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National popular vote vs electoral college essay
The truth about the electoral college
The truth about the electoral college
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Electoral College The upcoming presidential election will stir up questions about the effectiveness of the Electoral College. So I know you’re wondering “What’s an electoral college?” “How does it work?” “What’s the purpose of it?” According to dictionary.com, it states that the Electoral College is a body of electors chosen by the voters in each state to elect the president and vice president of the U.S. The Electoral College is the number of votes, simplified, that determines the outcome of a US presidential race. Essentially it equals the number of senators in the state and the number of house representatives. The more districts and house representatives a state has, the more “votes” it represents in the Electoral College. The Electoral …show more content…
It’s the most efficient way of voting and always seems to get the best man for the job in office to become the president of the US and run our country. Even with the major flaw of “winner takes all.”, it gives the most reasonable chance of choosing the best candidate to become the next leader of our country. What other option could even come close to matching the overall equality of the Electoral College? A popular vote? People would become even more biased than they already are. Why risk that by changing to a popular vote? In 2000, all the votes in Florida needed to be recounted, and that took a long time. What if we had to have a national recount? We could be without a president for months! What if a country were to attack us during those months. We would be in complete disarray, and get destroyed by that country!(debate.org) In the Electoral College the popular vote wouldn’t be better because the whole election would be biased. People would vote for a candidate for all the wrong reasons like race, gender, appearance, personality and popularity instead of what the individual could do to improve our country. Fixing up the Electoral College is a necessity and it’s just one flaw that’s making it become more respected. Change the winner take all concept and you have yourself an incredible system to decide who wins the next presidential
Originating in 1787, the Electoral College was created as the official body within American politics that elects the president and vice president. The decision of who will win is based off the vote totals in each state, and “the founding fathers established it 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.” (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, “What is the Electoral College?”). During this time, the job of the Electoral College was to make peace between differing states and federal interest groups, provide popular participation in elections, give a vote to less populated states, and keep the president’s powers separate from Congress.
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.
If you think on the Election Day, you just voted for US president, then you are mistaken, just like millions of Americans who hope their votes will pick the next president. When voting for President, we actually vote for state electors who hold electoral votes. Electoral votes are the votes that decide the victory of a candidate in an election. This Electoral College System has limited democracy to people in three major ways. Electoral College holds the ability to alter the results of elections over popular votes, discriminates against candidates to campaign in certain states, and creates high voter turnouts.
The fact that the popular vote holds no power to whom becomes president shows that only some of the people have the power. This seems like a sign that our own government doesn’t have faith in the population to make an educated decision on who should become president. The way smaller states votes are more important than bigger states, shows that states are still not equal in power. The way to win the presidency is more of a strategy than having the ideas to be elected. An example of this is how the electoral college elected George Bush when Al Gore won the popular vote. George Bush is said to be one of the United States worst presidents and was elected through a thought to be flawed system. I also feel as though corruption plays a role in the electoral college compared to the popular vote being authentic. I think this should be replaced with a system of electronic voting that could accurately and clearly show who the majority of the population voted for. But I also think that some sort of requirements to vote should be enacted. Education plays a big role in politics and I feel as though there are people who just vote to be voting with no kind of background knowledge. As bad as it sounds I feel like it could narrow a better decision being made than smaller, less developed states being “mind controlled” into voting for
over the past two centuries, the electoral college needs to be abolished and the election process needs to be changed. Keeping elections away from physical situations and making them into efficient, easy at home polling will make the election process smoother. Making the popular vote be the determining vote for president will keep more electors happier and will give them less reasons to lash out against the results. The recent elections have evolved from just electing the president, to being strong emotional situations that can possibly endanger many people when they end the wrong way. I think that if we can implement these two new ideas into the election process that it will keep electors safer, make them happier with the outcome, and will prevent elections from turning into bad
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. The Electoral College should be abolished because it’s undemocratic, the small states are overrepresented, and it hurts third parties. The United States of America is a democratic country that is characterized by the equality of rights and privileges.
I noticed that when one political party covers almost the entirely of the map, their party will continue winning the election for several years. Like how the election of 1932, the democratic party had about 88% of the electors votes and about 60% of the popular votes. The democratic party continued to win the next four elections.
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
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
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,
Many proponents of the Electoral College argue that it protects smaller states in the Union and it forces presidential candidates to pay attention to smaller states. This is plainly wrong, considering that most presidential visits during the 2012 election were to Ohio, Florida, Virginia and Pennsylvania, the smallest of which (Virginia) is ranked 12th in population out of the 50 states and territories in the U.S. Furthermore, the electors for each state are not required to vote according to their citizen 's wishes, which means with the Electoral College, a vote really doesn 't count. Instead of this, we should use the outrageous idea of having a person 's vote count directly to a candidate (the popular vote or "direct democracy"). We need to get rid of the Electoral College soon, because according to history, a mistake is bound to happen again with American elections.
In the United States we are all guaranteed one vote per person. Everyone has an equal voice in electing the people that serve in the government. Every four years during the month of November citizens of America go to the polls to vote for a president and vice-president of the United States. Am I right? Not really. They actually vote for electors that then vote for our president. It makes me wonder, "Are we a democracy?" Having the Electoral College defeats its purpose. I oppose the electoral college for these three reasons, in election 2000 the president that lost the popular vote actually won, everyone's vote doesn't really count, plus the electoral college has disrupted elections fifteen times!
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.
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