Electoral College Research Paper

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Electoral College The founding fathers established the Electoral College 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. The process is the selection of electors, the meeting of the electors where they vote for President and Vice President, and finally the counting of the electoral votes by congress. The College consists of 538 electors and a majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the President. The number of electors a state can have equals the number of members in its congressional delegation; There is one for each in the House of Representatives and two for that states senators. The 23rd Amendments states that the District of Columbia is allocated …show more content…

There is a “winner take all” system in most states that awards all electors of the winning presidential candidate, but other states like Maine and Nebraska have whats called “proportional representation” which is an electoral system in which parties gain seats in proportion to the number of votes cast for them. There are many interesting facts about the Electoral college that many might not know of. For example, in 1872 electors actually voted for a dead man. A Democratic candidate named Horace Greeley had gotten 66 electoral votes on a landslide loss to Ulysses S. Grant. This mistake was made due to Greeley passing away before the electors could get together. Disregarding the fact that Greeley was dead, three Georgia electors still voted for him. Of course the votes were invalid because obviously Greeley was unable to serve at that present time — or any time. Another interesting fact would be that more Constitutional amendments have been proposed to reform or even eliminate the Electoral College than any other subject matter ever. Unbelievably, 700 different proposals have been introduced to Congress to get rid of the Electoral

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