Electoral College has been around for nearly 200 years. This system is used to vote for the next President and vice president. There are a total of 538 electors and 270 of the majority are needed to win. Each state is allowed one for each member in the House and two for the Senate. Like other things in government there are some advantages and disadvantages when it comes to Electoral College.
Some of the advantages that the Electoral College has but are not limited to: They give the small states a say in the upcoming election. One of the biggest advantages this offer is that it avoids the need of a recount. The Electoral College always enhances the minority groups and the reason behind this is because of no matter how small a group is and no
You also have the issue if there was a legitimate third party you can’t win the majority vote and thus leave the House of Representatives to vote and many people may not like this idea. Then you have the issue with the swing states obtaining most of the attention because if a candidate has the majority of the votes then they will acquire all of the electoral votes for that state. This can also lead a discourage in a voter turnout which is where candidates only focus on trying to win these big swing states and this will make voters feel like their votes do not affect the election. There is also a term called faithless elector which is a risk for the candidate running for office. This is where an elector says that they are pledged to vote for on party then turn around and vote for another one. Lastly this can also cause failure to accurately account for the national popular votes in two ways. One is by some state are over –represented in rural states because each state is represented by the House. Then you have the winner takes all mechanism when the candidate wins the most of the popular votes in that state wins all the electoral votes of that state. Which would make it hard for a third party to have a chance.
The Electoral College has been around for over 200 years and yes there the College itself has been proposed to 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.
Electoral College is Wrong 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 important. With the Electoral College in effect, third parties don't have a chance to become the president, which isn't fair.
Florida is a good example of what I'm talking about--not because that state turned out to make the decisive difference in this week's election, but because more than 2 million voters--nearly as many as will go to the winning candidate--had no say in the outcome. All of Florida's 25 electoral votes will go to the other guy. That's the unavoidable consequence of the winner-take-all system that prevails in all the states. At the end, of course, any contest for a single office is a winner-take-all affair. But why should it be that way in the United States?
The fact that the popular vote holds no power to whom becomes president shows that only some of the people have the power. This seems like a sign that our own government doesn’t have faith in the population to make an educated decision on who should become president. The way smaller states votes are more important than bigger states, shows that states are still not equal in power. The way to win the presidency is more of a strategy than having the ideas to be elected. An example of this is how the electoral college elected George Bush when Al Gore won the popular vote. George Bush is said to be one of the United States worst presidents and was elected through a thought to be flawed system. I also feel as though corruption plays a role in the electoral college compared to the popular vote being authentic. I think this should be replaced with a system of electronic voting that could accurately and clearly show who the majority of the population voted for. But I also think that some sort of requirements to vote should be enacted. Education plays a big role in politics and I feel as though there are people who just vote to be voting with no kind of background knowledge. As bad as it sounds I feel like it could narrow a better decision being made than smaller, less developed states being “mind controlled” into voting for
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.
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 United States of America is a democracy country that is characterized by the equality of rights and privileges. The Electoral College is considered undemocratic because it gives a higher percentage of the voting power to states with low population. Thus, the popular vote should be counted and not the electoral votes. In Document D of the Electoral College DBQ, there’s a chart that shows the comparison of population and electoral votes in 2010. In the chart, it has the twelve states that are less populated plus DC with the total population of 12,500,722 and total electoral vote of 44. In addition, Illinois has the total population of 12,830,632 and the total electoral vote of 20. This shows that Illinois would have less electoral vote than the 12 states plus DC which has 44. It is unfair to the larger states and it shows the unequal electoral votes to the states. In Document F, Bradford Plumer wrote, “the election would be thrown to the House of Representatives, where the state
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
This is unfair because this suggests that voting power changes with your geography. Election of 1824, 1876, 1888 and 2000 reveals that sometimes a candidate with fewer popular votes can still win a majority of the electoral votes. This is a disadvantage because the state’s popular opinion is being neglected. Another thing to consider is the winner take all system, a system in which the “winner of their statewide popular vote gets all of their allotted votes in the Electoral College System which poses another disadvantage. The winner take all system is also known as the “Congressional District Method”; all states follow this except Maine and Nebraska. Maine and Nebraska tend to divide the votes proportionally. The winner take all system is however inequitable because in a state there is a vast amount of opinions, and this system prevents the minority from being discerned. This system “ does nothing to provide representation to any group making up less than half of the population in a given voting district.” Winner take all is a discriminatory rule as it tends to under represent minority. Winner take all is also a binary system, so if you are a Democrat living in Alabama (which is primarily a Republican state) your opinion is less likely to her
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
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
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.
...lity of the votes (Shugart 632). Each states would be important under such a system, as candidates would be forced to address as many voters as possible, not just "voting blocs" that could swing a plurality in the state and, therefore, the entire state. More people would participate in elections because they would know that every vote did indeed count.
Despite being the constant underdog and loser in major elections third parties make some significant contribution to the political spectrum in the United States. Third Party Agendas are taken serious by the Democratic and Republican Parties and specific pieces of the Third Party Agendas are sometimes adopted by the two major parties. Third parties give discontented voters other alternatives. The Republican and Democratic Parties have been known to operate in similar styles and third parties give the voter the opportunity to express their discontent. The third parties in the United States are policy advocates and often are more specific about were they stand ideologically. Often the Republican and Democratic Parties try and take a moderate approach to political issues, and third parties are more conservative or liberal when it comes to political issues. Also, third parties tend to do exactly the opposite when their agenda concerns social issues. Then there is the ?spoiler factor? a Third Party Candidate can collect enough votes to change the outcome of a Presidential Election.
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.