...The Electoral College: The Fear of Mobocracy Katherine Kinert Olympic College, Bremerton Abstract The Electoral College is a very important part of the United States Electoral System. However, very few Americans actually understand how it works. The lack of political efficacy in this country is a large reason of why some people do not think the Electoral College should be abolished. However, as Eric Black (2012) stated in an article on PBS News Hour, “Polls for many years have reliably shown that a majority of Americans would prefer a straightforward popular vote for the presidency.” Originally the Electoral College was established to prevent majority factions from having too much power causing mobocracy to occur. However, this system is outdated and the conditions that prompted the founding fathers to institute this precaution no longer exist today. Also, the fact that almost all the states use a winner-take-all system to determine which candidate gets all of the electoral votes for the state. Will abolishing the Electoral College rid the United States from mobocracy? Introduction The Electoral College is outdated and does not follow the true spirit of American Democracy. David Stewart (2013), a lawyer in Washington, D.C., states that, “Because most people knew little about public events or leaders from distant states, the convention delegates reasoned, they would not make a wise choice between presidential candidates.” Today, people have access to information through TV...
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...but that is not the case thanks to the electoral college. The electoral college was first established in 1787, almost when the government first started. The electoral college has decided every presidential election except one in 1824. If for some reason a presidential candidate do not get the amount of electoral votes needed, the House of Representatives will decide on the next president. The electoral college should be kept the same and not be changed or abolished. The electoral college should be kept the same because it gives smaller states a say in the election, the third party has a chance to persuade the election, and it takes away the chance of big population states to take over the whole election. The most important reason to keep the electoral college the same is because it takes away the chance of big population states taking over the whole election. An important reason the electoral college should be kept because it gives the smaller states have a say in the election. The electoral college is based off the population of the state voting towards electors which go towards the president as points basically. Each...
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...The Electoral College is derived from Article II of the Constitution, which asserts that each state has a number of electoral votes equal to its total number of Representatives to the House of Representatives and its two Senators. The 12th amendment dives further into the Electoral College process by establishing a majority is needed to be elected president and setting the guidelines to electing a president if neither candidate has a majority (House of Representatives votes). Recently, the Electoral College has become a subject of controversy. The primary concern with the Electoral College is that it raises the importance of particular states during the election cycle. The election focuses on those states thus diminishing the impact of the...
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...Alexander Hamilton’s Electoral College and the Modern Election Colin Campbell Prof. R Hurl TA: Matthew Lesch Tutorial: Thursday, 4:00 PM, UC 67) U. S. Government and Politics (POL 208 Y1Y) 1 November 2012 Alexander Hamilton’s Electoral College and the Modern Election When American's leaders assembled in Philadelphia in 1787, they originally had the goal of solving issues that had arisen from the Articles of Confederation, which had governed the young nation since separating from Britain. Instead, they drafted a completely new document that established a more permanent and effective central government. With it, they established the office of President of the United States. Rather than being directly elected by the people or selected by the legislature – as described by Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers – the head of state was to be elected by an independent institution that existed solely for the purpose of finding a man who was up to the job: a group that would become known as the Electoral College. However, as the political nature of the country evolved in an unanticipated and partisan way, the independence of this body became increasingly irrelevant, resulting in a system which fails to meet the standards of a true modern democracy. Although the Electoral College system has never substantially been reformed, it is now a mere formality which leads to the types of campaigns which it was designed to prevent. In The Federalist, Number 68, Hamilton argues...
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...Do you think that the electoral college should be abolished or is it a good idea. The electoral college is a good thing because it gives everyone the right to vote and it helps to elect the president of the United States. I am going to use document A which is the electoral votes and the states that have the most votes. Then I will use document C which talks about the way the electoral college is and how it helps pick the leader for the United States. Then use document E which is how the electoral college should not be a thing and how it takes so long to figure out the president or who it will be as the next leader. Then last document F talks about how the electoral college and how the electoral college is unfair to smaller states. So the states that are bigger like california that has 55 electoral votes is unfair because is you take a state like wyoming that has 3 votes then they have less say. The two...
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...copy and paste the links into your browser): State elected officials and members of Congress by state: http://www.commoncause.org/siteapps/advocacy/search.aspx?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=4860375 Presidential election outcomes by state: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_election_results_by_state Presidential election outcomes by state: http://www.historycentral.com/elections/states/List.html 2012 election outcome by state: http://www.politico.com/2012-election/map/#/President/2012/ Good Advice: · Do not wait until the day the assignment is due to begin work. That is a prescription for a very poor grade. · Don’t complete this project until you have studied up on presidential elections, especially the Electoral College. · Read the questions closely before answering them. Students frequently lose points for failing to fully answer each question. In particular, if the question asks you to write a paragraph, that means you need to write several sentences. A paragraph is not a single sentence. As you recall from your English class, paragraphs have topic sentences, several sentences in the body that develop the topic sentence, and a concluding sentence that ties the paragraph together. · Review all of your answers before you submit your completed project. Students often lose points for submitting answers that are contradictory. Make sure your answers are consistent and make sense. · Never, never, never copy and paste from a website. The...
