Ethan Garner
Government
Baker
2/28/2023
Why The Electoral College Works?
The Electoral College system was established by the founding fathers. It is the way which the President and Vice President of the United States are picked. According to the National Archives “The Electoral College consists of 538 electors. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the President. Your State has the same number of electors as it does Members in its Congressional delegation: one for each Member in the House of Representatives plus two Senators.” (National Archives) Despite the criticisms that the system has received, it is still important that we maintain the Electoral College system for multiple reasons.
The first reason is that the Electoral
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Unlike a popular vote system, the Electoral College makes sure that the candidate who wins the most votes from the electors is the winner. A popular vote system would result in a run-off election if no candidate received over 50% of the vote. Also, a popular vote system would trigger a need for a recount if the votes were close.Vitana.org states that the cost of a presidential election in the United States is already several billion dollars. On a close popular vote, often defined as a difference of 0.5% or less in the tabulated results, an automatic recount would likely be triggered. That means the cost of counting all the votes would be duplicated. With the polarization in global politics today, especially in the United States, a switch to the popular vote would likely increase costs even further. …show more content…
To win the election, a candidate must win most of the electoral votes, which means that they must have support from across the country. This process makes sure that the winning candidate has a broad base of support and is not just popular in one region of the country. This is essential because the President and Vice President can represent the interests of all citizens.
Although an argument could be made about the good of the popular vote system for example It gives each vote an equal amount of power, it would eliminate the threat of a faithless elector, It could encourage voter turnout, Battleground states would disappear in U.S. elections, It would eliminate the Congressional provisions for a non-majority election, It could help to reduce partisanship. All of these are good things, but they do not outweigh the system we currently have. As the great Burt Lance said, “If it aint broke, don’t fix it.”
In conclusion, the Electoral College system is essential to ensure that all states have equal representation in the election process, provide a clear winner, make sure that the President and Vice President are elected by most of the country, and are elected by a diverse group of people. Despite the criticisms that the system has received, we should maintain the Electoral College system to ensure that our democracy is fair, representative, and
Another pro to the electoral college system is it helps keep a two party system in this country. If it were an election based on popular vote some say it would be chaos because of how many people would be running for president. The electoral college lets the winning candidate get the majority of the vote In the 1992 polls, Bill Clinton only got 42 percent of the vote, but with Ross Perot’s influence, he won the majority of the electoral college. Ross perot was famous for splitting the republican vote in this election he was a billionaire that ran as a independent. This is one of the reasons George Bush sir didn't have a chance in this election.
If the United States was to alter the system from an electoral college voting system to going straight to the popular votes, each vote in all different state would be gathered and combined together. Once all of the ballots are counted, the candidate with the majority votes becomes president and vice
Since 1800 there have been over 700 proposals to either revise or eliminate the electoral college. The electoral college was added to the Constitution in 1787 to guarantee the best candidate was elected. The electoral college consists of electors who officially cast their votes for President. The number of electors for each state is determined by the number of congress members each state has. While there are no qualifications to become an elector, electors must follow the people's directive.
The Electoral College While some people believe their votes are contributing directly to the election of the President, most people are aware that their votes mean almost nothing compared to those of the Electoral College. The Electoral College consists of the electors who cast each state’s electoral votes. It is made up of 538 electors, each state having the same number of electors as Senate and House members combined, plus three votes from the District of Columbia. “To win the presidency, a candidate must receive at least 270 votes” and win the majority (Patterson 359).
One of the most popular reasons why we should keep the electoral system is that it gives small states an equal opportunity. If the president was elected through popular vote the areas of America with more population would rule the White House. But in the electoral college the smaller states have a more equal vote. Small states can make a big difference when it comes to tight elections and because of that candidates cannot ignore the smaller states. But if we had the popular vote system the candidates would only travel to bigger states with a larger population.
The Electoral College has been a part of the American National government ever since its beginnings, but is it the system that we should keep using? The Electoral College is made up of electors. Each state has 3 or more electors based on the amount of Senators and Representatives it has. These electors each vote for a running presidential candidate. And these votes directly determine who will become president.
