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Short essay on the electoral college
Essay about the electoral college
The electoral college then and now
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Many arguments still exist today whether the Electoral College system should be abolished in our nation as the citizens feel that their votes are meaningless. In the next paragraph, I will discuss how Electoral College works and its history.
The United States Electoral College is a process of electing the president and the vice president of the nation. The Electoral College consists of 538 electors: 435 members of house of representative, 100 senators, and 3 electors from District of Columbia. The Electoral College started when the founding fathers drafted the U.S. Constitution in which many laws and the presidential election laws stated. Most states use the “winner-take-all” system, that is, the winner of the state popular vote gets all of the state’s electoral votes. This system allows some candidates to win presidency even if they lose the national popular vote by a small margin. Another voting system is called the congressional district plan. This method divides the state depending on the number of its district then distribute its electoral votes to each district. The winner of each district will have that
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Because local interest and loyalties have played a great role in American history, proponents stated that Electoral College system unifies our country as it requires a major support from a state to elect the president. Electoral College also persuades presidential candidates to choose a vice president from a different region to maximize the support of one state. Thus, there is an encouragement for presidential candidates to unite alliances of States and regions rather than to worsen regional differences. This unifying mechanism seems to be practical especially in view of the severe regional problems that have typically overwhelmed some large nations such as China, India, the Soviet Union, and some other European
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.
Since the electoral system can change the outcome of the election, it often misrepresents the will of citizens. In electoral system, candidate with most popular votes in states wins electoral votes regardless of difference in popular votes. That means, if people living in urban areas support one candidate, they could easily mislead the results of popular votes. Smaller areas with more population often drag results on one side than larger areas with less population. Either it is a presidential election of 1888 or 2000 election, candidates with higher electoral votes happen to win against people’s popular votes.
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. Throughout the almost 2 and a half centuries since the beginning of the Electoral College there has been a large change in population.
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 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.
Due to the discrepancy between the winner of the popular vote and the winner of the electoral college in the most recent election, there has been a lot of talk about eliminating the electoral college and moving to a direct popular vote. While many people argue for this shift, usually with little knowledge of what a popular vote election would look like, there are also many citizens who are opposed to the idea. In our polarized political climate, this fact is not surprising. Those who support the electoral college defend it by claiming that it is not only constitutional, but it also represents the whole county, and makes for a more certain, legitimate election process.
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 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 Constitutional Convention of 1787 gave birth to the Electoral College system. The Electoral College system can be briefly described as a system where voters are able to vote for candidates(electors) on election day. Electors then cast their vote for a candidate in their respective party. Our Founding Fathers described the electoral college system in Article
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 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.
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)...
The Electoral College: Not a School, a Problem. May 24, 1984. How The Electoral College Works? Federal Election Commission. www.fec.gpv/pages/ecworks.htm 10/20/01.