...components to how it works. The only power the people have over the electoral college is the ability to appoint our electors through the popular vote; however, the electors have free reign, without needing consent from the people, over who is in charge every four years. Within the Electoral College is a rich history, pros and cons, how electors are chosen, how the difference of the popular vote cause Serbian states to be swing states, and why past elections have brought up questions about if the electoral college should be amended. The original philosophy behind the electoral college is what has caused the rich history of the electoral college. Everything began in 1789 when the idea of the electoral college came to elect our very first president. The Electoral College is a system of selecting the next president by electors who vote based on the popular vote of America (U.S. Electoral College). Alexander Hamilton created the original form of the...
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...the videos posted in the "Lecture and Video" tab. Do you think the electoral college is effective? Why? Yes I do believe the Electoral College is effective. I think the Electoral College is one of the most elegant systems in our republic. The key word here is republic and not democracy. We are not a true democracy in the sense that we are ruled by the will of the majority, but rather we are a constitutional republic that employs democratic methods. We have systems that check and balance power between the 3 branches of government, between states and the federal government and balance between majority rule and the rights of the minority. The people who are against the Electoral College are popularists. Meaning one vote per voter and the majority wins. This I believe ignores the right of the minority. If you want to abolish the Electoral College because it misrepresents votes, than why not abolish 2 senators for each state? Wyoming has as many senators as California has. The Senate has tremendous power in the legislature as the upper house. It can start legislation or it is the final deliberating body before a piece of legislation goes to the president’s desk. But it does not equally represent all the people, it represents the states. Also, even the congress has votes that require more than 50% to pass laws. Why? If a majority agrees, majority should win. Again that is because we have rights of the minority. Why don’t we directly elect federal judges? Shouldn’t...
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...give regarding why they did or did not do something, but if someone could possibly make a difference, even just a small one, why wouldn’t they? As most of us know, the presidential election this year is bizarre, and a correct decision just does not seem to exist. However, this should not stop Americans from voting. If you are strongly against both candidates, choose the “lesser of two evils” and vote. There are many reasons Americans aren’t voting, but a few are things such as: lack of time, feeling of their vote not mattering, and even the overall difficulty of voting. For the most part, a large number of citizens don’t vote because voting day is in the middle of the week. Although some employers offer paid time to go and vote, it often isn’t enough time to get to the polls and back with a few...
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...an article that “...Having the right to vote is widely recognized as one of the most important legal rights within a democracy.” (Wing and Clayton 534) With suffrage being an imperative democratic right, the questions of whether there should be a minimum voting age and if so, what age that should be set have quickly become central political issues. In 1971, the United States ratified the 26th Amendment to the Constitution, eliminating the age standard of twenty-one and granting eighteen year olds the right to vote. This was due to the realization of the double standard that eighteen year olds were old enough to be sent to fight for their country, but not old enough to vote for the people who represented it. A similar situation is occurring today, as American citizens under the age of eighteen pay taxes, drive cars, abide by the laws, are affected by the decisions of politicians, etc., but are denied the right to vote. These citizens are perfectly capable of making informed decisions and fulfilling the duties of a registered voter. Being affected by political decisions just as much as someone over the age of eighteen, citizens as young as the age of sixteen should be granted the right to vote. (Wing and Clayton 536) At the youthful age of sixteen, one can accomplish much more than they could at a prior time in their life. In most states, a sixteen year old can become emancipated from their parents, obtain a work permit, hold a job, choose to no longer attend school, be granted...
