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There are many proposed plans to run the government and decide the next president. Ideas including the District Plan, the Proportional Plan, the Direct Popular Election, the National Bonus Plan, and the National Popular Vote plan are in mind to fix the current system yet none have been decided. Currently, the president is decided by a method known as the Electoral College; however, this method has many disadvantages. In the United States today, the government runs a system known as the Electoral College.
The Electoral College is a system that was established in Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution. It is a system that is used to elect the next President of the United States. The number of electors are based on the number of seats a state holds in the Senate and the House of Representatives. So, when a voter places his ballot. It cast a vow for the elector of that state to vote towards that voted candidate (1).
The 2017 election has chosen Donald j. trump as the president of the united states. Donald trump as the president, just think about how the election process really works and how its chooses our commander and chief of the military. The way the united states chooses who will be the next president is by the electoral college is a process when people vote for electors who then vote for the president or vice president of the united states. The electoral college was created by our founding fathers as a compromise between the “election of the president by a vote congress and the election of the president by popular vote if the qualified citizens.” (source1: what is the electoral college).
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.
It seems as though the government wanted every other form of electing a president to fail, because they just continued to go to the next solution without trying to understand the problem and fixing it. It almost seems as if win the electoral college came into the play they just knew that it would work somehow because they kept trying at it until it worked. The article How the Electoral College System Works states that “the Electoral college system almost never functioned as they intended, but, prescribed only the system’s basic elements, leaving ample room for development.” To sum up my beliefs on the topic, I believe as though the government should get rid of the Electoral College because it’s a scam on America.
The electoral college can either be abolished or changed. With it being abolished all the power would go straight the American citizens, if changed it will allow the smaller states to have a say. By changing the electoral college system it will allow representatives of the people, smaller states
The Electoral College system should be abolished. It has been proven to be obsolete for many reasons. For example, a person could say that it presents a poor representation of the people of America. The Electoral College system also makes it so that candidates focus more on the “swing states” rather than all of the states. Additionally, the Electoral College system provides an unfair advantage to a winner-take-all system in 48 states.
They would ignore the less populated areas in between. They also argue that it would be dangerous and unnecessary to replace a system that has functioned for over 200 years. Proponents of the Electoral College system defend it because they believe that the Electoral College contributes to the cohesiveness of the country by requiring a distribution of popular support to be President, enhances the status of minority interests, contributes to the political stability of the nation, and maintains a federal system of government. Proponents say that the voters of even small miniorties in a State may make the difference between winning all of the State’s electoral votes or none of the State’s electoral votes. They argue that the original design of the federal system was thought out and wisely debated.
This way, electors are still awarded, and a candidate still must reach 270 to win the presidency. However, these electors are not won on a winner-take-all basis. Instead, they’re awarded by Congressional district. The idea is that in a solidly red or solidly blue state, there are huge pockets of voters in the minority party who make up entire districts but who never have a say in the election result. Recent data from the Office of the Federal Register reported that in 2012, over 3 million Texans voted Democratic, and almost 5 million Californians voted Republican.
As of last year’s election we all can say there were surely disputes, but who do we blame? Well, many articles have come out stating their opinions on the Electoral College whether it served its purpose or not. For example Corrie Goldman from The Humanities at Stanford say that “Why do we still let the Electoral college pick our president?” And his point of view clearly states he is strongly against the idea, he claims that “I could say fatal – flaws.
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.
Some may believe the Electoral College shouldn’t be abolished because it keeps extreme politics away from the election, and that’s true, there’s evidence that supports that. In “Securing Democracy: Why We Have an Electoral College.” The author states, “Though it may never have functioned as intended, the Electoral College has been the linchpin of American political prosperity. It has formed our political parties, moderated our more extreme elements...” (McConnell) McConnell, a former senator, states the Electoral College formed the major parties we have and moderated extreme elements in politics.
Do you want a voting system that can be a disadvantage to you? The Electoral College is not useful in today’s elections. In most electoral college elections there are only two candidates, this can lower the diversity of the candidates that the people can vote for. Furthermore, if we switch to a Direct election it would be much simpler and eliminate the need for the Electoral College which is very complicated. Importantly, the Electoral College is a complex voting system that may be confusing to many voters and it decreases the variation on which candidate to choose.
Also, I think that we should get rid of the popular vote. There are so many reasons why we need an Electoral College. The Electoral College keeps the coastal elites from basically choosing whoever they want for president. Many people often get mistaken and believe that the Founders wanted a popular vote and power to the people, however, nowhere in the constitution does it say anything about that. If there wasn’t an Electoral College then the smaller states would be at a complete disadvantage.
This is why I try to tell whoever I can about the Electoral College’s faults and what could replace it. Once the issues with the Electoral College are important to the populace they will elect representatives that share these ideas. These representatives will be pragmatic and most likely will begin at the state level, giving candidates an approximately equal percentage of electoral votes from the popular vote, i.e. if a candidate receives 50% of the popular vote, he or she will receive as close to 50% of the electoral votes. Once several states adopt this, others would fall in line
