THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE- IT’S TIME TO MOVE ON
The next President of the United States, the successor to William Jefferson Clinton and man who will lead America as the first President of the new millennium is George W. Bush, the Republican governor of Texas, the son of a former President. Or it’s Democratic Vice President Al Gore, President Clinton’s right hand man for the past eight years.
One of these gentlemen is the next leader of the free world.
Who that gentleman is will in all likelihood be determined by the Supreme Court. Which is probably not what our nation’s Founding Fathers had in mind when they designed the Presidential election process.
The 2000 Presidential Election has been nothing short of a fiasco on many levels. Historical in the sense that this has never happened in the United States before, but a fiasco, nonetheless. The popular vote shows Gore as winning the election, however, the popular vote does not determine the next tenant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That’s the job of the Electoral College. The winner of Florida’s electoral votes, and apparently of the election was Bush. Bush had won Florida’s 25 electoral votes. However, reports of voting irregularities, problems with the “butterfly ballot” and voters allegedly being turned away from the polls, raised concerns as to who the actual winner of the crucial Florida electoral votes was. The popular vote was so close that it required a recount, effectively taking the electoral votes, the election and the Presidency away from Bush.
The 2000 Presidential Election has done nothing if not raise serious questions about our election process. Lack of standardization in the voting process, methods of vote tabulation and the media’s role in determining the outcome of an election have all come under scrutiny. The question raised most often, however, seems to be about the Electoral College, and it’s validity as part of the election process in the 21st Century.
Originally, in our nation’s infancy, the plan was to have Congress elect the President. Despite the fact that the President of the United States might feel indebted to Congress, coupled with the fact that the intricate system of checks and balances placed in the Constitution would be weakened by such a process, this system was the process of choice and received approval on four different occasions (Pierce 39).
There were th...
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... they have the most to gain. Period. They always have and they always will.
While it would require a Constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College, perhaps it is time to do just that. The Founding Fathers of the United States created our Constitution to be a flexible document, with the idea that it should be able to adapt to meet changing circumstances and times. They created the college to protect a still shaky government and nation. The United States and its people have proven that they are no longer in need of such protection.
It’s time to give the election of the President of the United States back to the people.
Works Cited
Electoral College. Congressional Digest Oct 1992: 226,256.
Glennon, Michael J. When No Majority Rules. Washington: Congressional Quarterly mc, 1992.
Peirce, Neal R. The Peoples President. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968.
The Electoral College, Unfair from Day One- Akhil Reed Amar, New York Times, November 9, 2000
How to make the President talk to the Local Pol, Charles Fried, New Yoork Times, November 11, 2000
How the Winner of the Popular Vote Could Lose the Election After All, David Stout, New York Times,
November 3, 2000
... of Florida, under the Electoral College, electoral votes for the candidate running for office receive a plurality of their popular vote. Therefore, whoever gets the majority of the national electoral votes wins the election. Bush won by a narrow margin of these votes resulting in a mandatory machine recount, which afterwards concluded that Bush’s victory margin, was even narrower. This allowed Al Gore to request a recount in the counties of his choice, so naturally he chose the counties whose votes were historically democratic. The uncertainty continued through the circuit courts all the way to The Florida Supreme Court who ruled in Bush v. Gore that there was not enough time to recount the popular vote ballots without violating the United States constitution. The recounting of the ballots would have violated the Fourteenth Amendments “Equal Protection Clause”.
Since then, the U.S. has grown from a mere 4 million to a looming number of around 300 million people. It is because of this population increase that the Electoral College has become obsolete and is beginning to fail at its duties. Alexander Hamilton was a Federalist and a supporter of the Electoral College who was quoted as saying “It was also desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder/ promise an effectual security against this mischief” (Document #1). The College would have prevented tumult and disorder for many years, but nowadays, it isn’t capable of keeping 300 million people calm.
The Electoral College system should be scrapped and be replaced with popular vote because it is unfair. By abolishing the Electoral College and replacing it with popular vote, it would represent citizens equally, it would allow citizens to elect their president just as they elect their governors and senators, and it would motivate and encourage citizens to participate in voting.
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.
In conclusion, the Electoral College should be abolished because small states are unrepresented, there are many flaws in the system, and it is not accurate based on people 's votes. Overall there seems to be no need for it, it was made for the reason that back then they thought it was a simple way of choosing a president, but really it just causes problems and does not represent the candidates or voters fairly. If America is truly about equality and democracy, then they will abolish the Electoral College and let the people have a
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.
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.
As the United States of America gets older, so does the presidential election voting system. The argument to change this method of voting has been becoming more and more popular as the years go on. It has been said that the Framers of the Constitution came up with this method because of the bad transportation, communication, and they feared the public’s intelligence was not suitable for choosing the President of the United States. Others say that the Framers made this method because they feared that the public did not receive sufficient information about candidates outside of their state to make such a decision based on direct popular vote. My research on this controversial issue of politics will look into the factors into why the Electoral College exists and if it is possibly outdated for today’s society. It will look into the pros and cons of this voting system, and it will explore the alternative methods of voting such as the Direct Popular vote. Many scholarly authors have gathered research to prove that this voting system is outdated and it does not accurately represent the national popular will. Many U.S. citizens value their vote because they only get one to cast towards the candidate of their choice in the presidential election. Based on the Electoral College system their vote may possibly not be represented. Because of today’s society in the U.S. the Electoral College should be abolished because it is not necessary to use a middle-man to choose our president for us. It is a vote by the people, all of us having one voice, one vote.
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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)...
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