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...Omar Sharif Should the Electoral College be abolished? The invention and approval of the electoral college by the Constitutional Committee in 1787 resulted in an electoral system whereby the election of the president, every 4 years, is determined by members of the electoral college and not the popular vote. Each state receives a number of electoral college votes (number of state congress members) and this is amended every 10 years to reflect changes in state populations. However, there is a growing movement to abolish and replace the current Presidential electoral system with a more democratic system that more accurately reflects the popular vote. Firstly, to understand why the electoral college became the chosen system, it is important to understand the issues faced by the Constitutional committee. James Madison wrote at the time "There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to the fewest objections." Therefore, whilst many members acknowledged that a nationwide popular vote would be ideal, state conflict over the rights of slaves, which divided the nation, was the ultimate deciding factor in the choice of electoral system. However, there were other highly influential...
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...Module 3 Project Name: Kadeem Course: MAT 148 Date: 2/2/2016 Voting Power Before you begin: Read the parts of Units 12A and 12B of the textbook that deal with U.S. presidential elections and voting power. Answer the following questions: 1. Before examining the real U.S. presidential election system, we consider a hypothetical country with only six states. The population of the states and the number of delegates each state sends to Congress are shown in the following table. State | Population (millions) | Number of delegates/electors | Electors/millions of people | Utopia | 4.5 | 11 | 2.44 | Verity | 10.5 | 19 | 1.81 | Windfall | 3.2 | 9 | 2.81 | Xanadu | 0.5 | 3 | 6 | Yorkshire | 8.0 | 17 | 2.13 | Zodiac | 1.5 | 5 | 3.33 | Assume that for national elections each state has a number of electors equal to its number of delegates. Does a voter in one state have the same amount of influence (or the same voting power) as a voter in another state? One way to answer this question is to compute the number of electors per person for each state. To make the numbers come out nicely, compute the number of electors for each million people in each state. Place these numbers in the last column of the table. 2. Based on the calculations in (1), do the voters in each state have the same voting power? Which state has the greatest voting power (electors per million people)? What state has the least voting power? Ans: Voters in each state do...
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...The Electoral College: How Our System of Elections Needs to be Changed Richard Brookman Metropolitan State University of Denver Author Note This paper was prepared for ENG 1020, Section 031, taught by Professor Clark. Abstract Article two, section one of the Constitution details the creation and operation of the Electoral College. Each representative of each state, both senators and representatives, cast a vote for the President based on the wants of their constituents. This is the basis for the Electoral College; however our forefathers had little insight into the problems that can arise from crafting a quick solution to the problem of electing the commander-in-chief. Over the past 200 years, many changes have been made to the Electoral College when a problem has risen to give us the Electoral College of today. The people of the United States have seen what the Electoral College has become and want the election process to change into a popular vote system. The popular vote system isn’t the answer. Only a combination of the two systems will help to give fair representation to all of the states, while keeping the essence of majority rule that the people desire. This system includes a single vote for districts that are won by popular vote, getting rid of the human form of electors, and using today’s technology to make it easier to maneuver through the complexities of the voting process. The Electoral College: How Our System of Elections Needs...
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...The year 2000 election between Presidential candidate George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore will forever be remembered in history as one of the most widely debated elections of all time. Not only was it controversial, but it gave great insight as to exactly how a presidential race can be ran and lost as well. The Presidential election of 2000 sets itself apart from any other election because of the controversy surrounding the outcome. Even though Al Gore won the election based on popular vote, George Bush came out on top with winning the electoral vote over Gore, 271 to Gore’s 266. Although both sides fought a good fight, only one came out on top, the Bush campaign. Many were left wondering exactly why Vice President Al Gore lost. Research shows that the reasons as to why Vice President Al Gore lost the presidential election of 2000 to presidential candidate George W. Bush are due to, the inability to During the beginning of the 2000 campaign almost everyone believed that the outcome and win of the election was to lay rest with Vice President Al Gore. Having being Vice President during the successful Clinton administration in the 1990’s, analysts believed that a win was almost inevitable. According to the readings in Pomper, the question was not if Gore was going to win but by how much. The United States at that time had been used to a period of prosperity and had been living in an economy that was doing quite well. The only problem was that people were not entirely convinced...
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...Are third parties doomed to failure in the USA? The success of third parties within the US can strongly be argued, in that they are ’doomed to failure’, in particular through recent years. This can be explained due to the vast sum in financial demands in which third parties cannot meet due to the inability to gain credible reconciliation to obtain huge sums of funds, and thus continue to live in the shadow of the Republicans and Democrats; two growing leading parties. Also, other factors like state legislation which encourage third party barriers, such as evidently shown in New York were for a party to be placed on the ballot paper it must reach a certain number of signatures. Through the electoral system of FPTP encouraging a two party system, and the two leading parties being seen as ’umbrella parties’ in which there is little room for a third party to offer an ideological stance on policies which has not already been covered. Means it is highly unlikely for a third party to succeed as evidently shown within the debates in 2000 with Gore verses Nader, where straight ticket voting also contributes to the third party failures. However, third parties must be credited in that it has proven to be worthy of success, like in 1996 where Jess Ventura was elected governor of Minnesota. Third parties are largely disadvantaged and doomed to fail due to their inability to raise a substantial amount of funds or ‘war chest’. this is firstly, simply down to the matter of third...
