In light of recent presidential elections, more and more of the public as turned their attention to the process in which the president is elected. Four times in history the president was elected due to votes in the Electoral College instead of the popular vote. (Wheeler, 2007) Most agree that the Electoral College is unfair because the candidate who wins the majority of the popular vote is not necessarily who the president will be on inauguration day. (Gringer, 2008) There is potential for complete breakdown in the election process if the Electoral votes would come to an even tie. Some might argue that the whole idea of the Electoral College should be scrapped all together for the national popular vote, however, there are problems with that idea. The election process needs to be altered to better reflect the will of the people. There was a lot of debate over how the president would be determined during the Constitutional Convention including the popular vote, which was ultimately rejected during compromise. (Miller, 2012) One of the possibilities that …show more content…
Currently, there are two states, Maine and Nebraska, that do not automatically cast all of their electoral votes for the winner of the popular vote in their individual states. (Gringer, 2008) In these two states, the electoral votes are cast based on how individual districts voted. (Gringer, 2008) Aside from this system that will divide votes based on how ballots were cast, there was a proposal August 2006 in California in which the state would automatically vote according to the popular vote. In this system, the state would ignore how their own popular vote was cast and vote according to the national popular vote. (Gringer, 2008) In the end, the governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, vetoed the bill in California, however, it has been ratified in nine other state legislatures since. (Gringer,