Mackenzie Marquess
Professor Beange
Govt 2305
23 October 2013
Electoral College Outline
The Electoral College is a system that elects the president, it is possible for a presidential candidate to win the popular votes of the citizens and still lose the election because of the electoral college, a prime example of this rare happening is the election of 2000 where George Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore but still won the votes of the electoral college 271 to 266. The Electoral College can best be explained in an article from the Huffington post which states “Every four years, voters go to the polls and select a candidate for President and Vice-President … the candidate who wins the majority of votes in a state wins that state's electoral votes.” (Soni) This is true for all but two states, Nebraska and Maine, where votes can go to both parties using a proportional representation form. The Electoral College was included in the constitution because although there were concerns about the inability of the people to accurately choose a national candidate, it was mainly put into practice to protect the highest office from control of the masses. The Electoral College is a crucial check on what would be just the unchecked will of the people. The way the Electoral College is designed is to show the views of the people while also allowing states as a whole to be recognized during the times of elections. This is not the only “check” we have placed on the people. While the winner takes all portion of the Electoral College seems to work on the outside, once the façade is gone all that is seen is a corrupt portion of the system that silences the people and holds states above them, the purpose of this system is to allow both to be heard, th...
... middle of paper ...
...ching systems because they are currently benefited by winner take all. Texas is mainly republican thus that winner takes all the electoral votes, leaving the minorities voice silenced.
Works Cited
"How the Electoral College Works." Public Broadcasting System. N.p., n.d. Web.
Kimberling, William C. "The Electoral College” Federal Election
Commission. 22 Oct. 2013 .
Oppenheimer, Danny. "Eliminate the Electoral College." Huffington Post 21 Sept. 2012.
Soni, Jimmy. "What Is The Electoral College? How It Works And Why It Matters."The
Huffington Post. 06 Nov. 2012. TheHuffingtonPost.com. 16 Oct. 2013 .
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 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. With the Electoral College in affect third parties don't have a chance to become the president, which isn't fair. Electors are expected to be honest but in the past our country has caught some untruthful ones. The electoral College was created so long ago that it is now outdated, so we shouldn't even have electors. People of the U.S. may think that they are participating in a direct election for the president, but with the Electoral College system technically, this isn't the case.
Since Electoral system can change outcome of the election, it often misrepresent the will of citizens. In electoral system, candidate with most popular votes in states wins electoral votes regardless of difference in popular votes. That means, people living in urban areas support one candidate, they could easily mislead the result of popular votes. Smaller area with more population often drag result on one side than larger part with less population. Either it is a presidential election of 1888 or 2000 election, candidates with higher electoral votes happen to win against people’s popular votes. Candidate of election of 1888, Benjamin Harrison won seat in white house even if he lost popular votes because he carried electoral votes on his side. Furthermore, margin between electoral votes was less than one percent, but still Harrison became president despite of 100,000 popular votes difference! Election of 2000 came up with same scenario. Gore won people’s support but lost electors’; therefore he had to accept G.W.Bush as President. After all this, what we can believe is indeed, the Electoral College is such an unreliable representative of the...
As stated by Jamin Raskin, a professor of constitutional law at American University and a Democratic state senator in Maryland, “…It simply calls for an interstate compact among all states to agree to cast their electoral votes for the winner of the national popular vote. It becomes effective and binding when states representing at least 270 electors enter the compact. This is the way we will get to elect presidents as we elect governors and senators: everyone acting together, without games and subterfuge”. So really what happens with national popular vote is when a person votes, their vote is going directly towards their choice of president, unlike where in the Electoral College, a persons vote is going towards electors whom is a group of people who have pledged to work for their chosen candidate. The founding fathers thought that people directly voting for their chosen candidate would be too problematic and a disaster, which is why they came up with the Electoral College. So technically with the Electoral College, a candidate can win the most votes yet he can still lose the election, which is one of the reasons the Electoral College System is confusing and hard to understand to some people, and may even discourage citizens to vote because one may think their vote will not count towards their candidate in
The Electoral College is an outdated and unrealistic arrangement that caters to eighteenth century federalist America in a way that is detrimental to modern democracy. The electoral college gives too much power to the government, overlooks equal representation, and creates loopholes that do not serve to help America thrive.
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 can be considered one of the more misunderstood parts of our government. People have many misconceptions on how it works, at least I did until I took this class. When the Framers were developing how their new government was going to work, they ran into many problems. One of those problems was they has different ideas on how the president and vice president were to be elected. Some wanted to elect them like they do in Great Brittan with the parliament electing the prime minister. Others disagreed. The compromise was the creation of what we now call the Electoral College.
Every four years that a Presidential election comes to pass the Electoral College is responsible for the formal election of both the President and Vice President of the United States. As an example of an indirect election, where people in each state at large vote in order to decide which individuals will be delegated the responsibility of casting votes for President and Vice President in accordance with the popular vote of the state which has entrusted them to provide such representation, the Electoral College works to ensure that smaller states are not denied the right to have the equal power of influence in our national election for President (Neale, 2004). The Electoral College itself has been in existence since it was introduced within the framework of various proposals introduced at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 (Neale, 2004). The Mcgovern-Fraser Commission in 1969, which was known formally as the Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection, played a crucial role in amending the practices of political parties in their work within the Electoral framework, in particular changing the way in which states were allowed to select delegates to national conventions (Stricherz, 2003). This would result in candidates having to develop broader campaigns that would need to appeal to voters across any state in which they desired that states delegation officially support their candidacy.
In the United States, the Electoral College determines the victor of a national election. Each state has its own number of electoral votes, which is determined by state population. This system is a “winner takes all” system. Which means the candidate with 50 percent or more of the votes in an individual state gets all of that states electoral votes. The 2016 presidential election will have 538 electoral votes, this means that the election will be decided who is the first candidate to 270 votes. Some people have seen this system as outdated and unjust. Many are looking at a way to change the system and others would like to do away with the system
The Electoral College is not important in choosing the president of the United States. I agree with this because it should matter what the voters say, this is a democracy and it should be the people’s final choice, and if the Electoral College changes the voters’ choice then they will be the ones to blame if our country goes haywire.
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.
First, the Electoral College system is not the optimum election system for the country of America because of the fact that it allows for a candidate with a minority of the popular vote to win the presidency. On several occasions, such as in 2000, a president has been elected with less popular votes than the major opposing candidate. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “I...
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.
The Electoral College, friend or foe? The answer behind this question is in the minds of those that understand it. Whether it be a "friend" or a "foe" there will always be opposing sides and a controversial verse. Since the political circumstance of today, the Electoral College seems to be the topic in every conversation and the thesis to every essay. The uncontrollable desire to know the truth behind the mystery is stirring in the minds of the people in the United States of America. With the 2000 Elections underway sides are beginning to be taken among the people. Many oppose the Electoral College because of the fact that unknowing electors choose their leader and many support it because it was created by the founding fathers. Both sides are arguable and not one side is right. The question is: Can a system be created to satisfy both sides of the American public?
The United States of America is known as the free world, which is thought of as such due to its separation from the English monarch and the establishment of the United States Constitution, which grants its citizens certain rights and freedoms. One of those rights is the power to choose its own leaders, which is termed a democracy when the citizens elect a person directly. However, there is a slight difference, in the United States the President and Vice President are not chosen by the people directly instead there is a unique process used called the Electoral College. The Constitution of the United States of America should be amended to allow the citizens to elect their Presidents and Vice-Presidents through a popular vote in order to give