Should Electoral College Be Abolished Essay

1302 Words3 Pages

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 by coin toss, party affiliation and could let them vote how they liked. It should be scrapped because it is undemocratic. …show more content…

As a Californian, my vote for president is worth 1/3 that of an Alaskan or Rhode Island. One reason Bush won in 2000 is that his support was spread over small states with their extra senators. Democracy is in principle wedded to the idea of one citizen, one vote. The Electoral College is an insult to that principle and discredits our democracy.
With or without point one, the Electoral College can pick a popular vote loser as president. It doesn 't happen often, but when it does, it is as much or more an insult to democracy as lopsided vote values. People who support it can go on all they like about the "subtle brilliance of the framers in balancing urban power with rural" or rubbish like that, but any system that awards a victory to the loser of the popular vote is quite simply wrong. It requires in it somewhere that some Americans are worth more than others and should have a greater say in who is

Show More
Related

  • DBQ Essay: Abolishing The Electoral College

    165 Words  | 1 Pages

    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,

    Read More

  • Should Electoral College Be Abolished Dbq Essay

    599 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Unfairness in the Electoral College

    798 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Electoral College Dbq

    695 Words  | 2 Pages

    over the past two centuries, the electoral college needs to be abolished and the election process needs to be changed. Keeping elections away from physical situations and making them into efficient, easy at home polling will make the election process smoother. Making the popular vote be the determining vote for president will keep more electors happier and will give them less reasons to lash out against the results. The recent elections have evolved from just electing the president, to being strong emotional situations that can possibly endanger many people when they end the wrong way. I think that if we can implement these two new ideas into the election process that it will keep electors safer, make them happier with the outcome, and will prevent elections from turning into bad

    Read More

  • Electoral College Flaws

    1559 Words  | 4 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Persuasive Essay On Why The Electoral College Should Be Abolished

    1041 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Essay On The Electoral College Should Be Abolished

    1252 Words  | 3 Pages

    Some people believe the Electoral College system weakens the fundamental principle of a representative government- that one person should have one vote. If we switch to a popular vote, people will have a greater amount of saying than before. The candidates will have a better chance to get

    Read More

  • Electoral College Argumentative Essay

    1378 Words  | 3 Pages

    Instead of a direct democracy, the United States has what is called a representative democracy, which means that when you vote, you are voting for a representative who in turn will vote for the president. This system may seem fair but it gives more power to people in a less populated states than those who live a highly populated state. If the 538 total votes in the Electoral College were divided evenly, then there would be one vote for every 574,000 people. However, the rules of the Electoral College say that each state gets at least three votes, regardless of population. Then the rest of the votes are given out based on population. This happens because the Electoral College gives the votes to the state rather than the people. California has about 37,000,000 people and has fifty-five compared to the 560,000 people in Wyoming, which gets represented by three votes. So Wyoming gets one electoral vote or one for every 187,000 people. However California gets 55 electoral votes, or one for every 677,000 people. This means Wyomingites have three and a half times the power of Californians in the Electoral

    Read More

  • Electoral College Persuasive Essay

    1347 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Electoral College Advantages

    1473 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Electoral College Should Be Abolished Essay

    1018 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • The Electoral College Vs. Popular Vote

    1203 Words  | 3 Pages

    By dismembering the Electoral College and replacing it with a popular vote, some Americans believe this would eradicate any further issues on who is placed in office, while others want a system to do the dirty work and select their future leader. But by eliminating the very system created to keep the states at peace, the Electoral College has, in fact, caused turmoil and confusion among the people in regards to American politics; many people have a sense of displacement and lack of care for politics due to the mindset that someone else is in charge and their voice does not matter. Allowing the American people to cast their choice for who takes care of their future and eliminating the middle man ideals of the Electoral College, government can give back to its people in ways they might not have thought about before. They give the people a voice, choice, and a sense of personal expression and freedom.

    Read More

  • Pros And Cons Of The Electoral College

    2215 Words  | 5 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Electoral College Should Be Abolished

    886 Words  | 2 Pages

    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)...

    Read More

  • Questioning the Electoral College System

    1971 Words  | 4 Pages

    With the Electoral College in place, the United States remains a true Representative Democracy. By having electors, who are nominated to cast their vote for the president, the nation distances itself from a Direct Democracy (Longley). While creating the nation, many people believe the founders were strictly concerned with power to the citizens. However, they truly did not give the people much “political credit” (Longley). In fact, the “framers expressly ejected” the idea of popular vote, and felt using state electors was the only fair method of electing the president (Gringer 2008). They also understood “it would be unlikely for a candidate to have a nationwide presence among the people” (Patel, 2012) Delegate Elbridge Gerry believed a plan using popular vote was “radically vicious” and feared that the “people are uninformed, and would be misled by a few designing men” (Gerry 1787). They framers understood many people do not have a lot of information on, or background in politi...

    Read More

More about Should Electoral College Be Abolished Essay

Open Document