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...these swing states can determine the outcome of the entire election. The overall geography of the 2012 Election looked like what most expected it to, with Obama winning with 332 of the electoral votes to Romney's 206 (Andrews, Bartz and Tumgoren). In fact, Nate silver, of the New York Times, correctly predicted every single state's winner. Regions that went to Obama include the West Coast, the Northwest, the Northeast, and Megalopolis. While regions that went to Romney include the Great Plains, the South and the majority of the Rocky Mountains and Great Basin region. However, not all of these regions went entirely to one candidate or the other. In the South, Obama won Florida, as well as Colorado and New Mexico in the Great Plains. Another split region was the Rocky Mountain and Great Basin region, with Romney winning Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming and Obama winning Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico (Andrews, Bartz and Tumgoren). This divide between Obama and Romney in different states and regions begins to show a pattern. The majority of states that Obama won are states with bigger cities, meaning bigger populations. When it comes to demographics, there were a few different groups that came into the picture in making a difference for the winner. The most predominate ones being age and race. For example, exit poll results showed that Americans under 30, who made up 19% of the voting population, voted for Obama by 23 points, while seniors voted for Romney by 12...
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...Christian Llerena BUS 200 Dr. Lasher 3/19/12 The Electoral College is defined as “a body of electors chosen by the voters of each state to elect the President and Vice President of the United States”. The Electoral College system has been a staple in the United States since the ratification of The Constitution, however there is much debate on whether it should remain or be done away with completely. In this essay, I will give a brief history on the Electoral College, how it works, and why it was created in the first place. Despite the shortcomings and limitations of the Electoral College I believe that it should not be abolished because it contributes to the cohesiveness of the country, it maintains a federal system of government, and it maintains the interests of minority groups. To begin with, I will discuss how the Electoral College works. The Electoral College operates by having each state allocate a number of electors equal to the number of its U.S. Senators (always 2) along with the number of its U.S. Representatives (varies from state to state depending on its population). Next, after all their caucuses and primaries, each party nominates their candidates for president and vice president. After that, the people from each state vote for a party’s slate of electors. Whichever party slate gains the most popular votes becomes the slate of electors for that state. Then, the electors meet in their respective state’s capitol and cast their votes for president and vice...
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...The factors that influence the founders in creating the Electoral College were brought on by lessons learned in the early elections the result of those factors are still used to this day, two centuries later. The founding fathers had a lot to consider when it came to selecting how they would choose the leader for their newly formed government. The first president was chosen by the founding fathers before the election of 1800 in which the candidate with the most votes was elected president and the runner up was to be the vice president. This was proven to be a problem due to the different views of the parties that were running against one another. Having just won its independence from Great Britain and only having the Monarchy as a model to obtain guidance it was very important that the founding fathers looked at every angle of picking the person to lead the country at the time. The wrong type of man at the helm of the country could be devastating to what the founding fathers had worked on establishing. If the people were to have a say in who was to be president the electoral college could be seen as a way to protect them from a person that could persuade them with words but truly have a hidden agenda or not have the best interest of the country in mind a “demigod “. Adolf Hitler is a good example of this type of person becoming a leader that was able to persuade an entire country into trying to take over the world and this kind of person was exactly what our founding fathers...
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...El sistema binominal. Después del 11 de septiembre de 1973 chile necesitaba un profundo cambio en su constitución y en sus políticas publicas ya que quedaron demostradas que eran demasiado frágiles. Es por eso que durante el gobierno militar se implemento el sistema binominal, un sistema de elecciones con el fin de la creación de un sistema bipartidista en torno a dos grandes partidos políticos o coaliciones. El sistema binominal es tanto para el equilibrio político como económico, ya que en ese momento no se creía que el pueblo chileno fuera lo suficientemente capaz cívicamente de elegir correctamente a sus representantes (senadores y diputados), entonces se creo este sistema para mantener un margen de efectividad y equilibrio con respecto a sus representantes. El sistema binominal es fundamental para entender la gran democracia que existe hoy en chile, ya que permitió dar un equilibrio de partidos políticos ideas y posturas para la transición a la democracia que conocemos hoy, sin esta hubiéramos vuelto a los errores del pasado con ideas extremistas y sin moderación. Dejar de lado las ideas extremas y concentrarse en ideas moderadas pero de gran capacidad son las que tienen a chile en una posición políticamente envidiable por nuestros vecinos que no han podido dejar de lado sus ideas extremas y moderarlas por el bien común y desarrollo del país, la capacidad de que cada proyecto deba ser debatido y analizado en profundidad que para conseguir la cantidad de votos...
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