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DBQ Essay: The Electoral College

967 Words4 Pages

As one of the most hotly debated areas of the US government, the Electoral College deserves to be given a more in-depth look. It was originally founded as a way to prevent a lack of informed voters from electing an unqualified president. Now, it still serves its original purpose, but has become far less necessary in an age of easily accessible information. Despite having some positive points, the Electoral College is too overburdened by issues like unfair vote distribution and a high failure rate to be an effective system. The way the Electoral College distributes votes is overtly favorable to less populated states. As shown in Document A, these states have far too many votes. A state like Wyoming, which has a population of around 500,000 …show more content…

According to Document C, it protects the rights of states with smaller populations. Many states, like Montana and Wyoming, would never have had enough representation to have any power, but with the Electoral College, they have a say in the election of the president. This follows the same idea as the reason to divide Congress into two houses. The Electoral College also prevents unqualified people from becoming president. As described by Document E, using the winner-take-all method doesn’t give any votes to candidates who are not given the majority of votes, the ones most likely to be candidates for splinter parties. Not having a radical or eccentric people in office prevents large divisions in the US government. This leads into the third main positive aspect of the Electoral College: it presents a more unified nation. The second half of Document E, written by George Will, describes how the Electoral College is important to keeping the appearance of a unified nation. It makes any winning candidate seem like they have the support of most of the US population. This discourages splinter parties from making runs for office. It also makes political parties favored over larger areas because the candidates must get the votes of less populated states, which tend to have much more area in

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The Electoral College has been our presidential election procedure since 1787. This system was created to indirectly choose the president in a way that fits the desire of the citizens, which also prevents uninformed voters from deciding upon the country’s leader. Each state receives one electoral vote for each member of Congress, which totals up to 538 electors.

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This is one of the many reasons why the Electoral College is unfair, past elections have shown that bigger populations have more electoral votes, concluding that smaller states’ votes become insignificant. This leaves people in question, is the Electoral College now based on where you live? Even though the purpose of the electoral college is to ultimately decide who will occupy the position of the president, there was an Electoral Commision of elite representatives, established to determine the 19th President, because of the situation the electoral college caused. The commission included five representatives from the House, another five associates from the  Senate and five justices from the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court Justices in the Electoral Commission were David Dias

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The electoral college is a process the founding fathers established in the constitution with the intent to create a safeguard between the population and the selection of a president, and to give extra power to smaller states. However, based on the information presented in the articles the electoral college should be abolished as it violates our right of political equality, and fails to represent a third, independent, party in any election. Although there are many reasons to abolish the electoral college, the principal reason to take action would be the result of an obvious violation of our right to be politically equal. As shown in the chart provided (Doc D) 12 of the lowest populated states and the District of Columbia have almost the

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On document C, the text says, “It is designed to promote good government and legislation that forwards the common good of a large and diverse nation” (Document C), “It has formed our political parties, moderated our more extreme elements and forged the presidential campaigns that have given direction to our ship of state” (Document C). This here explains that the Electoral College is designed to promote good government and legislation to progress from our distinct nation. This comes to the closure of that the Founding Fathers created this for the common good of our nation and it promotes many elements that shape America as we see it

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By relying on this method of distribution, and capping the number of electors allowed, the Electoral College causes inaccurate representation. States that require more representatives to represent the votes of their larger populations cannot receive them due to smaller states taking up the minimum requirement of three votes, no matter how small their populations may be. Not only this, but a combinations of thirteen states and regions, whose combined population is only 12,500,722, receives 44 electoral votes, while a state like Illinois with a population of 12,830,632 receives only 20 (Document D). Thus the Electoral College gives more power to smaller states and less to larger states due to its requirements. This means that some citizens are favored over others in the electoral vote, based solely upon the population of the state in which they live.

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Alexander Hamilton’s essay, The Federalist 58, was an attempt to convince the state of New York to ratify the constitution. The essay explained the plan the framers of the Constitution put in place to elect the president. The people would vote for the candidate they supported, but ultimately the president would be selected by a group of 538 electors who were appointed by the people. This group is known as the Electoral College. The Framers of the Constitution chose to use the Electoral College as the method for selecting the president as it assured that the president would be capable and qualified, eliminated corruption, and lessened turmoil in the election process.

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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.

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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

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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.

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The electoral college also helps the small states have an opinion that actually is heard in the presidential election. In class, it was discussed that Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota together, though their combined population is less than that of Oklahoma, each of those states has three electoral votes, whereas Oklahoma just has seven votes. Going by electoral votes, a candidate would have a better chance at winning the election if they won over Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota versus Oklahoma. With the electoral college, a candidate could win over all thirty-nine small states and win the entire election. Though the candidate could be supported by less than a quarter of the population,

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845 Words | 4 Pages

The Electoral College was put into the character for some elemental and very straightforward reasoning which are still applicable and important today. Our country was founded as a commonwealth, and along with having a king, the idea of a 'democracy ' was pretty much a apprehension to our founding fathers. their concept of a representative commonwealth in which people of high aspect and in good continuing would be elected to point in association and so on was established in the acceptance that these good men would do what was right without concern to amount and or personal or economical achievement. Forward the way, of development, much of that has dissipate, and the circumstances nation and economical advisability have come to leading a

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1511 Words | 7 Pages

“Is it possible that this once-brilliant device has become a constitutional accident waiting to happen” (Congressional Digest 25). “The Electoral College has been said to be ‘archaic,’ ‘too complex,’ and even ‘dangerous,’ but the principle complaint has been that it is ‘undemocratic’” (Klinker, McClellan 1). The Electoral College violates the principle of one-person, one-vote (Congressional Digest 17). Klinker states that Wyoming’s 619,500 residents make up only .18 percent of the U.S. population, yet recieve three three electoral votes which is .56 percent of the electoral votes, while Texas has a population of 20,044,141 residents that make up 7.35 percent of the U.S. population, but Texas’ 32 electoral votes make up slightly less than 6 percent of the electoral votes, giving one voter in Wyoming nearly as much power as four voters in Texas (1).

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975 Words | 4 Pages

The Electoral College system the founding fathers devised helps to balance out the power of the large, populous states. This system forces candidates to campaign in all states since they all carry some sway in the elections (“Understanding the Presidential Election”). However, other issues present themselves as well, like states with large independent voters that can be swayed and the issue that a candidate can lose the popular vote and win the election. The first issue is that states that are equally divided between democrats and republicans and hold a large number of electoral votes like Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania are considered swing states. (“Understanding the Presidential Election”)

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975 Words | 4 Pages

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.

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951 Words | 4 Pages

For example, Colorado has 7 House of Representatives and 2 Senators which means each Congress person represents around 883,300 and each of our senators represent approximately 2,650,000 people. Wyoming on the other hand has 1 House of Representative and 2 Senators meaning their congress person represents around 600,000 people and their Senators represent around 300,000 people each. There is a clear difference here when it comes to how representation is distributed into the states. Apart from this uneven distribution the system of “winner takes all” also discourages people from going out to vote. For example, some Republican lives in a Democratic state that always goes Democratic when it comes to elections, they tend to not go out and vote because they know their vote won’t make a difference because of this “winner takes all” system.

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