Essay On Electoral College

1618 Words7 Pages

Life, liberty, and the ability to lose but still win. In short, the Electoral College makes that scenario possible. Put into place by our Founding Fathers, the Electoral College is the only one of it’s kind. Always a whirlwind of controversy, it has served as a highly contested topic since its founding in 1787. With the recent election of President Donald Trump, this issue is bigger than ever. Using electoral voting for the Presidential Election should stay in place because it increases the importance of voting by giving every state a say in the election. Our Founding Fathers coined our nation the nickname “The Land of the Free.” In 1787, at the Constitutional Convention, they decided to put a limit on this freedom. At the time, they felt …show more content…

Against his wishes, we divided politics with the two party system (Speel 2). Through it all, the Electoral College has remained. With this evolution, the splitting of electoral votes has also changed. Now, in all but two states, legislature has been passed to require electors to give all votes to the popular vote of their state. Maine and Nebraska stand a minority, as they allow votes to be split at the electors’ discretion (Speel 3). This disproves the uneducated that say Electoral voting makes individual votes not count. In retrospect, votes matter more than ever because in all or nothing Electoral Voting, each vote makes the majority. The continual tweaks to the system keep it fair and useful as ever. Most recently, Washington DC was added to the college. With these newest three votes, the college is up to 538 votes each election (Walsh 3). The number of votes per state is dependent upon the number of senate seats and members in the House of Representatives. From there, the states can decide how electors will be selected and how the votes will be split. Thus, creating freedom among the states and unity (Elving 3). Giving such power to the states further reflects the ways the Electoral College empowers states and boosts