The recent presidential election has had a controversy on the abolishment of the Electoral College. With many citizens not understanding whether or not their vote is actually being counted during the election, more debates have risen on if popular vote should be the deciding factor of presidential determinations instead. Popular vote is an actual count of individual votes from all states in America while the Electoral College is a measure of the House of Representatives and Senators choosing directly who the president should be (Kimberling, 1992). The reasoning behind why the Electoral College was the determining factor for president was declared by the founding fathers decades ago to ensure equality (Pavia, 2011). Recently, critics have expressed that this system is not as equal as predetermined. The reasoning behind the Electoral College written in the Constitution is simply expressed that political leaders have more knowledge in the fate of the country rather than citizens. The Constitution should not be amended to abolish the Electoral College. …show more content…
Hamilton and the other founders came up with this idea to protect the country. This allows for educated political leaders in the House of Representatives and the Senate to decide on an educated and qualified leader to become President (Pavia, 2011). The founding fathers were knowledgeable enough to know that rulers could opinionate citizens to cast their votes for them with the use of manipulation. It was originally designed as individuals voting not for their president, but for whom they can trust to be their local elector and cast the educated vote for presidency. In more recent times with the same general background, citizens vote using the popular vote while the Electoral College leaders choose their votes after seeing what their state decided
Did you know that the Electoral College was created as a compromise between those Founding fathers who wanted the president elected by Congress and those who wanted direct election by the people? Presidents are elected by a group of 538 electors, acting on behalf of the states and not by the citizens. This arrangement is called the Electoral College. Every four years, millions of United States citizens vote for a president and a vice president of the United States.
Should we really put the decision of an archaic system over the voice of us, the people? No, we should not. The electoral college is outdated and undemocratic. The electoral college was created at the birth of the United States for two reasons.
In the early years of America the Founding Fathers created the constitution for everyone to follow. One thing that is in the constitution is know as The Electoral College is a group of electors that decide on who the president will be. Electors are decided by each states party convention before the election takes place. The Electoral College consist of 538 people and to elect a president they must reach a majority of 270. The Founding Fathers of the United States created the Electoral College because they believed it was the best way to elect the president, although there are good things about the Electoral College there are also some fall backs.
But before delving into the various different arguments it is important to understand the history surrounding the Electoral Colleges origins. The Electoral College was created not
As of recently a debate that has existed in American politics for centuries has flared up again. The debate in question is whether we should keep our Electoral College for the purpose of electing our President or abolish it and elect our Presidents through a popular vote. Those who seek to abolish the Electoral College cite instances -recent and past- in which Presidential Candidates have won the popular vote yet lost the majority of the Electoral College. They also argue that the undemocratic philosophy behind the Electoral College, the thought that the American people aren’t competent enough to choose their own Commander in Chief, is an outdated piece of a backwards past that has no place in modern society and law. Those who seek to preserve the Electoral College as it is state that the electoral system the framers of the Constitution created is as good as it can
People vote for the candidates by voting for the electors that reflect the viewpoints of the particular candidate and their personal political opinion. With that said, the Electoral College is a winner take all system where the states have voted and the majority vote of the presidential candidate goes to the electors that then cast their votes for the states. The Founding Fathers created the Electoral College in the Constitution for a couple of reasons. Schulman (n.d.) states the first reason it was fabricated “was to create a buffer between population and the selection of a President” (p. 1). Although, another significant reason that the Electoral College was created was for equal representation in voting
Moreover, they suspected that the citizens would not educated themselves on candidates, and that citizens would not have enough information to make a good judgement. Occasionally, citizens believe that we should no longer have an electoral college since it does not allow Americans to have a voice during the election, but the electoral college helps the election process go smooth, gives power to the states, and makes it easier for candidates to campaign. Imagine going to a polling place, everyone frantic and nervous about who to choose since they have all the power in their hands. They may have briefly looked over candidates and are not positive on who to decide. Do you want clueless people deciding the future of our country?
” We should be realistic that the “game” is not going to change anytime, as a few people seem to agree with on nerdwallet.com. However, I feel that this is a good example of us humans always wanting “more” then what we already having and not learning to satisfy with what we have. We must be aware that as stated on uselectionatlas.org, “although there were a few anomalies in its early history, none have occurred in the past century. Proposals to abolish the Electoral College, though frequently put forward, have failed largely because the alternatives to it appear more problematic than is the College itself.”
There is no law stating that electoral have to choose what they want in 49 of the 50 states, the one being Massichuties who choses the natioal popular voter winner. With all these problems a question is always raised should the electoral stay with us or be abolished. The Electoral College needs to be abolished because the
If we somehow happened to be a capable vote, then we ought to have the capacity to really pick who might be president. The Electoral College removes that from us. The Electoral College is not by any stretch of the imagination reasonable for our rights and our opportunity. It, for the most part, takes away the ability to vote the president. The Electoral College was made in a period when votes were harder to gather and number.
The president of the United States is of utmost importance to the nation’s progress and success, both domestically and internationally. Hence, it follows that presidential elections are quite a popular event on a national level. Since the nation’s creation in 1776, it was clear that the president must be chosen wisely as well as fairly in order to preserve a democratic character in the United States and also to ensure an incapable president is note elected by the people. The solution that followed in response to these considerations was the establishment of the Electoral College, a method of indirect election of the president and his or her running mate for the vice presidency. The Electoral College establishes a group of electors who pledge to vote for the candidate of a specific political party.
“The Founding Fathers established The Electoral College 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.” according to archives.gov. The Electoral College was an option out of four ideas as stated in a peer-reviewed article by William C. Kimberling, a Deputy Director FEC Office of Election Administration. He stated that during this time, the colonies had a small population and people where very spread out, an idea of a patriarchal figure is very displeasing, those are a couple of problems the Convention had to go through... The Constitutional Convention had a couple of ideas like for example Congress choosing the president, state legislature chooses the president and the popular vote, but they ultimately chose the Electoral College.
In 1787, years after the founding of the United States, the Constitutional Convention met to decide how the new nation would govern itself. The delegates understood that the need for a leader was necessary but still bitterly remembered how Britain abused of its power. The delegates agreed that the President and Vice President should be chosen informally and not based on the direct popular vote, thus gave birth to the Electoral College. The Electoral College is defined as “a body of people representing the states of the US, who formally cast votes for the election of the president and vice president.” Since 1787 the Electoral College has been the system for voting in the United States, but with our nation ever more changing and growing it
Every four years we hold an election to decide who will be hold the office for the President of the United States. The founding fathers established the Electoral College to keep a candidate from manipulating the publics opinion and keep them from gaining absolute power. It also was set up so that smaller states would be able to have same power or say as the bigger states (Why the Electoral College). Each state is giving “Electors” based on the number of members it has in the U.S. House of Representatives, and also gets a 2 Electors for the two members they have in the U.S. Senate. Washington D.C. however only has 3 Electors.
Several years after the United States came to be, the Constitutional Convention met to determine how the new nation should govern itself. The delegates saw that it was crucial to have a president and vice president, but the delegates did not want these offices to reflect how the colonies were treated under the British rule. The delegates believed that the president’s power should be limited, and that he should be chosen through the system known as the Electoral College. The Electoral College is a body of people who represent the states of the US, who formally cast votes for the electing of the president and vice president. Many citizens feel that the Electoral College goes against our nation’s principle of representative democracy, while others