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Essay on electoral college explained
Essay on electoral college explained
Cons of the electoral college essay
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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.
However, many states make a requirement for the electors to vote for the candidate with the most votes of that state. The Electoral College was originally created to prevent the people of the United States from having too much power. Mainly because the creators of the Constitution, were very wary of any one group acquiring too much power. Also, at the time of the creation of the Constitution, it was almost impossible for citizens to be able to go and cast
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.
Did you know that the Electoral College was created as a compromise between those Founding fathers who wanted the president elected by Congress and those who wanted direct election by the people? Presidents are elected by a group of 538 electors, acting on behalf of the states and not by the citizens. This arrangement is called the Electoral College. Every four years, millions of United States citizens vote for a president and a vice president of the United States.
In the early years of America the Founding Fathers created the constitution for everyone to follow. One thing that is in the constitution is know as The Electoral College is a group of electors that decide on who the president will be. Electors are decided by each states party convention before the election takes place. The Electoral College consist of 538 people and to elect a president they must reach a majority of 270. The Founding Fathers of the United States created the Electoral College because they believed it was the best way to elect the president, although there are good things about the Electoral College there are also some fall backs.
There was many different reasons for why the Electoral College was established. One, A direct election would have been impractical for the time. Collecting all the votes of all the people who voted and then counting those votes would have taken inordinate amounts of time to do as a single, direct election. By splitting it into an Electoral College system, in which each citizen is effectively voting within his or her State, the system became much more easily managed. Another reason the Electoral College was established is because they didn’t want to give the people too much power.
Do We Need the Electoral College? Following the 2016 election many individuals we shocked to find Donald Trump had won the Presidency while not having the popular vote. They were unaware of how the electoral college works and how the president is actually elected through the electoral college rather than the popular vote. But, before we find out if we need the electoral college, we must look into why it was created, and look at the pros and cons of the electoral college as well as the pros and cons of the proposed system to replace it.
These unknown electors are the true people who determine the outcome of the election, not the citizens of the United States. Furthermore, these electors have no Constitutional provisions that require them to follow the will of the citizens (“About the Electors”). Some states do have laws which require electors to vote in accordance to the popular vote of each respective state.
The electoral college, created in 1787 and written into federal law in 1845, is a system in which citizens of the United States vote in general elections to choose a lineup of “electors” who pledge to vote for a particular party. Established by our Founding Fathers, it is made up of 538 members and is used by the people to indirectly elect the president of the United States and the vice president of the United States. Each state, however, does not obtain an unlimited amount of electors to choose from; the number of electors is equal to the number of members of Congress (House of Representatives and Senators) each state in entitled with. A candidate must receive a majority of 270 votes in order to win the presidency, an ideology that has begun to spiral down as the years, and presidential elections, go by.
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)
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.
America's founding fathers were obviously incredibly intelligent. In addition to composing the masterful works of writing that sculpted The United States, they also planned and arranged a system to elect the president unlike any other on Earth. Wary of human nature, the Fathers avoided implementing a simple majority election, and instead developed the electoral college. This system of voting for the president has seen its share of disputes and critics, yet it remains relatively unchanged since its first uses. Those that oppose the electoral college do so because it represents the states unfairly, it has a negative effect on voter turnout, and it occasionally fails to elect a president that represents the majority.
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.
The Electoral College: A Safeguard of Federalism or an Outdated Institution? Emily Gerard Professor Ethridge Government & Politics 27 June 2015 The Electoral College is a controversial institution and beginning with the 12th amendment there have been periodic attempts to reform it. In fact, “The provisions for electing the President and Vice President have been among the most amended in the Constitution.”
The electoral college is an institution that can be found deeply rooted in the functionality of both the state and federal government. Due to this fact, calls for the abolition of the electoral college may cause for many changes to occur in these systems of government. In order to be able to decide whether or not we as a nation should update our electoral system, we must compare both the positive and negative effects that the abolition of the electoral college would have on these institutions. To start the paper, I would first bring to attention the history behind the winner-takes-all system and the intention of the states to move to this system. I would explain that the electoral college promises two electoral votes to every state, and how this disproportionately advantages smaller states.
