...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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...Did you know the electoral college is the way we as a country select our president and has 435 votes in total? The electoral college was established in 1787 to consider many methods to elect the president and was originally called the Constitutional Convention. The electoral college should be changed even though many people think it’s a successful method of how we pick our president. The main reasons are that it causes confusion in the ballots and it is corrupt, there’s an unfair amount or representation in the number of votes per state, and if there is no majority then the House of Representatives decides the leader of our country instead of the people. The primary reason the electoral college is due to the confusion of the ballots in some polling stations or corruption within a state’s voting. In the 2000 election, George W. Bush won the election because he won Florida in a 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court case decision (Document 6). This decision could show the corruption due to the party affiliation of the judges or who they voted for in the election. The reason that this case went to...
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...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 changed to election by popular vote when choosing the president. The standard way of explaining the Electoral College would be a process that “consists of the selection and the meeting of electors” (Source 1: What is the Electoral College) this is then where the president and the vice president are voted for and the counts of the presidential electoral votes are taken place Basics of the Electoral College are the entitled allotment of electors a state has equals the number of members in its congressional delegation. Article one points out “one for each member of the house of Representatives and two for the senator. (Article 1) To elect a president 270 electoral votes are required. So at least 270 electoral votes from 538 electors guarantee’s office, or at least a certain party in office. When you think you’re voting for your candidate to be the president you’re really...
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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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...To reform the U.S. electoral system, the government should eliminate the Electoral College and allow the citizens to choose the president in order to make the system more democratic. The function of the Electoral College is described in Article II Section 2 of the constitution, the constitution “does not provide that all US citizens may vote for presidential electors. Rather, it provides only that the electors shall be appointed as the state legislatures direct. Once a state determines that electors shall be chosen by popular vote it has wide latitude to determine eligibility to vote” (Hardaway 106). The electors are chosen based on the amount of House of Representatives and Senators each state has in Congress; the few hundred electors controls the United States vote (ABC News). This system is not democratic because the people are not the direct electors of the President, elite men and women of both political parties are in charge of choosing. If the system is kept that way, there is no real reason in having the eligible voters in voting because at the end of the day, their vote does not count causing various effects in the elections such as low voter turnout and lower voter efficacy.Citizens of the United States are discouraged to vote because they feel that their vote does not count since their government has established a group of people to “double-check” their preferred candidate. Why hasn’t the government abolish the Electoral College if more than 54% of the United States...
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...The Electoral College The Electoral College is a highly outdated system that needs to be removed from our presidential elections. Without the electoral college presidential candidates would be have to campaign nationwide instead of focusing on a few battleground states that hold key electoral votes. This scenario would ultimately lead to the best man standing as our next president. In today’s society the Electoral College is unnecessary and unwanted. This system was introduced in 1787 because delegates were unsure if the general public would have the knowledge to make an informed decision in a presidential election. 228 years later with the inventions of the television and the Internet it would be hard to argue that the public is no longer informed on the candidates and their positions. The Electoral College is discouraging to many and therefore causes countless people to not vote. For example, in Texas many democrats will not cast a vote because they deem it useless in a Republican dominated state. The removal of the Electoral College would encourage every voter to cast a ballot and those votes would actually mean something. The removal of the Electoral College will cause presidential candidates to take notice of the entire United States. “For example a full 99% of all advertising by the two major candidates were concentrated in only 17 of the states.” (Source D) Presidential candidates tend to focus all of their attention on those states considered battleground...
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...So, where exactly is the Electoral College? Well, surprisingly, the Electoral College is not a place, but a group of elected people, chosen to vote for the next president of the United States. There are many rules and factors in voting, therefore, the election process is very confusing. The Electoral College needs to be abolished, because it is very out-of-date, has too many steps, and it’s an inaccurate representation of the people of America. The Electoral College was established to insure a qualified president by having qualified people vote in the official election, but this has since failed and is no longer the case. “The Founding Fathers established it in the constitution as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in...
