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The effectiveness of the electoral college
Electoral college argument essay prompt
The effectiveness of the electoral college
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The Electoral College is sometimes considered puzzling. Its purpose and origin can be difficult to understand, and not seem necessary. When the system is understood, people have realized that this system is fallible, and called for reforms. One of the primary reasons for the creation of the Electoral College is that when the American government was being formed, it was believed that citizens could not be relied upon to properly select the nation’s leader. Some founders, Alexander Hamilton in particular, assumed that a candidate with tyrannical views would be able to sway the voters in his or her favor.
This was proven otherwise in the stolen election of 2000, in which Bush won the candidacy by the 25 Florida electoral votes. This outcome did not serve as an effective system for modern presidency. It makes American’s question whether or not their vote actually counts, in comparison to the votes of the electors they choose to represent their states. If someone who wins the popular vote of the people but not of the electoral loses how exactly does this allow the people to feel comfortable about making a difference with their own vote when the ultimate decision is not left up to them but the Electoral
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.
You are not alone in finding the fact that the majority vote does not always win in United States elections. There are actually many groups attempting to abolish the electoral college after the election of Donald Trump, as he did not win the popular vote. I think that the electoral college was a good solution for the founders to give all of America the ability to have their voice heard by a nonpartisan election caster, but unfortunately it does not seem to be working as well today. Ali from Reading Discussion #2 11 hours ago
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
Being a person of politics yourself, you of all people should know that many compromises have been made over the course of the establishment of the United States. However, some of the compromises, like the electoral college, were made because of factors in the past and are now not needed in today’s modern democracy. While the electoral college once worked as a compromise in the past, it is an archaic system that unfairly represents the votes of citizens all across the nation. A popular vote should instead be utilized to fairly choose the people of power in this country and would better represent voters’ opinions. In implementing the electoral college, most states’ votes either go to one candidate or the other, leading to candidates to only campaign in swing states (Bradford Plumer 13).
The Electoral College is a fair process of government for everyone. The Electoral College is a trustworthy method of government. Certainly, this way is a fair to the citizens, the states and the country. If the government was to develop a new system it may not give everyone this power. The Electoral College also helps uniformed voters not have a have a huge say in government.
This is strictly why the Electoral College should be taken off the amendments and if not abolished. The Electoral College has failed three times in history, and the loser ended up winning because of state votes and not popularity votes. If we get rid of the Electoral College we will be able to vote directly, and citizens votes will be equal without having to worry about candidates cheating any kind of system for personal gain. Getting rid of the twelfth amendment will solve this issue like I have stated above, If we do not act; candidates will keep on deceiving the system. We’ve been trying to get rid of the Electoral College for the past couple years now, but we as the people have failed to act and therefore they will put it to the side and say “Don't worry, we will get to it”.
This is an issue that occurred in the aforementioned 2000 Presidential election, which created several controversies. During that election, George W. Bush of the Republican Party attained 50,456,002 popular votes and won 271 electoral votes, while his competitor Al Gore of the Democratic Party won the popular vote by 50,999,897 votes and only won 266 electoral votes. With such a small margin of victory in both the popular and electoral votes, there is no wonder why this election is highly contested. Considering this particular event, without the ability for citizens to see their vote directly influence an election, some consider not voting at all. In fact, it is well known that on average 40% of the U.S. population choose to opt out of participating on Election Day.
Currently, the electoral voters are the only ones with a direct vote in the election. In order for the election to be more reflective of the citizens’ wishes, the popular vote should become more significantly tied to the election. The Electoral College should not be the most prominent voting process, when the popular vote should be more important. The risk of untrustworthy electors increases, which causes the voter to feel that they are being cheated out of their votes, which may discourage them from voting in the future. There is also the high possibility in which neither candidates receive the majority of electoral votes required to win election, such as what occurred in the 1824 election, meaning the House of Representatives would have to decide who becomes
In 1787, years after the founding of the United States, the Constitutional Convention met to decide how the new nation would govern itself. The delegates understood that the need for a leader was necessary but still bitterly remembered how Britain abused of its power. The delegates agreed that the President and Vice President should be chosen informally and not based on the direct popular vote, thus gave birth to the Electoral College. The Electoral College is defined as “a body of people representing the states of the US, who formally cast votes for the election of the president and vice president.” Since 1787 the Electoral College has been the system for voting in the United States, but with our nation ever more changing and growing it
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 may be true, but in this method, candidates might only spend time in certain battleground districts instead of the entire state and there is a possibility of Gerrymandering. The Electoral College will also resolve ties. “This happened with President Nixon in 1968 and President Clinton in 1992, when both men won the most electoral votes while receiving just 43% of the popular vote. The existence of the Electoral College precluded calls for recounts or demands for run-off elections.” When in the possibility of a tie, the Electoral College is ready with the decision to recount to get a clear
Firstly, the electoral votes prevents conflict and makes it clear on who wins. On December 16th 2016 George F Will wrote The Electoral College is an Excellent System in which he quotes that we used the popularity vote and one person won by a few more votes, the losing candidate could “...challenge the results in many of the nation’s 170,000 precincts.” (doc B). With the
The Electoral College is the process to which the United States elects the President, and the Vice President. The founders of the Constitution came up with this process. This was done to give additional power to the small states, and it was done to satisfy them. It works by the citizens of the United States electing representatives called electors. Each state is given the same amount of electors, as they are members of congress.
