I must preface this discussion with the fact that I am anything but, pro Electoral College. Nonetheless, the Electoral College is a method of voting within our democracy, which each state is allocated a certain amount of “electors” who are sworn to vote for the candidate who wins the popular vote in their respective state. However, there are two exceptions to this rule, the states of Nebraska and Maine, which bifurcate their respective electoral votes in proportion to the popular vote. The quantity of electoral votes in any given state is grounded in the state’s congressional representation. Respectively, each state is afforded two votes for every Senator with an added vote for every member of the House of Representatives, which is in-turn grounded in volume of the state population. When all the votes are tallied in a General Election for the Presidency of the United States, the total number of electoral votes must meet or exceed 270 in order to declare a candidate the winner. (Fine & Levin-Waldman, 2016) …show more content…
The Electoral College also appears to preserve Federalism. The biggest downfall of the Electoral College is the “winner-takes-all” imperative. This creates candidates that are more likely to only focus on the “swing states” due to the subsequent majority republican or democrat states, irrespective of popular votes. When considering the reform of the Electoral College system, Madonna (2005) states, “These proposals-the automatic, proportional, district, and national bonus plans-have their advantages, and each partially mitigates some of the shortcoming of the current