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Pros And Cons Of The Electoral College

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Electoral College: Good or Bad?

The electoral college is a system used to elect the president of the United States of America by using selected electors to choose with president to vote for based on their beliefs. The electoral college has been debated by many on whether or not it should stay around. Some say that it does not represent what the majority wants, while others say it is effective because the people they pick to choose the president are more educated on the subject than most citizens. There are many benefits of the electoral college, but there are many terrible things about it as well. I think that the electoral college needs to be removed from our process of picking the country’s president.
The electoral college has some parts …show more content…

The electors can vote differently than what their state’s population has voted for. Even though the majority of a state votes for a president it is simply a suggestion for the faithless electors, and they get no punishment for voting against what their state wants. There is no National law stopping electors from doing this, but some states have a law stopping electors from voting against the popular vote, and even fewer of those states have a punishment if they do not vote in line with the majority. The electoral college stops the people from directly having a say in the election of their president. The voters actually are not voting for who they want as president, but are voting for who they want as an elector to pick their country’s president, and can decide whatever they want. They could put a president in office that is not favored by the American people which would make many unhappy and not allow the president to get anything done since they will not have the support of their citizens. The electoral college system has many flaws when electing our president which makes it very …show more content…

Five presidents have been elected by the electoral college going against the popular vote; John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump. If the majority of people want one president but get another then it rejects the whole purpose of the people managing the government. A president that the majority dislikes is going to pass legislation that upsets the people of the United States. The popular vote shows what president the people favor over the other. If you go by the popular vote then the majority of the people win and the majority of the people are happy. The popular votes makes everyone’s vote equal, so if you are a liberal living in a conservative state, or vis versa, you will still get a bigger say based on your mindset. The popular vote is a fair and equal way to elect the president of the United States, and way better than the electoral college

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587 Words | 3 Pages

The Electoral College is pretty much a process that was established in the Constitution by the founding fathers which was suppose to be a compromise between election of the President by a vote in congress and by the popular vote of citizens. This process consists of the selection of electors, the meeting of the electors is where they vote for the President and Vice President, and the counting of the electoral votes by Congress. In the Electoral College it contains 538 electors and to win the majority they need to have 270 electoral votes. As well as, the number of electors for every state is equal to the number of Representations that the state has in congress which is based on the population and there is also one vote for each Senator. So, each state has at least three electors and votes.

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However, voters do not vote for a specific elector, they just vote which party they are affiliated with. The popular vote is just as important as the Electoral College vote, but it does not determine the outcome. Fundamentally, the popular vote is just to see how many voters favor which presidential candidate the most. “Democratic and Republican state parties nominate their own slates of electors-some as early as the spring and others as late as October. In many states, elector candidates are picked at congressional district and state conventions, when local activists also pick their delegates to the national convention.”

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607 Words | 3 Pages

The Electoral College has many good attributes some of those include giving equal representation to the small states and keeping the system simple. “The election of 2000 is one of the rare cases where the winner of the popular vote did not also win the electoral vote, but the electoral vote reflected the fact that Bush won in far more states (30) than did Gore, and thus highlighted the federal nature of the system.” The outcome of this election shows how the Electoral College more accurately represents the citizens votes than the popular vote. In this scenario without the electoral college the election would have been swayed in favor of the larger more populous states. “the Electoral Colleges strengthens the two-party system and discourages third-party challengers who could further fragment the existing political system.”

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946 Words | 4 Pages

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

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1570 Words | 7 Pages

Ever since the election involving Bush and Gore, the viability of the Electoral College has become a heatedly debated topic. The question is whether the Electoral College is still an effective system considering the conditions the United States faces today as opposed to the conditions that the Founding Fathers faced when they created it. For over one hundred and fifty years, the United States has used this system, and controversy has followed it ever since. It was created in an effort to protect the people and institution of America by putting the final vote of the presidency in the hands of a trusted and respected few. These few have the power to disregard the popular vote due to the fact that there is still no federal law demanding electors

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738 Words | 3 Pages

Lastly, the Electoral College ignores the will of the people. There are 538 electors and over 300 million people in the United States and only 538 people get to decide who gets to be voted in. Is there a better way then the Electoral College for voting? This question is very opinionated because some people think we don’t need the Electoral College at all and other do. But, I think the Electoral College isn’t that bad of a way, because you wouldn’t want some uneducated adult that has no idea what they are doing decide who they want to run the country.