("Should the Electoral College be abolished?" n.d.) Another downfall of the electoral college system is that votes cast in smaller states are more significant than those of larger states because the smaller states have fewer electoral votes. Therefor every vote from the people has much more weight than those from larger states. Without the electoral college, candidates
It will also help to prevent any fraud that could possibly occur. Because each and every individual state has its own different system and way of managing votes and collecting results, it creates a very reliable form of checks and balances. This makes it very difficult to cheat or to try and manipulate the vote count in any possible way. Also, more often than not the winner of each individual state’s Electoral College votes is usually clear, this really helps to make it way less likely of having any disagreements or disputes over the end outcome of the election. Without the Electoral College there would be so much more fraud and manipulating within the election.
The Founding Fathers ruled out a national popular vote because back then there was no good way to communicate information about candidates so they thought that people would only vote for candidates that they knew or the most popular person in the group and not the most eligible candidate. Even now, with all resources available to them, many voters- mostly younger people- vote for a person without knowing anything about their policies; the electoral college prevents voters like this from electing a leader they know nothing about. “According to Alexander Hamilton, the Electoral College is if ‘not perfect, it is at least excellent,’ because it ensures that the office of president will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” (The Electoral College- Top 3 Pros
In a popular vote system, there are millions of votes to count and many chances to make a mistake. With the Electoral College “there’s no chance of a run-off election or a protracted national recount” (Roos). It costs a ton of money to count votes and a recount would take a long time, so with the electoral college you won't have to worry about that. It also would be easy for the votes to get confusing and unsuccessful with a bunch of third-party votes and chaos happening. Luckily, The Electoral College, “has provided stability to the process of picking presidents” (Stepman).
This system makes a safeguard around our votes. “Using electors instead of the popular vote was intended to safeguard the presidential election against uninformed or uneducated voters by putting the final decision in the hands of electors who were most likely to possess the information necessary to make the best decision in a time when news was not widely disseminated.” (Electoral College). The Electoral College gives voters peace of mind because they know the electors are educated on what they want and will vote accordingly. Some may say the popular vote is better in this situation because it gives each vote an equal amount of power and it would eliminate the threat of a faithless elector.
Current day, it has little relevancy since it was originally included to address also issues that do not exist anymore, including not trusting the decision to be made by the American people. When originally founded, they wanted to ensure the President was decided by electors who had the knowledge to make what they felt was informed decisions. Now, many people feel as though too much power is given to the electoral votes, and that their vote does not mean as much as someone in a different state. As it stands, many feel that small states are largely misrepresented and given too much power since the votes are not divided equally among the population. In fact, if the Electoral College system was not in the Constitution, it would undoubtedly be removed due to it being unconstitutional, because using the electoral votes violates the principle of one-person, one-vote.
The Electoral College is a longstanding organization in place in the United States of America that was originally established by the Founding Fathers in create equality in presidential elections has become a topic of harsh criticism and controversy over the years. The Electoral College was established by the Founding Fathers of the United States at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in order ensure there was representation of the people while keeping the best interests of the nation in mind (“What is the Electoral College?”). At the time of the writing of the Constitution, there were two main ideas on how to elect a president. The first was that there should be a simple vote of all eligible people and who ever gets the most votes becomes
The Electoral College system assures balanced power between the states, puts the independent parties under control, grants balanced voting, and supports the major political parties. The Electoral College has proven itself to be very sufficient in determining the president and the vice president of the United States. Since this system has been successful since our Founding Fathers created it, there should be no reason as to why we should get rid of the Electoral
Electoral college has been with us since the birth of the constitution, and to this day we are still using this type of system to this day. The Electoral College is a system that the United States uses to elect our upcoming presidents and vice presidents. Each state has electors equal to their senate member and house of representatives, however who ever gets the highest popular vote in the state gets the electoral vote. The issue is the Electoral College do not give votes to the people, but to the states. Which has some unfair consequences.