The author of ‘Why We Should Abolish the Electoral College’ is a political science major. He explains why we should abolish the electoral college by explaining a candidate is allowed to choose a slate of electors who are able to make the real votes for President. He states that the Electoral College is made up of 538 electors. States are not given electoral votes based on just population but also by their representation in Congress. Therefore, each state has a minimum of 3 votes. The 3 votes comprise from each state including 2 senators and at least 1 representative. A candidate who achieves a majority of the votes, which is estimated to be 270 as of today, wins the Presidential election. One weakness in his argument however is he only states …show more content…
If the votes were given according to population, small states would be seen as irrelevant to the election therefore every state was given a minimum of 3 votes. Although this was seen as a good thing to the smaller states, each citizen’s vote varied from someone living in a different state. States are divided into two groups known as the ‘swing states’ and the ‘safe states.’ Safe states are states in American that have proven throughout time that they are always in favor to a particular party. Swing states are known to contain equal support for both parties. In 48 states, the majority vote by citizens helps determine which presidential candidate will be able to take the electoral votes from the states. Did you know that by gaining at least 21.8% of a popular vote can help someone become the next president of the United States of America? The smaller states contain just about as much power as the larger states when it is regarding the popular vote. Receiving more of the popular vote among the smaller states is actually more beneficial because the smaller states are given more power than they should have compared to the larger states. For example, in the 2000 election, Al …show more content…
The author feels as if in the Electoral College that if electors were able to change the vote of the people living in the states that it does not seem to matter if someone were to voice their opinion or not, due to the outcome of how the elector of the state may take in order to cast their
The United States is a privileged country with freedoms and opportunities many countries strive to achieve. People come into the United States in hopes to obtain these rights and make a better life for themselves; they strive to achieve “The American Dream.” Citizens are given the chance to vote, speak their mind, and live according to their desires without prejudice. However, the same government that promises hope has flaws that frustrate the American people; the Electoral College is one topic of debate. Many feel this system is a safe way to regulate who leads the country, while others feel that issues should be left to popular vote.
Having only two candidates running for the leader of our country restricts our choices for president. If a third part wins the majority of the popular vote, that doesn't necessarily mean they will be the president because it's all up to the electors. If the candidate doesn't win the electors' votes then they will not h...
As stated by Jamin Raskin, a professor of constitutional law at American University and a Democratic state senator in Maryland, “…It simply calls for an interstate compact among all states to agree to cast their electoral votes for the winner of the national popular vote. It becomes effective and binding when states representing at least 270 electors enter the compact. This is the way we will get to elect presidents as we elect governors and senators: everyone acting together, without games and subterfuge”. So really what happens with national popular vote is when a person votes, their vote is going directly towards their choice of president, unlike where in the Electoral College, a persons vote is going towards electors whom is a group of people who have pledged to work for their chosen candidate. The founding fathers thought that people directly voting for their chosen candidate would be too problematic and a disaster, which is why they came up with the Electoral College. So technically with the Electoral College, a candidate can win the most votes yet he can still lose the election, which is one of the reasons the Electoral College System is confusing and hard to understand to some people, and may even discourage citizens to vote because one may think their vote will not count towards their candidate in
The Electoral College is an outdated and unrealistic arrangement that caters to eighteenth century federalist America in a way that is detrimental to modern democracy. The electoral college gives too much power to the government, overlooks equal representation, and creates loopholes that do not serve to help America thrive.
It states that “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” (US Const. Art. II, sec. 1). The number of electors the each state receives is equal to the combined total of its Senate membership and House of Representatives delegation. By combining both the Senate and the Houses of Representatives, that Founding Fathers made it so that smaller states would not be forgot, while insuring that states with a larger population would have a larger say in the election. The 23rd Amendment, ratified on March 29, 1961, provides an additional three electors to the District of Columbia. Currently there are a total of 538 electors, corresponding to the 435 representatives and 100 senators, plus the three electors the District of Columbia is provided. The number of electoral votes in each state ranges from three to fifty-four for California, the most populous state. The total number of electors each state gets are adjusted following each decennial census in a process called reapportionment, which reallocates the number of Members of the House of Representatives to reflect changing rates of population growth (or decline) among the
The Electoral College was created by the framers at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. They believe that it wasn’t a good idea for the people to elect the president directly because they did not trust that voters would have enough information to make a good choice. The Electoral College basically chooses who the next president will be since it takes away our freedom to vote. The Electoral College should be abolished because it’s undemocratic, the small states are overrepresented, and it hurts third parties. The United States of America is a democratic country that is characterized by the equality of rights and privileges.
