The Electoral College System Survey Report The Electoral College System The Electoral College is the due process that is employed in the choosing of the U.S President and the Vice President. The members that are in charge of taking the vote to elect the President and his deputy are assigned the duties through an election done on a state by state basis. There is the appointment of the electors to the District of Columbia and each state. The electors in each state match the Congress membership entitled to each state. The total number of electors that corresponds to the 435 House of Representative members is 538 (Putnam 81). Besides this, there are 100 senators and an added three members from the District of Columbia. There is the pledge that …show more content…
is expected to a given running President and Vice President from the electors. The basis that is used in determining the election is the “winner take it all,” in all states but Nebraska and Maine that use the congressional district approach. The candidate that gets the majority of the vote, 270 currently, for either the presidential post or the vice wins the election. In case of a failure in the presidential hopefuls meeting the majority threshold, the election will be taken over by the House of Representatives to elect the President (Sheppard 7). A failure in the Vice President position would entitle the choice-making process to the Senate. Founding Fathers’ Rationale The rationale that was used by the founding fathers in the establishment of the Electoral College in the Constitution was in the hope of achieving a compromise between the due process of election of the President by the use of a vote by the Congress and the normal expectation of electing the President through the reliance on the popular vote system of citizens that meet a given minimum age requirement (Sheppard 7). This was perceived to be the best-suited approach that would lead to the creation of a buffer between the selection of the President and the population. As such, there would be the creation of a platform to result into the delegation of power by the government to the other smaller states. Criticism of the Electoral College The system results in the distortion of the presidential campaign given the candidates grant extra weight in regards to the parochial needs that are borne by the swing states. For instance, vouching for Florida would result in the effective elevation of the always-present need contestants. The system is also criticized for the chance it creates for the loser of the popular vote to carry the day in the electoral vote. There is also the distortion that is exhibited in the presidential campaign as a result of the incentives that the parties get to write off over 40 states that they have confirmed to lack an impact (Putnam 88). They can never win the support in the states, and at the same time have nothing to lose in them. The Electoral College system results in the distortion of governance.
A sitting President serving the first term may have to worry about a successful reelection in the event of the desire to establish trade and diplomatic relations with Cuba. With the use of the system, there is also the exhibited distortion of the entitlement of a single individual to one vote that is meant to be the key to democracy. The cause of this is the failure by the system to occasion an equal distribution of the electoral votes in accord to the sizes of the population in various states. There is the entitlement of a single electoral vote for each member of the House of Representatives delegation and an additional of two electors in the representation of the senators (Sheppard 16). The impact of this is the over-representation of the smaller states in the College …show more content…
system. Drawing from the result from the 2010 census, the model of distributing the House seats entitles an individual citizen in Wyoming to a triple weight in the votes that they have in comparison to a solitary citizen in California. Personal Opinion In regards to the misgivings that come into the fold as a result of the use of the Electoral College, I tend to think that the whole system should be abolished. There may be the consideration of giving the power of the vote to the popular voting system to the qualified general public. This would constitute citizens who have attained a given minimum age requirement. There needs to be a change in the system as a result of the potency it has in creating a 269-269 vote tie. The tie is bound to result into a lot of challenges that manifest in the form of the difficulty in determining one winner before the date that is set for Inauguration lapses (Putnam 91). With the Electoral College system, there is the chance that a smaller third party may win a single state or two, and this would change the outcome that is tallied for the entire national election. Survey The respondents in the survey was 16, out whom 10 were in support of the Electoral College system, and six had a contrary opinion; translating to 62.5% approval and 37.5% disapproval.
