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The Electoral College System Is Outdated And Unfair

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Every year on the fourth of November an election is taken place to select the next president of the United States. Just recently, in the 2016 election, Hilary Clinton won the popular vote and Donald Trump won the electoral vote, in which he was elected president. This made many Americans question if the electoral college system is outdated and unfair and if the direct popular vote is a more effective way of electing the president. This has happened twice where the candidate who has the popular vote did not win the presidency. The problem that has arisen is that the rules of the presidential election need to be replaced so that it will reflect the true opinion of the U.S. citizens. According to Edwards III, under the constitution, the …show more content…

Every state has two senators and the number of representatives that is proportional to its population (Schumaker 12). Congress decides who they want to dictate how many electors each state has based it off of the state 's population (Edwards 14). The Constitution requires that winning candidate must have 270 of the Electoral College votes. For instance, during the 2004 election, Bush had collected 271 electoral votes if he had two fewer votes and Gore two more than both of the candidates would have had fifty percent of the Electoral College votes (Schumaker 12).
What is a popular vote? A popular vote is a way for a candidate to get a majority of votes for an election. The citizens of the U.S. vote on a presidential candidate.
How was the Electoral College Founded? The Electoral College was constructed to be a compromise between the different ways of selecting the president. Originally the delegates of the Constitutional Convention wanted Congress to select eh president, while others preferred the direct popular election (Schumaker 13). While the Constitutional Convention proceeded, one of the founders established a "Committee of the Eleven" to create a compromise for selecting the president (Schumaker 13). The reason for the idea of the Electoral College many opposed to the direct popular vote because people feared that the less popular vote would feel inferior to other states (Schumaker 13). This method was widely accepted there was

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