Should The Electoral College Be Abolished Dbq Analysis

Time-out for the Electoral College

Write thesis here. Write Background here. Write prompt/question here. The Electoral College is unfair and should be abolished because third party candidates are given no chance to win the election, voting isn’t distributed equally, and it is undemocratic and flawed. One reason why the Electoral College should be abolished is that it’s almost impossible for third party candidates to win. In the presidential election of 1922, the candidates were Clinton, Bush, and Perot. On the subject of popular vote, Clinton won 43%, Bush received 37.5%, and Perot received 18.9% (Document B). From this data, one can conclude that Perot had a smaller, but noteworthy amount of popular votes in comparison with the other contenders.

A presidential candidate could win the Electoral College with merely eleven states total (Document A). If one were to deduct this number, then 39 states would remain without an appropriate say on who the next president is. This is unfair. Additionally, George C. Edwards quotes, “The Electoral College violates political equality. It is not a neutral counting device… It favors some citizens over others, depending solely upon the state in which voters cast their vote for president (Document D).” Edward’s point means that votes aren’t population-based and that an individual’s vote may outweigh another’s depending on the state. The Electoral College undercuts the principle of one person, one vote and therefore is anti-democratic and should be

George Will quotes, “The winner-take-all electoral vote allocation tends to produce a winning margin that looks like national decisiveness (Document E).” Will is conveying that in appearance, the immense gap between the winning candidate and runner-up might give off the impression of a unanimous national acceptance. But, in reality that said candidate might not be the president the people really voted for. This infringes the citizen's right of choosing their own president, therefore the system is undemocratic. Additionally, Bradford Plumer quotes, “Perhaps the most worrying is the prospect of a tie. In that case, the election would be thrown to the House of Representatives.” And that, “...each state only casts one vote (Document F)…” Plumer expresses if the electoral votes are tied, then the voting will become more unfair because of the misrepresentation of state population in the House. Lastly, in the presidential election of 1876, the candidates were Hayes and Tilden. Tilden had won the popular vote with an advantage of 245,448 more than Hayes (Document G). On the other hand, Hayes was the winner for the electoral vote by a difference of one vote. This is evidence of how popular vote results differ from electoral votes. All of these examples further display of how the Electoral College does not reach the objective of reflecting the will of the voters, therefore is undemocratic and