The Electoral College System
After the last presidential election, which is still underway apparently, there is much controversy over what should happen to the Electoral College system. There are people who say that the Electoral College is good but should be modified to meet the needs of the modern world. There are those who say that the Electoral College system is too outdated to be modified and should be entirely eliminated. Finally there are those who say that it is has stood the test of time and is still the best system for our country.
The original framers of the constitution obviously preferred the electoral system to a direct popular election. The argument that historians give for this is that they preferred this system
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There have been many attempts to reform or even scrap the Electoral College election sense it's birth. The most recent one being in 1997 when congress debated a constitutional amendment to replace the electoral system with a direct popular vote system. However the Electoral College system to this day remains virtually un-changed from its original form. The only exception is the twelfth amendment, which requires each elector to cast two votes, one for president and one for vice president.
Under the current system there are five hundred and thirty eight electors. Each state gets one elector, each representative, and a senator. A presidential candidate needs two hundred and seventy votes to win the election. The electors meet after the November popular election to cast their votes and officially elect the president. Electors may vote for whomever they wish. Each state's electoral votes are awarded on a winner take all bases.
The arguments to modify or eliminate the Electoral College system are all derived from the notion that it is outdated. Under the current system if a candidate wins a large states like California, then they win twenty percent of the needed votes even though California only accounts for eleven percent of the U.S. population. What's more is a president can be elected without winning a majority of the popular vote. This has happened 15 times in U.S. history. The
In addition, another reason why the Electoral college should be abolished is because if you consider the fact that each state picks its own governor quite directly. All votes are counted equally and fairly and in cases that there are close races they are recounted carefully. Electoral colleges are not involved in any state elections. The fact that no state uses an Electoral College for its governor suggests that Americas national voting system is corrupt and messed up.
Another problem surrounding the Electoral College system is that it allows one-party states, states that almost always go to one party. In this context, a Democrat who casts a vote in a mostly Republican state feels that his vote is wasted because of no way that state will be won by a Democrat. Besides, the system is based on two-party elections, the Democrat and the Republican leaving Americans with two candidates to choose (Belenky, 364). The voters end up picking the candidate with fewer issues rather than the one they support. In my opinion, people feel that Electoral College has single-handedly defeated
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
Another major reason why the Electoral College needs to be eliminated in America is because the population is unevenly distributed throughout America causing presidential candidates to focus a majority of their campaigning in specific regions and states, rather than appealing equally to the whole country.
The Electoral College is a system that creates a compromise between the election of the president by a vote in congress and a popular vote from the citizens of the U.S. This results in a total of 538 electors from congress and to win the presidential election you must have over 270 Electoral votes. There is people who do not like the electoral college because the system is old fashioned and not democratic according to the two articles In Defense of the Electoral College by Richard A. Posner and Time to End the Electoral College by The New York Times. There is people who do agree with the Electoral College process. The Electoral College should not be abolished because the system gives an opportunity to political parties to express themselves in the American government, gives small states a chance in the elections, and the system is determined by the constitution. If presidential candidate does not get over 270 votes then the House of Representatives decides with votes from the top three other presidential candidates with the most electoral votes and same goes for vice presidential election except Senate decides with only top two.
The Electoral College is a group of people who are “appointed by a larger group” of people to represent each state in the U.S. who then vote for the presidential elections (Dictionary.com 2015). The founding fathers created the Electoral College so that qualified citizens could vote for the president. They believed that the average American is uniformed, so they decided that a few educated people would make the correct choice for the entire population. The founding fathers also thought the Electoral College would be effective because at that time the only way of communication was through word of mouth and through letters. With the Electoral College, it was a more simple way to get the votes to one place and count them. A major criticism of the Electoral College is the popular candidate may lose to the electoral vote. This means that if majority of the population voted for candidate A, but majority of the electoral votes were for candidate B, the president of the nation would become candidate B. This situation has occurred four out of the fifty-six presidential elections that have been held in the United States. I believe that the Electoral College should be abolished so that the popular candidate would win the election, people would feel that they are making a difference in the society they live in, and we should replace the Electoral College with popular choice or allow our house of representatives to vote for the presidents instead.
The electoral college was established from the Constitution. When the Framers had gathered to make the Constitution, James Wilson from Pennsylvania had proposed direct elections. James Madison, however, opposed to direct elections in fear that it would put the south at a disadvantage by being outnumbered by the north’s population. This lead the Framers into creating
One of the greatest accomplishments in the history of the United States was the creation of the Constitution. It was created by the Framers who included many important and specific rules to make sure that the government would be able to sustain itself. The Idea of the Electoral College was first introduced in this constitution as a way to make sure that there was a buffer between the population and the selection of a President. They did not want a dictatorship to arise due to a manipulative candidate. In recent history, the Electoral College has been a very controversial topic. Many people do not agree with it and believe that it should be abolished due to varying factors such as the unequal distribution of votes per state. When the Framers first created the Electoral College, I believe that there hopes of what it would become have not been met and that they would not be pleased with it in today's government.
The last reason I want to keep the Electoral College is because a direct popular election would cause chaos. America is already screwed up enough; we don’t need a presidential election to make it worse. There would be too many petitions, riots, and all kinds of things going on during the election. The people and congress like the way the Electoral College is set up. Also, we don’t need to change it. Doing that would take forever, because if we switch to a direct popular election, many presidents would only win by popular vote. The electoral votes should determine who is president, not how popular he or she is. No one region has the absolute majority of electoral votes that is required to be president. In very close popular elections, it’s possible that the candidate who won a slight majority of the popular vote may not be the person who is elected president. Whether the popularity of that one candidate is concentrated on very few states or spread out across America. The popular
I agree with Hayes, the electoral college is outdated. There is no longer a necessary role for it in the American Electoral System. The Electoral College was created since the government felt that the people would not know about the issues that they were voting on. Instead, they decided that the people would vote for a select group of candidates. The group of people that are being voted for are the caucus.The caucus member that wins their district casts their districts vote in favor of the candidate that won the majority vote .
Third, there was always a large portion of society that opposed the electoral voting system and took actions to abolish the Electoral College. Instead amendments were made to offset complaints.
The Electoral College has been a source of controversy for the American voter since its creation. Some voters favor keeping the Electoral College while others would prefer alternative methods of electing our president. There are many opinions about the Electoral College but its foundation, structure, history, and function remain a mystery to most voters.
The Electoral College, however, was kept the same for all these years, even if there are many flaws to it. This just shows how outdated the system is for our new, always changing nation. To summarize, because of our newer nation, we need a change in the system, to help prevent popular votes from losing.
The electoral college should be kept. Five times has a candidate won the electoral vote without the popular. The most recent being our last election. Each time, it sparks a debate on whether or not to do away with this system of voting. In fact, there have been 700 proposals in the last 200 years to get rid of, or modify the electoral college.
However, in recent times, "the Electoral College is mostly a formality", and electors don't actually get to choose a candidate (Miler). In most states, the winner of that state gets all the electors regardless if they support the winner or not. Thus, the College is outdated because it no longer has the freedom to choose any candidate. Also, I feel the College is outdated because it is no longer necessary. Much of the nation is educated and qualified enough to select the right candidate. American's don't need someone to chose their president for them. Therefore, I feel the system needs to be changed. The concern of a faction ruling the nation is still valid so the College still needs to exist to place a limit on pure democracy. However, the voice of the nation's majority cannot be ignored. Both the