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...The Electoral College: How it works Axia College University of Phoenix How do we elect the President? Many people do not understand the process by which we elect the President. They do not understand how the Electoral College works. Bill Stern (Andrews, 1996) said, “Our elections are free, it's in the results where eventually we pay.” Oftentimes, people vote based on public opinion or information obtained by the media. Voters should inform themselves on how the Electoral College works in order to make good decisions when voting for the president. Electoral College delegates elect the President. Voters elect Electoral College delegates. The Electoral College was created as a compromise between election by Congress or popular vote for the presidential election process. At the time, some politicians believed an election by popular vote was not good for the country, and others did not want to give that much power to the Congress. Although the Electoral College has had critics and controversy since its beginning, it has delivered a President and a Vice President in 54 elections. Our founding fathers formed the Electoral College in Article II, Section I, of the United States Constitution, it states, “each state shall appoint, in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the state may be entitled in the Congress (U.S. Constitution, 1787)”. The Constitution does not state...
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...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 to be Changed When our country was first created, a debate emerged on how to elect the President of our country. Many ideas were expressed but our forefathers decided on an Electoral College that cast the votes for the President instead of the people. For 226 years we’ve used this process with some controversy and with hardly any changes made...
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...“Why don’t more young adults in America vote?” In the United States the word voting can have different meanings for different people, but in general is defined as a fundamental right at the core of what the country stand for which are called democracy and freedom. Young Americans are apt to vote less because of the criticism that stems from the older generations on the inefficiencies with the current administrations and the government at large. Consequently a trickle down effect occurs which leaves younger Americans critical whether their vote even counts. Many factors can be named to explain the low figure of why young people are not voting. The first factor is ignorance that consists in how a person thinks towards the fact that they need to vote. They think one vote is not going to change anything in the elections, so they just decide to not vote when that decision could change a president election. The apathy among young citizens is big; the lack of interest towards this manner, that has been decreasing throughout years and affecting the electoral decisions. The cynicism is the third factor that explains the absence of trust that the people have with the government institutions and the regime as a whole. This cynicism has been defined as oppositional to political efficacy related to trust the economical, social and political institutions. All this problems are happening every time an election is coming and the amount of young Americans that think this way is increasing...
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...British Empire and became forming a national government. In 1777 Congress adopted The Article of Confederation. This attempt to structure an American government failed; The Article of Confederation was unsuccessfully because it restricted the national government; most power was concentrated on the states’ level. The states kept their autonomy. The national government was lack of authority, it was hard to collect taxes from each state; foreign trade was suffering because foreign counties which wanted to conduct business with the United States had to negotiate separate agreements with Congress and a state. In addition to all of these problems the Article of Confederation did not even include a president or any other executive leader because people were in their zeal to reject monarch; everybody was tried of British tyranny and they were worried if they used this model of government it would lead to the same results as they had during British colony’s time. However, in 1787 Constitutional Convention began in Philadelphia (Bianco & Canon, 2013, p.33). The framers of the Constitution understood that confederation did not work. So framers based the new American government on an entirely new theory: federalism, which divides power across the local, state and national governments, and each of these levels of government has some degree of autonomy from the other levels (Bianco & Canon, 2013, p.71). This structure includes a president and grants him a limited power. Despite to...
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...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 just because that person was popular. The fathers thought that the people would make an uneducated vote. The fathers also thought that it would be a great...
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... We have the freedom to vote and the freedom to choose whether we want too or not. However, just because voting matters it does not mean that everyone does it. Studies show that barely 60% of voters participate in the elections that take place here. So why don’t voters vote? I mean we fought for the right to vote so why don’t we take that privilege? The question that face americans today is Should americans be required be to vote? I think Americans should be required to vote because Many nations have good voter turn out, we could have better informed voters and we could have higher voter turnout. The first reason i think americans should be required to vote is because many nations have good voter turnout. In Document A it shows that at least 40 countries have required voting. This is...