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...election, which is the Electoral College. The voters elect the electoral college which then elects the President. However there is much room for mistakes through this process. Therefore, due to the corruption and inequality, the Electoral College is not a fair and equitable way to elect the President of the United States. Over the years, there have been times when the Electoral College elects a candidate that did not win the popular vote. For example in the election of 1824, Andrew Jackson won the popular vote with 152,933 votes but John Quincy Adams became president...
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...politics, and almost always never immediately noticeable unless one was looking for the problem. Election rigging starts with smaller factors, like social media and press coverage, the way the country chooses to conduct its polls, the very structure of the electoral college, and the way we choose our political districts years in advance. According the Pew Research center (Gottfried and Shierer 2013), “A majority of U.S. adults – 62% – get news on social media,...
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...Electoral College The American people are led to believe that they decide who gets to be president but really the choice is made for them. The choice of a few can overshadow the choice of millions, but the illusion of each vote counts still rings loudly. The Electoral College has the only votes that actually will decide the President of the United States. The Electoral College is not really a college or a physical place but it is a procedure. This is a procedure that takes place every four years by a group of electors to elect the President of the United States. This procedure known as the Electoral College should be abandoned and done away with permanently. The origins of the Electoral College date back far to the beginning of the USA and was created by the founding fathers and placed in the constitution. According to The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA, 2012) “…..The founding fathers established it in the Constitution as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens.” When unable to determine whether the president should be elected by congress or by the citizens, the Electoral College was put in place as a middle ground solution. The founding fathers believed that the population of a certain region could solely dictate the presidency based on popularity and not have the country’s support. Woods (2012) noted this point“…the state-dependent electoral college system...
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...The Electoral College was created for the purpose of making the little guys seem important, therefore making the number of Electoral College votes per state unequally dispersed. If the amount of Electoral College votes a state received was based on population, smaller states would not be relevant. While this dispersion method made our small states happy, it produced many a consequences and made the value of each person’s vote different. Each individual vote in California counts for about five times as much in the Electoral College as each individual vote in Maine. For instance, California has fifty-five electoral votes for a population of about 38.8 million people and maine has four electoral votes for a population of almost 1.33 million. California...
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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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...Constitutional Amendment Proposal Paper There are many things that could be changed when it comes to the Constitution of the United States of America. The founding fathers knew this and that is why they put in the amendment process. These men knew that at some point things would need to be added or removed for the Constitution so they made sure that process was available. The process of amending the Constitution is not easy. In fact in all these years there has not been many amendments. At points in American history there are times of great change that changes everything we know. It is about that time again. It is time that the Electoral College be removed from the Constitution of the United States of America. The next amendment to the constitution should be doing away with the Electoral College. The Electoral College is an old system that does not fit the way Americans think today. Americans today think that their counts as one vote for the Presidency but in fact it does not. The Electoral College gives each state a certain amount of votes. If the person running for the Presidency wins the state by enough votes then he or she wins the electoral votes for that state. So a person could win the presidency without winning the popular vote. If this sounds a bit strange it is but the founding fathers had good reasons for implementing this process. The founding father worried about the popular election. The father thought that the people would go out and vote for people...
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...THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE by William C. Kimberling, Deputy Director FEC Office of Election Administration (The views expressed here are solely those of the author and are not necessarily shared by the Federal Election Commission or any division thereof.) In order to appreciate the reasons for the Electoral College, it is essential to understand its historical context and the problem that the Founding Fathers were trying to solve. They faced the difficult question of how to elect a president in a nation that: • was composed of thirteen large and small States jealous of their own rights and powers and suspicious of any central national government contained only 4,000,000 people spread up and down a thousand miles of Atlantic seaboard barely connected by transportation or communication (so that national campaigns were impractical even if they had been thought desirable) believed, under the influence of such British political thinkers as Henry St John Bolingbroke, that political parties were mischievous if not downright evil, and felt that gentlemen should not campaign for public office (The saying was "The office should seek the man, the man should not seek the office."). • • • How, then, to choose a president without political parties, without national campaigns, and without upsetting the carefully designed balance between the presidency and the Congress on one hand and between the States and the federal government on the other? Origins of the Electoral College The...
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