who formally cast votes for the election of the president and vice president. However, many Americans do not know how it works and why it exists. Popular vote should decide the president and vice president, not A process formed from a deal between two factions over whether Congress or the people should decide the president. There are many other problems with the Electoral College. With the Electoral College the loser of the popular vote can win the election. It also destroys the every person get a vote idea by using representatives to vote. One representative cannot possibly be able to speak for all of its people with one vote. This is why popular vote should determine who will be at the head of America’s executive branch. That way every single person has a say
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.
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. This has made it very unfair to many people, because the Electoral College has the most advantage for candidates. The Electoral College is a very unfair system that causes any candidate to win easily if he or she has the highest votes, and makes the number of voters
The Electoral College was created by the framers at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. They believe that it wasn’t a good idea for the people to elect the president directly because they did not trust that voters would have enough information to make a good choice. The Electoral College basically chooses who the next president will be since it takes away our freedom to vote away. The Electoral College should be abolished because it’s undemocratic, the small states are overrepresented, and it hurts third parties.
By dismembering the Electoral College and replacing it with 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
The Electoral College today is a very complex system of voting and campaigning. When it was first created, the Framers thought the average citizen of their day was not intelligent enough to know who should be leading their country. So they created the Electoral College which was run by people who knew what they were doing. The Electoral College is a body of people who represent each state and they determine the president. The real question is: Has the Electoral College gotten too far out of hand where it needs to go? The answer is yes. The reasons are because any third party candidate running in the election has no chance of winning any electoral votes. Also, it gives too much power to the big states in electoral votes. Finally, it creates problems on majority electoral votes and equality of smaller states is diminished.
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 National Archives and Records Administration makes it clear that, "the Electoral College is a process not a place". (archives.gov) It was first meant as a compromise for those who wanted the president elected by popular vote. The Electoral College is a group of individuals from each state who cast their votes for president. They represent the vote of a particular group of people from each state. The number of “electors”, as they are called, depends on the number of members of Congress in each state. There are over five hundred electors, a combination of Representatives and Senators from each state. In the 2012 presidential election, President Obama had 281 electoral votes from the state of California, while Mitt Romney had 191.
21%. In the United states that’s the percent it takes any presidential candidate to win the election. The candidate only needs 21% of the popular vote to become president. Isn’t that shocking that our president doesn’t have to be liked by most of the the people that live in America. The United States is a country that was supposed to be built on freedom and democracy; yet the electoral college system fails to support the philosophies our country was built on. The United States should abolish the electoral college system because the distribution of the votes per state is unequal, it discourages people's voices to be heard, and the candidate can win without getting the majority of votes.
The Electoral College has potential to make a candidate, who has won the majority of the popular vote, lose the presidential election. In calculations for the use of the Electoral College, a person can still become president by winning about only twenty-two percent of the popular vote. This
Supporters of the Electoral College emphasize that the program’s encouragement of a two-party system contributes to the political stability of our country, as it makes it extremely difficult for a third party to win presidency and subsequently throw off the sort of balance that the Democrats and Republicans have created within our government. Advocates also remark how the Electoral College directs more power towards the states, as they are given the ability to represent themselves through their choice of elector, and how less populous, minority states are given the chance to increase their influence in government by always retaining at least 3 electoral votes, regardless of how small their population is. Opponents to the Electoral College target the fact that, regardless of how strong the popular vote may be, there is always the chance that the minority-favored candidate will win, as seen in the 2000 Presidential Election, where electoral vote winner George W. Bush prevailed over majority popular vote winner Al Gore. While supporters praise how difficult it is for third party candidates to win any electoral votes, opponents argue against the harsh nature of this proceeding. In terms of power, opponents remark on how both small states and swing states get more power, as candidates shift their resources to focus solely on gaining the votes of these states, reducing the importance of bigger
Some American’s see the electoral college as a downfall to the U.S. Constitution because it fails to acknowledge the change in technology the framers were accustomed to. It gives too much power to swing states, and neglects the will of the people. (1) Back in 1787, the everyday citizen was not as exposed to mass media like there is today. With wide-spread social media spreading more up-to-date knowledge about the candidates allows the population to be very informed on their vote. A Nov. 6, 2016 episode of PBS NewsHour revealed that "Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have made more than 90% of their campaign stops in just 11 so-called battleground states. Of those visits, nearly two-thirds took place in the four battlegrounds with the most electoral votes — Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and North Carolina." (2). The most unsettling thing most American’s have with the electoral college is that it neglects the popular vote. Going back to the most recent election Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by over three million, but did not gain enough electoral votes to win the election. This upset many people because it showed how the electoral college does not always represent what the majority wants. The electoral college is set up on a winner take all basis, meaning if forty-nine percent of the state voted for Trump and fifty-one percent voted for Hillary, all
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 author of ‘Why We Should Abolish the Electoral College’ is a political science major. He explains why we should abolish the electoral college by explaining a candidate is allowed to choose a slate of electors who are able to make the real votes for President. He states that the Electoral College is made up of 538 electors. States are not given electoral votes based on just population but also by their representation in Congress. Therefore, each state has a minimum of 3 votes. The 3 votes comprise from each state including 2 senators and at least 1 representative. A candidate who achieves a majority of the votes, which is estimated to be 270 as of today, wins the Presidential election. One weakness in his argument however is he only states
The electoral college started in the year 1804. This mechanism is a group of representatives in the United States who cast votes for the election of a leader or co leader of America. In recent years, there has been a lot of debate amongst citizens of this country on whether or not the process of electing the president is fair. To most, they can agree that something isn't right with the system for individuals in America to vote. There is too much confusion going on and not to point out the total unfairness that some don’t realize. The U.S. presidential election is biased due to the reasoning that it is out dated for its time, senators are valid to hijack the election, and the electoral college gives the Americans a right to vote for the president,