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1374 Words | 6 Pages

The Electoral College While some people believe their votes are contributing directly to the election of the President, most people are aware that their votes mean almost nothing compared to those of the Electoral College. The Electoral College consists of the electors who cast each state’s electoral votes. It is made up of 538 electors, each state having the same number of electors as Senate and House members combined, plus three votes from the District of Columbia. “To win the presidency, a candidate must receive at least 270 votes” and win the majority (Patterson 359).

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1267 Words | 6 Pages

Even though the United States is supposed to be a democracy, the people do not actually elect the president directly. Instead, a group of electors from each state vote for the president through a process known as the electoral college. Through this system, a group of state-elected officials from each state, not the people, decide who wins the presidency. The number of electors a state has is relative to its population size. For example, a state with a smaller population receives less votes than a state with a greater population.

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1499 Words | 6 Pages

In the United States, there is a popular belief that the public decides presidential elections directly, as in a true democracy; however, this is only part of the truth, due to the Electoral College. The Electoral College is the system that the United States has in place to decide the president and vice-president, the way that it works is the United States people vote for electors who will represent them in a vote based on each states population (Jost & Giroux Sec. 1 Par. 6). The Electoral College is a widely debated topic among people in the United States, as stated in a document by Jost and Giroux “The Electoral has been controversial throughout U.S. history” (Jost & Giroux Sec. 1 Par.

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569 Words | 3 Pages

In the question of whether the Electoral College was or still is a good idea, I would have to say no. Why the Electoral College was made goes back to the Founding Fathers of America, who had been arguing for months on whether Congress or the majority vote should pick the next president. Their compromise led to the Electoral College. However, to me, it seems like a band-aid to an actual solution because they couldn't agree on anything else.

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706 Words | 3 Pages

The Electoral College is a system where each state has a certain number of votes based on the amount of population the state has. The electoral college gives more power to people that live in bigger states. For example, a vote in California has more power than a vote does in Idaho or Washington. The main idea of the electoral college is that candidates would spend most of their time campaigning in populated areas such as California and New York, and focusing their efforts on the swing states, those states would basically decide the election. I believe that the current Electoral College is a fraud and out-of-date system that does not reflect the will of the people.

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608 Words | 3 Pages

The electoral college system was invented a very long time ago. A lot of things have changed since then, the most obvious is the population of this country and the technology. The electoral college system should be abolished. There are many problems with the current electoral college system. Some of these problems are, everyone’s vote is not equal, people are discouraged to vote in certain states, and it would be a more accurate representation of how the American people want as the president.

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904 Words | 4 Pages

Several years after the United States came to be, the Constitutional Convention met to determine how the new nation should govern itself. The delegates saw that it was crucial to have a president and vice president, but the delegates did not want these offices to reflect how the colonies were treated under the British rule. The delegates believed that the president’s power should be limited, and that he should be chosen through the system known as the Electoral College. The Electoral College is a body of people who represent the states of the US, who formally cast votes for the electing of the president and vice president. Many citizens feel that the Electoral College goes against our nation’s principle of representative democracy, while others

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1345 Words | 6 Pages

Currently, there are 21 states that have no law binding their elector to vote for the candidate that the state’s popular vote chooses, however, even in the 29 states that have laws enforcing the electors to vote for their states popular vote, the fine for not doing so is usually $1,000 and over the years, a number of electors have gone against their states popular vote. During the founding the United States, the Electoral College was actually established for the purpose of preventing the public from making uneducated decisions. The founders feared that the uneducated public, at the time, would not make intelligent decisions when deciding which candidate to choose for, however, this was not designed for the modern day public and leaving the decision of voting to the electors is counter-productive. Since the founding of the Electoral College to the 2008 election, 157 electors have not voted for whom they were supposed to.

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1613 Words | 7 Pages

Traditionally, in a democracy, the people directly vote for their candidate, not the officials; and the majority rules. However, the Electoral College ignores the popular vote disallowing the popular candidate presidency. Instead, the candidate with the most electoral votes (a certain number of votes assigned to each state based on its population) wins presidency. The Electoral College is an unfair system because hundreds of votes are wiped out and wholly consumed by the number of electors in each state. California Senator, Barbra Boxer states that, the Electoral College “violates the principle of one person one vote” (Boxer, 2017, p. 2), a principle that was pronounced in the US Supreme Court Case, Gray v. Sanders (Jefferson-Jenkins, 2001).

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