The Pros And Cons Of The Electoral College

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Electoral College A system that is used to decide who the president and vice President will be is called an electoral college. Each state is provided with a certain number of electors that will vote in the Electoral College. This number is decided based on the number of seats possessed in Congress. States with higher number of seats received a higher number of votes. While those with lesser number of seats revived a smaller number of votes. These electors then get to vote to decide which candidate will be the next president and vice president. As voters go to the polling station and vote they are actually voting for the electors who are attached to the presidential candidates. This means that American citizens are not directly voting for the President (Electoral college, 2010). First, let's discuss some of the advantages of the electoral college. At the time in which the constitution was written, It was believed that a direct election was impractical for …show more content…

Within the electoral college, the potential winner could be the popular votes loser. Meaning the less popular candidate could win based on the electoral vote. An electoral college takes away from the one person, one vote standard. This is because some of the smaller states have less votes based on the number of congressional seats. According to, (Grofman & Feld), authors of Thinking About the Political Impacts of the Electoral College, "it has been argued that one party may develop a “built-in” advantage in the Electoral College if its strength comes disproportionately from the smaller states" (Grofman, & Feld, 2005). Although, candidates focusing more on the competitive states leave much of the county barely aware that there is even a presidential election going on. Mostly because these states have higher electoral votes. This discourages voter turnout because the individual vote only matters to the context of the state (Constitution,