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Every four years our nation votes for the next leader of our nation; however, it is not really the citizens of our nation but rather the Electoral College who chooses the President of the United States. The Electoral College, which is the group of people who formally elect the President and Vice-President of the United States, has been part of our nation since its inception. There are 538 electors in the Electoral College, which comes from the number of House representatives and the two Senators each state has. To win the presidency, a candidate needs 270 of those electors. It is an indirect election since the people are not directly voting for the president but rather the people of voting for their elector. The electors meet in the Capital The most significant issue of this system is that it is nearly impossible for a third-party candidate to win the election (Black). In all states, besides Nebraska and Maine, a winner-takes-all system exists for allocating electoral votes. Thus, the candidate who wins the majority of the votes in that state receives all of that states’ electoral votes. So even if a third-party has any significant support in a state if he/she does not receive majority they receive no electoral votes. Another drawback is that it is possible for the loser of the popular vote could win the electoral vote hence becoming president (Black). So the people’s choice is not always the winner. Many feel the people should choose the president rather than having the unpopular lead the country. Lastly, it makes voters feel that their votes do not matter since the most states vote the same way for most elections (Josephson). Voter turnout is usually low in the nation and without the Electoral College the incentive to vote may increase since people will feel that their vote actually counts since a direct election makes people vote for the president. Due to these drawbacks, countless Americans feel the nation may be better off without the electoral
Abolishing the Electoral College is the best option for our democracy because keeping it slim the chances for independent candidates to win and unfair voting distribution to exist. In Document B, the 1992 presidential election shows Ross Perot with 19,743,821 votes but 0 electoral votes. Independent candidates like Ross Perot don’t get any electoral votes but millions of popular votes. This proves my claim to be true because major party candidates are receiving all electoral votes and are not allowing independent candidates to have a fair election. In Document F it states, “Because each state casts only one vote, the single representative in Wyoming, representing 500,000 voters, would have as much say as the 55 representatives from California,
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.
The Electoral College is the name given to a group of electors who are nominated by political activists and party members within the states. The electoral college really isn't necessary and should be abolished. There are numerous reasons why this is so. With the Electoral College in affect third parties don't have a chance to become the president, which isn't fair. Electors are expected to be honest but in the past our country has caught some untruthful ones. The electoral College was created so long ago that it is now outdated, so we shouldn't even have electors. People of the U.S. may think that they are participating in a direct election for the president, but with the Electoral College system technically, this isn't the case.
If you think on the Election Day, you just voted for US president, then you are mistaken, just like millions of Americans who hope their votes will pick the next president. When voting for President, we actually vote for state electors who hold electoral votes. Electoral votes are the votes that decide the victory of a candidate in an election. This Electoral College System has limited democracy to people in three major ways. Electoral College holds the ability to alter the results of elections over popular votes, discriminates against candidates to campaign in certain states, and creates high voter turnouts.
Every four years, the citizens of America migrate to their respective polling locations and cast their vote. On this important day, the second Tuesday of November, the next President of the United States is elected. The election race for United States presidential candidates undergo a political marathon, negotiating primaries, party conventions and an electoral college system along the way. The electoral college is one of the main aspect of a presidential election. The Electoral College is made up of electors in each state, who represent the states popular vote. Each presidential party or candidate designates a group of electors in each state, equal to the States electoral votes, who are considered to be loyal to that candidate, to each State’s
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.
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.
There are some advantages of the Electoral College such as, it preserves the voices of the states with the lowest population. It also favors a two-party system and dissuades third-parties which creates more stability. Even with all these pros I think without an overhaul that we should eliminate the Electoral College. This would simplify this process and more people would get out and
Originating in 1787, the Electoral College was created as the official body within American politics that elects the president and vice president. The decision of who will win is based off the vote totals in each state, and “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.” (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, “What is the Electoral College?”). During this time, the job of the Electoral College was to make peace between differing states and federal interest groups, provide popular participation in elections, give a vote to less populated states, and keep the president’s powers separate from Congress.
Finally, these consequences go far beyond simple "fairness" issues. Too many times in American history the Electoral College has single-handedly defeated the purpose of democracy in our country. Since the first presidential election, there have been more than a dozen instances in which somebody has been elected president without a majority of the votes. The following are examples from how the electoral college has disrupted an election: Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, and now George Bush.
Americans do not vote for their presidential or vice-presidential candidate. Instead, they indicate their preference of candidate. Whichever candidate gets a plurality of the vote in a state gets all the Electors for that state. Each state's number of Electors is based on the number of Representatives and Senators it has in Congress. Once a candidate gets a plurality, the Electors vote in the "Electoral College" (a sort of caucus in their state six weeks after the election) for that candidate. So a candidate who gets just one more vote than the other in a given state wins all the votes from that state. Notably, although it is called a College, the Electoral College is a process administered by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). It is not a particular place (NARA 1).
At first when seeing Electoral College in high school, I thought it was a place that you go to school. Silly me, I didn’t know anything about the government and how it was ran or what makes up the government. I really didn’t start learning about the government until the 10th grade, when I took American Government with Mr. Evans. If he never did anything else, he made sure that we knew about the government and how and why it was ran the way it was ran.
There are many debates on how to fix the electoral college, but which one is truly the superior? The electoral college was formed to keep certain states from being the ones who basically choose our president. Alexander Hamilton wanted to have a fair opportunity for every state; he wanted us to all be truly equals, but as the country grew different states got more representation. More and more states chose to give their whole state the title of their party, but is this really what we need?