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...This was seen to be a participation crisis by some. This extract would argue that casting a ballot is only part of a person’s political participation. It shows that 62% of people had given money to an organization in the previous 12 months. Also, 50% of people had signed a petition. This suggests individuals choose their involvement in politics in their own way and generalizing that if general election turnout is low, political participation is low is incorrect. This is supported by the POWER report in 2006 that suggested there is not a political participation crisis as there is still involvement on a local level. This suggests that political participation should not just be judged on turnout for general elections but also other acts of political participation. Using your own knowledge as well as the extract, consider why some commentators have spoken of a ‘participation crisis’ in recent years. In recent general elections, declining levels of turnout have led some to believe Britain is having a participation crisis. Meaning, political participation is so low it threatens to undermine Britain’s democracy. In the 2005 general election just 60% of registered voters cast a ballot and this increased slightly in 2010 to 65%. Low levels of turnout cause numerous problems. If not enough of those able to vote do, it calls into question the legitimacy of the result and any decisions made by the winning party. For example, the Conservative party...
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...Marcus Ewers 3-15-16 Ms. Hartstein Literature Persuasive Essay Why to vote Republican rather than Democrat. The 2016 presidential election is only 7 months away and options are very limited. You got the Democrats: Hillary Clinton and her competitor Bernie Sanders. For the Republicans you have now only Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and John Kasich to choose from. Three Super Tuesdays have already occurred and Trump has won the majority of them. On super Tuesday 3 Trump won the Florida Republican Primary which was a huge victory for him over his competitor Marco Rubio. Trump manages to beat Rubio in his own state of Florida. Because of this Marco Rubio has dropped out of the presidential run. Leaving only Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and John...
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...and being smart? What is having no control over life like? In the book Anthem, by Ayn Rand, Thier jobs were picked, where to live, when to go to bed, how to talk, or even where to be at during lunch. They dreamed of a society where they could choose all of these things. They dreamed of a democracy. A democracy is a form of government in which supreme power is retained by the people or a representative for the people that is voted on by them (livescience.com). Having the power to chose what everyone wants with limited government interference, and having guaranteed rights, and providing social equality and diversity for everyone is just some of the many reasons why a democracy is a strong form of government....
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...largely independent of ___________________. Choose one answer. | a. the party organization/officeholders | | | b. officeholders/the party organization | | | c. voters/politicians | | | d. bureaucrats/the president | | | e. the electoral college/state legislators | | Question2 Marks: 2 A new order of demonstrated political loyalties, such as seen in Texas and the South from Reconstruction until the middle 20th century with the movement from a Democratic majority identification to a development of parity between the Democratic and then in the latter half of the 20thcentury the shift to Republican party majority identification is called Choose one answer. | a. dealignment. | | | b. alignment. | | | c. realignment. | | | d. party shift. | | | e. political epoch. | | Question3 Marks: 2 The right to vote was not extended to women in the United States until Choose one answer. | a. the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. | | | b. the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution. | | | c. the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. | | | d. the adoption of the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution. | | | e. an executive order that was issued and signed by President John F. Kennedy just weeks before his assassination in November of 1963. | | Question4 Marks: 2 No clear evidence exists that surfing the Web makes people more politically informed. Answer: True False ...
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...No Way, No Change “Voting is the expression of our commitment to ourselves, one another, this country and this world.” -Sharon Salzberg Why would you want a change? Why take away our rights? Is it that, you feel that we don’t have the right mindset to choose our politicians, who will run our country? But our men who are eighteen are old enough to go and fight in the war. These are questions you must ask yourself. Do not take away the rights of an eighteen year old. Let us keep the chance to vote. There are so many reasons to keep the age limit the same. For example, by keeping the voting age at 18, it has encouraged responsibility at an early age, and has promoted lasting social involvement and political participation from youth. When the youth see other youth getting involved, they want to join as well. It’s the domino effect when one fall into doing something, the rest will fall into place as well. Instead of changing the age to twenty-one, why don’t we encourage the responsibility that it takes to vote. Adults should not want to limit how many people should be able to vote. They should want more people to vote that way it’s a better chance for who they want elected to be elected. I mean, shouldn’t we as teenagers have a say so in who runs our country? Democrat Senator Edward Ted Kennedy (United States) states that 18 year-olds already have many rights and responsibilities in our society comparable to voting. It does not automatically follow of course-- simply because an...
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