The survey was taken between September 2nd, 2015, and September 11th, 2015. From the online generator, the computed margin of error for a 29000 population size and a sample size of 16 is 24.49%. As such, at a confidence interval of 95% the lower limit is 38.01% and the upper limit 86.99%. These are obtained by subtracting the margin of error from the approval percentage and adding to it respectively. Therefore, the confidence interval range that can be deduced form this is 38.01% - 86.99%. This is the range that lies the expectation of approval of the Electoral College system 95 times in every 100 tests. The table below depicts the survey
results: Respondent's Name Date Surveyed Elect. College Approval Fahad Alajmi 2 -Sept -15 0 Naser Alibrahim 2- Sept -15 1 Abdullah Alnaser 3- Sept -15 0 Mohammad Morsi 3- Sept -15 1 Mohammad Almutairi 3- Sept -15 1 Joel Nino 4- Sept -15 0 Feyi Osifuwa 5- Sept -15 1 David Rios 6- Sept -15 1 Rawan Almsaileem 6- Sept -15 0 Abdullah Albrinji 7- Sept -15 1 Husain Alqattan 7- Sept -15 0 Anthony Cerda 8- Sept -15 0 Robert Rios 8- Sept -15 1 Robert Fidone 9- Sept -15 1 Van Tran 10- Sept -15 1 Christopher Wood 11- Sept -15 1 Approval Percentage 62.5% Disproval Percentage 37.5% Margin of error 24.49% 95% Confidence Interval 38.01%-86.99% From the result in the table, the lower limit being 38.01%, implies that less than 50% of the population are opposed to the Electoral College system. This is therefore a population that is not significant and may not be used to make a generalization for the entire population. The percentage of the population that is in support of the Electoral College system and that which does support the system may be represented in a pie chart as show below: Chart: Representation of the Survey Findings The sample size of 16 used is the likely weakness given it is a small sample that would not effectively represent the entire population. The result may thus not be repeatable, thus a questionable accuracy. There is not the incorporation of probability sampling in the identification of the respondents (Fowler 60). In a bid to raise the accuracy stakes, it would be ideal to use a larger sample size to lower the margin of error and look to select them randomly. Works Cited Fowler, Floyd J. Survey research methods. Vol. 1. Sage publications, 2014. Putnam, Joshua T. "A simple approach to projecting the electoral college." International Journal of Forecasting (2015). Sheppard, Stephen M. "Case for the Electoral College and for Its Faithless Elector, A." Wis. L. Rev. Online (2015): 1-20.
For the most part, the connection between the Presidential election process of 1788 and the present Presidential election procedure are both determined through the Electoral College process. The Electoral College process made sure people played a crucial role in the selection of the President of the United States. As was previously stated, I have expounded on the process of how the President is elected; the vital role that people played in the election, and the responsibility of the House of Representatives in response to the
In order to understand and analyze the forces that shaped politics during this time period, political changes must first be examined. One of the biggest changes during this time period was the change in the number of voters. Between 1812 and 1840, the percentage of eligible voters in the United States presidential elections almost tripled, increasing from 26.9 to 80.2 percent while the percentage of states allowing voters to choose presidential electors more than doubled, rising from 44.4 to 95.8 percent, shown in Document A. By 1840, Rhode Island was the only state that didn’t allow all free men to vote.
The Electoral College has been the favored method by the United States to elect the president for many years. When the College was first created in 1787 it was seen as an efficient and reliable way to vote the president into office. It has been more than 2 centuries since this method of electing was chosen and many things have changed in U.S. society. The Electoral College is failing to keep up with these advancements in society and a new method must be chosen soon.
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 allows a candidate to win the presidency without winning the majority of popular votes. Additionally, the unequal representation created by the number of electors each state has leads to a differential worth depending upon a voter’s state of residency. Moreover, the winner-take-all rule of the results in votes which are essentially rendered worthless if they are contrary the state majority. Finally, the system places much of the focus and power to effect elections in the hands of so called swing states that are not historically aligned with only one party. (Dahl, 80-83) These aspects of the U.S. political system are utterly counterintuitive and stand in stark contrast to many of the cardinal ideals of
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 process consists of the selection of the electors, the meeting of the electors where they vote for President and Vice President, and the counting of the electoral votes by Congress.
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 was a compromise between those at the Constitutional Convention who wanted the US president elected by popular vote and those who wanted congress to select the president. They believed that having it where each state would get a certain number of votes based on population would keep a manipulative and charming person out of office. They thought it would prevent bribery and corruption along with secret dealings. I don’t think that this is the case and it one of the reason I feel that the Electoral College should be abolished.
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.
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.
The Electoral College is made up of 538 electors which represents the voting membership of both houses of congress (535) and 3 additional electors to represent Washington D.C (Neale, 2004) . Each state is allocated electoral votes according to their representation of members in both houses of congress, giving electoral college ...
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
Quinnipiac University in 2012, 67 % of people in the years of 18-29 support the
Beginning at the time the Electoral College was put into place, many debated over its pros and cons. As time has gone on, more and more people have begun to show support for a change in the system (Saad 2013). After George W. Bush defeated AL Gore in the 2000 election by losing popular vote, but winning the college, leading to a “legal recount contest”, many began to question the fairness of the college (Cohen, 2010). This marked the “third time in the nation’s history” the less popular candidate has taken office (Longley). However, the Electoral College should remain in place because it ensures the continuation of a Representative Democracy, maintains a two party system, and because currently no plausible plan has been produced as a means of replacement.