As many know, the electoral college is a group of people who represent the U.S by casting their vote and getting the last decision in who becomes president/vice president . The Electoral College is made up of five hundred and thirty eight electors, majority being two hundred and seventy, enough to win you the election. According to the population of a state they get so many votes, plus 2 for each senator. The 23rd amendment which states that the citizens living in the District of Columbia have the right to vote in the presidential elections, gives them three votes. All states, besides two (Nebraska and Maine), run off of a winner takes all system, which means once a presidential candidate hits the majority of the of the votes, two hundred and seventy, they win the election. …show more content…
Small states are very crucial when it comes time to break ties so it is important that they spend a lot of time visiting them. Another pro is, it is easier to count the votes because it 's five hundred and thirty eight vs the three hundred and eighteen point nine million. Also it keeps states, an important part of the voting. Some cons of the Electoral College is, it completely overweighs the popular vote, making it so there is no point in it. It also allows for “faithless Electors”, which is a member of the Electoral college who does not vote for the presidential or vice presidential candidate they pledged to vote, which means they voted for the other candidate or just did not vote at all. It also gives unwarranted power to “swing states”. A swing state is a state that has equal support for both the democratic and republican parties, which makes it unfair when the electoral college for that state 's chooses one party over
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 is a group of five hundred and thirty-eight people who, every four years, decide our countries president and vice president. This number is created by taking the House of Representatives (four hundred and thirty-eight members elected per stated based upon population), The Senate (Two representatives elected per state), and three representatives from the
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.
The Electoral College consists of 538 electors. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the President.
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
Most of those who are against the Electoral College are prone to argue that the idea of the Electoral College is a bit undemocratic. The less populated states are granted a greater representation rather than the larger populated states. For example, a less populated state such as Wyoming is granted “three electoral college votes for a small population of 532,668 citizens” according to the 2008 Census Bureau nevertheless a greater populated state such as Texas is granted “thirty –two electoral college votes for an outsized population of twenty-five million”. If the Electoral College votes are viewed in perceptive of the population, the smaller states are privileged enough to have one elector per a smaller group of citizens. This disproportional misrepresentation allows the citizens of the less populated states to have a greater voice than those of the greater populated states. Another issue would be concerning “Faithless Electors”. The Electors were chosen as a way to disregard any uneducated votes made by the citizens but also keeping in mind which particular candidate the majority of the population of a state wishes to vote for. Although the national vote from the citizens is supposed to give the Electors a view on which way the majority of the state wished to vote, the Elector doesn’t necessarily have to vote for the particular candidate that they pledge
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
One might think that when they cast their vote in the presidential election, that they are voting directly for the president. This is not so! People are actually voting for where they want their state’s Electoral College vote to go. The Electoral College is a group of people, appointed by the people, who vote for the president and vice president. They are chosen based on what party the voters voted for in the
What is the Electoral College? Well for one, it isn’t a college, nor a place at all. The Electoral College is a process. What process? It is the process of choosing a president. “You mean when America votes for a president?” someone such as the reader might ask. Close but no, not exactly, The Electoral College consists of 538 electors who then vote in a president. When A Patriotic citizen, also known as a voter, votes on his or her president and in turn voting for that presidents electors. There are 538 electors in total. The amount of electors depends on the number of congressmen plus three. There are 435 members of the house of representatives, one-hundred senators,
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
Every four years our nation votes for the next leader of our nation; however, it is not really the citizens of our nation but rather the Electoral College who chooses the President of the United States. The Electoral College, which is the group of people who formally elect the President and Vice-President of the United States, has been part of our nation since its inception. There are 538 electors in the Electoral College, which comes from the number of House representatives and the two Senators each state has. To win the presidency, a candidate needs 270 of those electors. It is an indirect election since the people are not directly voting for the president but rather the people of voting for their elector. The electors meet in the Capital
The electoral college system is not only unfair but also outdated. People in smaller states are less likely to vote because they think their electoral college votes don't count or change anything. People in bigger states often vote a lot more than the smaller states, people need to vote and their vote needs to decide not the electoral college vote. If the popular vote was to elect the president than a lot would change in our history maybe for worse or better.
The Electoral College was established in a compromise between a direct election system, supported by James Wilson, and a system whereby the President would be chosen by congress, supported by Edgridge Gerry, in Article II, Section I of the United States Constitution (Houser, 2). It is a group of ‘electors’ who are nominated or appointed by each party within each state however they choose, who have pledged their loyalty to one candidate. In fact, it is the electors for whom we vote on Election Day. The Electoral College is comprised of 538 members representing the number of the total number of members of the House of Representatives and Senate and three electors representing the District of Columbia. A presidential candidate must have a majority of electoral votes in order to become president.
It is a part of “The Great Compromise”.Attempts to undermine the constitutional amendment “have been defeated by Congress more than 700 times.” When John F. Kennedy was just a Senator in 1956, he “attempted to undermine federalism by abolishing the Electoral College.”(5) He pretty much stated that” he wanted to abolish the Electoral College”, but it is not as easy as you might think. There are two ways you can abolish the Electoral College. First, you pretty much have to rewrite the constitution. Which would require a new constitutional convention, The other way would require getting rid of the senate, and requiring the Electoral College to replace it. Many people have tried to amend the Electoral College but all have failed, but is the Electoral College so bad? It prevents “split states” and it helps prevent candidates from creating independent parties by forcing them to win the entire state to get the Electoral Vote. Without this there would be all kinds of confusion with “split states” and candidates running for their own independent parties. The Electoral College actually does well, and keeps the presidential election process from becoming a mass of confusion and an overwhelming amount of candidates running with independent parties with
The Electoral College was a compromise between those at the Constitutional Convention who wanted the US president elected by popular vote and those who wanted congress to select the president. They believed that having it where each state would get a certain number of votes based on population would keep a manipulative and charming person out of office. They thought it would prevent bribery and corruption along with secret dealings. I don’t think that this is the case and it one of the reason I feel that the Electoral College should be abolished.