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The Pros And Cons Of Electoral College

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Electoral college represents indirect popular elections. This system is an example of Federalism. Both the States and the Federal Gov't are involved in process: States are electing a federal president. Each state has certain number of electoral votes, which depends on population. As long as a candidate gets just over 50% of the popular vote in the state or just more popular votes than others candidates, he wins 100% on the electoral votes. There are 538 electoral votes. According to the rules of the electoral college, every state, no matter how few people lives here gets 3 votes to start with. The rest is distributed according to the population. At this point, electoral college protects small states from the big states. It gives them voting …show more content…
But I also can't say that electoral college works the way it supposed to work. There are certainly positive effects of electoral college, but let's take a look at two main problems that it should help with, but actually it doesn't. Is it helpful against tyranny? The last elections showed that answer is no. A candidate still can manipulate people's feeling through creating the cult of personality or whatever, but just instead of the one big campaign you need to make 51 small campaigns. The other pro of the electoral college, that we can argue about, is giving opportunity for all states become equal candidates attention. Let's see at this year's election, the candidates most visited states during campaign are Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania. Why the candidates spent more time and money in those states more than in others? Because the electoral college force them to do that. They know that if they will lose even with the small difference they will lose all electoral votes. So, the candidates have no reason to pay that much attention to the states with big margins, like California for democrats or Texas for republican. Instead, they are interesting in the needs of just few states with close

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