Voting is at the center of every democratic system. In america, it is the system in which a president is elected into office, and people express their opinion. Many people walk into the voting booth with the thought that every vote counts, and that their vote might be the one that matters above all else. But in reality, America’s voting system is old and flawed in many ways. Electoral College is a commonly used term on the topic of elections but few people actually know how it works.
The Electoral College consists of 538 electors. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the President.
The electors in each state are equal to the number of representatives that state has in Congress resulting in at least three electors per state regardless of population (McKenzie 285). Each state has two votes to correspond to the senators representing that state in Congress, and then each state has one vote to correspond to the House representative that represents that state in Congress. Smaller states comprise a higher percentage of the total electoral votes than would a popular vote for the president in those states (Muller 1257). The Founders intended the Electoral College to protect overshadowing the small states’ interests of the larger populous states by allowing at least three representative votes rather than none at all, and the smaller states were not willing to give control of the election process to the larger states, which was similar to their fight for representation in Congress (Muller 1250). However, it ignores the people who voted against the winner, since once the result is determined at the state level; the losing voters no longer have any significance nationally (Wagner 579). Wagner also points to the fact that the winner-take-all system can lead to selecting the minority candidate over the majority vote, as in the George
The Electoral College Should Be Abolished Many years after the United States was founded, the Constitutional Convention met to decide how the new nation would govern itself; they later came to settle on the Electoral College. The Electoral College is a system in which the president and vice president are chosen indirectly. In general, the delegates did not believe that a direct popular vote was acceptable, however that it should be decided by the US senators and representatives instead. The way in which it works: a candidate must receive a majority of the electoral votes to be officially declared president. If no candidate obtains a majority, the US Representatives selects the president from the top three contenders; this means each state receives
The Electoral College today is a very complex system of voting and campaigning. When it was first created, the Framers thought the average citizen of their day was not intelligent enough to know who should be leading their country. So they created the Electoral College which was run by people who knew what they were doing. The Electoral College is a body of people who represent each state and they determine the president. The real question is: Has the Electoral College gotten too far out of hand where it needs to go? The answer is yes. The reasons are because any third party candidate running in the election has no chance of winning any electoral votes. Also, it gives too much power to the big states in electoral votes. Finally, it creates problems on majority electoral votes and equality of smaller states is diminished.
In the Electoral College system, every state has one electoral vote for each congressman and senator. Congressman is allotted by population and every state has two senators, so Rhode Island, which has basically nobody in it, has three electoral votes. California, with 53 representatives and two senators, has 55 electoral votes. The states choose electors and the electors meet in what is called the Electoral College to pick a president. In practice, nearly every state has passed a law that the electors will all vote for the popular vote winner in their state, but as the Supreme Court said in Bush v. Gore, the people of the United States do not have a constitutional right to pick the president. A state could, if it felt like it, select the electors
The Electoral College should be abolished because the United States today is much more populous and very different than when the founders wrote the Constitution more than two centuries ago (Raasch 1)...
Although, it is remotely possible in a very close election that there will not be one candidate receiving 270 electoral votes, in which case the House of Representatives chooses the President. In this scenario, each state has merely one vote each to decide the presidency out of the top three contenders for the office. The Senate chooses the vice-president out of the top two contenders.
The Electoral College is a system where the President is directly elected. This process has been used in many past elections as well as the current 2016 election. This process also helps narrow down the large numbers that were made by the popular votes, into a smaller number that is easier to work with for electing the President. Some states use a system called “winner-takes-all”, which is another system that is connected with the Electoral College. This allows a candidate with the most electoral votes, to get the rest of the votes that the state provides. This has made it very unfair to many people, because the Electoral College has the most advantage for candidates. The Electoral College is a very unfair system that causes any candidate to win easily if he or she has the highest votes, and makes the number of voters