...The Electoral College: Is it Really Worth It? The Electoral College. An iffy subject, isn’t it? Some people support it, while others do not. That’s just how it’ll be. The Electoral College was made to give the smaller states more power as a whole, given the large population differences between some states. While it may seem fair in some ways, in other ways it seems entirely unfair. So should the Electoral College be abolished? No. The Electoral College should not be abolished because it supports our Founding Father’s views on federalism, it makes sure every state gets representation, and it gives smaller states a better representation. The first reason that the Electoral College should not be abolished is that it supports the idea of federalism....
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...The Electoral College Should Be Abolished The Electoral College has been around for over 200 years. It was made in a time when the population of the United States wasn’t as large as it is now so, the Electoral College helped give smaller populated areas more power in elections. There are 538 qualified electors and to become president you’ll need 270 votes from the Electoral College. The amount of electoral votes a state gets is determined by the population of the whole state. A state is given one electoral vote for every representative and two for each senator. When a person goes to vote they aren't really voting for the president they are voting for an elector to cast their vote on the candidate that gets the most popular votes in that state. So, if the population of a state votes for a presidential candidate by even 1% more than the other, all the electors in that state need to cast in their vote for the presidential candidate that won by that 1%. For years, the question of whether the Electoral College should be abolished or not has been floating around. The Electoral College should be abolished. It takes away voting rights of...
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...The electoral college is pretty Important to the United States of America. It helps us elect who our next president will be from the two candidates that are campaigning to become the next president. The electoral college provides a clear and indefinite result on who the next president would be. The electoral college was created by our founding fathers. The electoral college also makes sure that every state plays a role on who the United States's citizens new president would be. There is a lot of debate on wether the electoral college should be abolished or not but, I believe that the electoral college should not be abolished. First the electoral college provides a clear message on who the president will be so there is no confusion or conflict....
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...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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...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 popular vote should be used for an Presidential Election. The Electoral College is basically people voting for people to vote for who they want as president. The Electoral College makes something simple so much more complex. It would be easier to just use the popular vote instead of having people vote to vote for who they want. The popular vote is a much better representation on who people really want as their president. A reason the Electoral college shouldn’t be used because it shows lack of faith in American voters . The Electoral college was formed in the late 1700’s because of people that might lack knowledge of presidential candidates and because the founding fathers didn’t want a direct election. At the present time, We can easily...
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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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...Caden Jenkins English 2010 February 21, 2016 Annotated Bibliography Berns, Walter. “Should The Current Electoral College Be Preserved?” Congressional Digest, 80. (2001): pg.16. EBSCOhost. Web. 21 February 2016. From being one of my databases I thought that it would be a good idea to have both sides of the argument, so that is why I selected to put another pro of the electoral college. The reason for this is to simply receive more credibility from my audience that I have looked at all sides of this and from all of this information was able to draw my own conclusion. Furthermore the audience is always pleased with the fact that you do not simply hammer on the topic but show the good things about it as well. It answers key questions as to why it should be kept what good things it does for the smaller states in giving them power. It argues that if we were to take it away it would mean that the smaller states would then become more over powered by the larger ones. Durbin, Richard J. “College System Be Preserved?” Congressional Digest, 80. (2001): pg.17. EBSCOhost. Web. 21 February 2016. This article is a little bit older being published in 2001 but it still holds very good information on whether or not the college should be preserved or not. This is a very credible source to me simply because it comes from a man who has been working in politics for quite sometime. The audience would be pleased reading about this as well because they will be able to receive the opinion of a man...
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...You may think that the presidential candidate with the most votes will become the next president, 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 has been used for numerous years and that is the system America uses to select their coming president. But should it be used to this day? The reason the Electoral College was first implemented was to avoid having uninformed people making decisions as a result of news traveling extremely slow years ago. However, nowadays, news is delivered within a matter of seconds on our smartphones. So, there surely isn’t a reason as to why America still needs the Electoral College, is there? The answer is no, and there’s a plethora of reason as to why. Three primary reasons to why the Electoral College should be abolished is that it’s undemocratic, it hurts the third party candidates, and it causes the small states to be over represented. One prime motive as to why the Electoral...
