the states are. In this case some of the smaller states that have less population get the same voting power as states that have millions of people in them. I believe that is the only way it is really fair without this rule the smaller states wouldn’t really mean anything in the election if it were different.
The main flaw of this system is allowing a candidate to win the election without securing the popular vote. It allows for the President to be elected if they receive 270 or more electoral votes. Large states such as California have many votes whereas small states like Kansas for example have much less the amount of electors but Estate has is determined by population list
One way to solve this is send percentages of electoral votes, or ignore the winner-take all system. For instance, say that in Florida, who has 25 votes, 80 percent of the popular vote supports the democratic nomination, whereas the other 20 percent went for the republican nomination. Then 20 electoral votes would go to the democrat, and 5 would go to the republican. Another way to solve this problem would be to base electoral votes solely on the population, separate the nation into regions with approximately the same population, and give them each votes. In this, there would be no actual state borders, just a set number of voting regions. A third and final way to solve the problem would be to do away with the system entirely, and let the popular vote be the sole decision making factor. This would be the easiest and quickest way to solve the Electoral College
In 1787 when the Electoral College system was created by the Constitutional Congress, the group wanted to keep room between the population and the election. It was decided that each state would get a certain amount of electoral votes based on the population size. In total there are 538 electoral votes, but a majority of at least 270 votes must be obtained to win the election. Throughout this essay one will become better educated on the Electoral College and why it does not work for today's society.
In the United States, an electoral college system is used to elect a president. It is vital in any democratic country to allow a vote from the people to elect their representative leaders, especially in an influential country like the United States. However, due to the process of the electoral college system placed by the Framers, a candidate may win the popular vote but lose the electoral vote. Such an event may upset certain members of our country as recently seen in our latest presidential election of 2016 where candidate Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote to candidate Donald Trump.