The Flawed Electoral College Voting Process

The Flawed Electoral College Voting Process

When Americans vote their choice for President, one would assume that these votes would be tabulated and the majority vote would win. But this is not the case at all. The Presidency is ultimately decided by the Electoral College, what William McClenaghan calls “one of the least understood parts of the American political process”(340). McClenaghan also defines the Electoral College as “the body that makes the formal selection of the nation’s President, from what the Framers intended into a `rubber stamp’ for the popular vote in presidential elections”(67). The original Electoral College did not succeed for very long, however; it only worked for as long as George Washington was President (328). In the election of 1796 a Federalist and a Democratic-Republican were paired as President and Vice-President. This happened because these two men received more electoral votes than their expected running mates. This is where the trouble started, but it has not nearly ended. There have been some cases where the popular vote of America was contradicted by the electoral vote winner. Every person in America is equal and should have the same authority in their voting. The Electoral College should be abolished not only due to its obvious flaws, but because all Americans should have the equal right to vote. No one governmental entity should have the right to decide the American people’s choice.

One serious flaw in the Electoral College system is that the popular vote winner does not always win Presidency. This is a result of two factors. “In each State the winning candidate customarily receives all that State’s electoral votes”(343). For example, in 1992 Bill Clinton received barely 50% to win New ...

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...rly History of the Electoral College, 1). This method cannot be the best if it has flaws. A group of selected people is expected to accurately represent and entire nation’s vote; that is an impossible task. It is obvious that the Electoral College has flaws, but it should be abolished moreover because it takes away American’s right to vote.

Works Cited

McClenaghan, William A. Macgruder’s American Government. Prentice Hall: Needham,

Massachusetts, 1998.

Pierce, Neil R. and Lawrence D. Longly. The Electoral College Primer 2000. Yale

University Press: New Haven, CT, 1996.

The Electoral College: Critics Claim Democracy Tarnished, Issues and Controversies on

File. http://www.2facts.com/icof/search/i050290.asp

The Electoral College: Early History of the Electoral College, Issues and Controversies

on File. http://www.2facts.com/icof/search/i050290.asp