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The Pros And Cons Of The Electoral College

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John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon both competed in the 1960 presidential election. This election allegedly represents the Electoral College functioning as designed. Even though Kennedy lost the popular vote by a small margin, he won most of the electoral votes. As a result, he was elected President. He won regardless of the electoral college in minor addition to the overwhelming majority of the crucial states (History). The Electoral College allows the United States to vote for the President and Vice President. Instead of being voted directly by the people, each state selects electors to vote for the President (Lau). The system has been in place since the country's founding and has been the subject of much debate over the years. While some …show more content…

While there are valid arguments against the Electoral College, it remains a vital component of the American political system. One significant criticism of the Electoral College is that it increases the likelihood of a political candidate securing the presidency without receiving a large majority of the vote. Given this, people must remember why the founding fathers proposed the Electoral College. It was a way to ensure that all states, not just the ones with the most people, have a say in the election (Kirch). Without the Electoral College, candidates will be slightly more motivated to run for office in less populated states because such states' challenges and needs will likely go unmet. Additionally, the Electoral College helps to prevent alleged fraud and political corruption by making it more difficult to manipulate the election results (Ross). While there are valid criticisms of the Electoral College, it remains an important safeguard against the tyranny of the majority and an essential part of our …show more content…

The system allows states to select a specific number of electors based merely on population. This announces political states with reduced populations a more valuable opportunity to secure the contested election than they would under a popular vote (Kirch). This helps ensure that all states' interests are represented, rather than just those with the most massive populations. Also, the fact that each state obtains its electors means that the election is controlled by several authorities, with each state responsible for its election. This helps prevent any condition or region from possessing all the power in an election. The Electoral College restores more populous states from retaining an unqualified influence over election outcomes. Put differently, it ensures that candidates need to earn broad support across many different regions and independent states to win the presidency rather than just focusing on a few densely populated areas. Not only but also, the Electoral College system incentivizes campaigns to visit and engage with voters in various states, including those with more limited populations, rather than solely focusing on the most populated areas (Miller). Finally, the Electoral College is designed to prevent any one state or region from dominating the election outcomes. This is because each state is

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The Electoral College system, in our government today, is made up of a winner-take-all system. The winner take all system demonstrates that whichever candidate that receives the most votes wins all of the electoral points and the other candidate receives nothing. The Electoral College system enacts the candidates of both parties to only visit the larger states, in which they know they will most likely receive the most electoral points. This is not technically fair because each state is not getting proper representation. When states disagree, with one candidate’s views on a particular issue, they can swing and vote for the other candidate causing the other candidate to alter their approach to win back the state.

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In 1888, Grover Cleveland won the popular vote by 100,000 votes. However, he lost the Electoral College by 65 votes. No compromise or bargain was used to settle the election, revealing that even without under the table deals, the winner of a popular presidential vote could fail to win the Electoral

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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.

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The Electoral College is a method that was established by the Founding Fathers of the United States within the Constitution. The Electoral College has been the subject of more proposed amendments than any other provision of the U.S. Constitution (Richie and Levien 353). The Founding Fathers did not intend for the Electoral College to be a perfect democratic system, but James Madison, strongly opposed winner-take-all laws. The Electoral College is a vital part of Federalism, which is the foundation of the system of government and without it no candidate would be likely to receive a majority (Bond and Smith 343-352). Though, there are many downfalls to the Electoral College.

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Under this system, every state is given a certain number of electoral votes based on its population. While this means that larger states have more electoral votes, smaller states are not completely ignored. In fact, small states are overrepresented in the Electoral College, as they have more electoral votes per capita than larger states. This means that the presidential candidates must consider the interests of small states while campaigning, which helps to prevent them from focusing solely on the issues that affect large urban areas.

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The electoral college gives citizens the impression that their votes would not matter after all, causing them to just stay at home rather than going out and participating in the elections. This can discourage people from educating and informing themselves about our country

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This means that each state has a set number of votes, per that states size and population. The reason there not all equal is because, if it all came down to the line one wouldn’t want the state of Rhode Island deciding who our next president is right? No, that’s why there are numbers of votes per size and population. People often argue that their votes don’t matter since we have the electoral college, but they do matter.

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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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The electoral college has always successfully chosen a president and benefited small states. However, in the more recent years there has been much debate as to whether or not this system works for our country. There have been five times when the winner of the popular vote loses the election leaving citizens wondering

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This system makes a safeguard around our votes. “Using electors instead of the popular vote was intended to safeguard the presidential election against uninformed or uneducated voters by putting the final decision in the hands of electors who were most likely to possess the information necessary to make the best decision in a time when news was not widely disseminated.” (Electoral College). The Electoral College gives voters peace of mind because they know the electors are educated on what they want and will vote accordingly. Some may say the popular vote is better in this situation because it gives each vote an equal amount of power and it would eliminate the threat of a faithless elector.

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They feel this system provides an advantage to swing states that will have an influential advantage. The Electoral College method of election gives an advantage to the smaller states where a popular vote election provides an advantage to larger states. The United States is the only country that elects one of the most powerful men in the world without having to secure the highest number of votes

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The Electoral College system the founding fathers devised helps to balance out the power of the large, populous states. This system forces candidates to campaign in all states since they all carry some sway in the elections (“Understanding the Presidential Election”). However, other issues present themselves as well, like states with large independent voters that can be swayed and the issue that a candidate can lose the popular vote and win the election. The first issue is that states that are equally divided between democrats and republicans and hold a large number of electoral votes like Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania are considered swing states. (“Understanding the Presidential Election”)

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The electoral college voting system is that exists today to keep the nation going, without having to battle the wrong decisions made by uneducated people. This system keeps the nation from collapsing and makes sure that every state is included in every election. This system makes it possible for every vote to be

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The Electoral College is a system that was put in place in 1787 when the founding fathers were determining how to fairly elect a president in a country that had different sized states that separated themselves from a centralized national government in a time when national votes being collected from all of the people, given the rural areas and lack of transportation or communication, was not feasible, thus eliminating the idea of a simple national popular vote. Other ideas suggested included having Congress or state legislatures elect the president, but these too were discarded due to the risks of upsetting balance of the power, either between the executive and legislative branch, or between state and federal governments. In the end, the concept of the Electoral College was passed. With the Electoral College, each state has a specified number of voting districts, these divided and based upon the population of that state. During an election, the people vote for the candidate they choose, and the candidate who wins the popular vote wins the election - for that state.

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The electoral college is a system that gives representatives to states to vote in favor of what the people want in that state. Each state is guaranteed one representative out of the 435 there are. The remaining 385 are distributed into the states by population size and how the population of that state increases or decreases. This is seen as unfair because the smaller states have the same power to influence the election outcome as the states with more people. The smaller states have more advantage because their representatives, represent a smaller amount of people, while larger states representatives must represent what a much larger amount of people in that state want.

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