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...In 1776 when our nation was founded we only had about 2.5 million people. Now 241 years later we have over 326 million people. We are closer and more connected to politics now. This is why we need a good fair way to see who will lead us. We need some sort of system that is fair and reliable for our country. The Electoral College is an unfair and unreliable system chose our President. Some people believe that the Electoral College shows good government and legislation. This is not true because if it was to show this we need an understandable and efficient system(Document C). The Electoral College is inefficient and hard to understand, which shows we need a new and better system in its place. It is true that some states can have a much...
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...In 1787, the Constitutional Convention were trying to devise a method for electing the President. This method included selecting congress, state governors, state legislators, and other high political people to represent each state and ultimately help in choosing the President. This would later be known as the Electoral College. The only people allowed to be an elector are, Representatives, Senators, and a person who holds an office of trust in the United States. According to my textbook American Democracy Now, The Electoral College by definition is “a group of people elected by voters in each state to elect the president as well as the vice president”(Harrison Harris Deardorff 3rd Edition, 285) . But looking into the historical origins of the Electoral College, I realize that there is more to it than just that....
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...The Electoral College | Should it be done away with? | Presidential election seasons tend to be an exciting and volatile time within the United States. This is made ever more true by the existence of the Electoral College. When brought up in everyday conversation, the phrase Electoral College gets danced around and avoided. That is because it is such a difficult concept to get a grasp on. Not many people exactly know how our election system works due to the cryptic language that it normally is defined with. It is safe to assume that the uneducated voter believes that whichever candidate wins the most votes nationwide is the winner, and that is sound logic. However in the case of the Electoral College, that sound logic doesn’t hold true; one of the commonly disputed deficiencies of the electoral system. Are these criticisms justified or are they merely just complaints? Another important question to ask is why this system was put into place by our Founding Fathers; there must be a logical explanation, right? In order to begin to understand the system that is currently in place, it is best to look at why it was seen as a necessary measure and some of the history surrounding it. Our Founding Fathers thought it was important that the States and the citizens residing in them should have a say in the appointment of our nation’s leader. The last thing they wanted was to have Congress deciding who would become president. They feared this for several reasons. The...
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...is the Electoral College – an indirect voting system and not a national popular vote. This system was implemented by the Founding Fathers about 200 years ago (Shea 2005, 4-6) In recent times the debate about whether the Electoral College is still an effective system considering the circumstances the United States has to face now, is arising more and more. “American society is highly polarized in its perception of the existing election system” (Belenky 2012, ix). This paper has the aim to contrast the arguments against and in favor of the Electoral College and to demonstrate possible alternatives. In the conclusion an answer to the question “Should the Electoral College be reformed?” will be given. 2. How it works The Electoral College, as it is outlined in the 12th Amendment, is a body of electors chosen to elect the President and Vice President of the United States. In Article II of the Constitution the electing procedure is written down. Each state delegates a specific number of electors to the Electoral College, dependent on its representation in Congress (House of Representatives & Senate). According to the fact that each state has two Senators and at least one Representative (dependent on the size of the population in the state), each state has three electors at the minimum (for example Alaska). With 55 electors, California has the largest number at the moment (see illustration 1) (Electoral-vote.com 2013). Figure 1: Blank map of the U.S. with electoral vote ...
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...Why Did a Campaign for Women's Suffrage Develop in the Years after 1870? The most important reason for the development of a campaign for women's suffrage after 1870 is the number of reforms that were taking place. This is important because women were involved in many of these campaigns so they were encouraged that they would be able to win suffrage for themselves. A campaign for women's suffrage developed in the years after 1870 due to several reasons. Women's necessity and craving for suffrage can partly explain the campaign, although it is also significant to consider why a campaign or fight was necessary, along with the reasons why this began after 1870. The primary reason women wanted suffrage was because of their inferior status to men. They wanted to improve this. For example women were not allowed to attend schools or colleges limiting their chances of becoming someone important and well respected in society. Their job range was very limited they could either work in mills, farms or stay at home and look after the house however the poor women were unable to stay home to look after the house, as they had to work to bring in income to support their families. This led to a campaign for women's suffrage because they were not happy about being treated as slaves. The men were the slave-masters and the women were the slaves. They wanted to change this so they could live independently and not to rely on men. But this would only happen if they were able to get education so they...
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