Argumentative Essay On The Electoral College

The controversial debate of the need for the Electoral College is something commonly argued in debates throughout the history of the United States. The electoral college debate has been constantly pushed by the people against the electoral college to be amended and defended by those who are for the electoral college ever since the 1800s, where it was pushed to be nullified by replacing it with a popular vote. Political Ideology is a concept that is often used in the Electoral College debate in order to gain a deeper understanding of each side’s arguments. This debate is talked about even more today compared to the times in the late 1800’s, where the popular vote also happened to differ from the electoral college. Political ideology, when seen

In order to take a more perceptive look into the electoral college debate, we will need to take a look into the history of the debate as well as the Founding Fathers’ intentions for it. The first thing that we need to take a look at would be the Founding Fathers' intentions as well as how the electoral college changed throughout history. In the article “Electing the People’s President: The Popular Origins of the Electoral College” it is stated that “Our Founding Fathers understood that America is a nation of both ‘we the people’ and a federal system of states” (Villegas 202). What Villegas is saying is that the Founding Fathers' looked at the people’s rights, as stated in the promised bill of rights during the Continental Congress. Most people who argue against the electoral college say that the people’s will and saying of “we the people” in the Constitution are violated, but rather it is a compromise between giving the people a chance at a say of the vote, as well as the federal state of

Christopher Pearson gives us an interesting piece of data that “the winner-take-all rule is why 70% of American voters are ignored”(NCSL Website). This statistic states that a majority of voters’ votes are meaningless overall, as the winner takes all system overrules their vote. This statistic shows the people’s ideologies of being able to vote for their presidential candidate and to have an equal say as everybody else is not being followed as it ignores many of the voter’s votes in order to give all of the electors to one presidential candidate, rather than splitting the electors among the electoral candidate in either a popular vote of the state, or by regions of the state. However, for the political parties, the winner takes all system helps their political parties much more than it does for the people. Pearson gives as an example that the winner takes all system “gave then-candidate Donald Trump all of Pennsylvania’s twenty electors the moment he got one vote more than Hillary Clinton inside Pennsylvania” (NSCL Website), stating that the political parties had much more benefit to this system by not having to worry about certain states, such as California and Texas. This allowed the political parties to focus on the swing states, such as Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, and a few