Electoral College Pros And Cons

Recently, especially after the 2000 elections where Al Gore won in the popular vote with 500,000 more votes but lost the electoral vote to George W. Bush, has the public began really arguing if the Electoral College should continue to be the major deciding factor in elections. “The Electoral College, the assemblage of state electors constitutionally charged with electing the president, also limits third-party growth. With the exceptions of Maine and Nebraska, states award all their votes to the plurality winner within the state,(a term commonly referred as winner-take-all)” (AM GOV). Each state receives an electoral vote for every member they have in the Senate and House of Representatives. The Electoral College comprises of 538 electors,

The states in general have essentially more power as it’s the state to decide how they are going to handle the Electoral College votes, keeping the states a part of the election of a president. The Electoral College also gives more power to the smaller states by giving them Senate and House of Representative votes (APECSEC). The Electoral College is just as democratic but is more federally democratic. There is also an argument where the rural areas of states get more attention than they would normally compared to popular vote since the concentration of the campaigns would shift to mostly high population areas. Recounts on a federal level could also have large delays if it is the votes are counted in one or more states compared to precincts within the states (Franck). One of the last arguments of why we should continue the Electoral College is since the Electoral College Is part of the Constitution it is difficult to amend and there should be just a work

The Electoral College, in states where they have the winner takes all system, make voters that are voting in states that are strongly controlled by the a certain political party feel like their votes aren’t really important considering that all the electoral votes will just go to the political party that wins. This feeling like out votes don’t count is the biggest argument against the Electoral College that it should’ve been for quite a while already a popular vote decision not an Electoral College decision (Davis). This argument also goes hand and hand where a president and vice president voted into office won because of the popular vote and received a majority of the support. Also removing the Electoral College would remove the power that only a certain states have, the swing states, but the downfall is swing states will just be replaced with high population states. Some people also view the Electoral College as being undemocratic especially in large population states where the votes of the losing political party, are a large number of voters, are essentially