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The Pros And Cons Of The Electoral College

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The United States Electoral College is an American system designed by the founding fathers to conduct elections. However, it has become subject to controversy in the 2016 Presidential election. The unique aspect of the Electoral College is how electors are awarded to presidential candidates using a state-by-state method of determining the number of electors. While the Electoral College is fundamental to the founders of America to protect the nation, its fatal flaws are too damaging to the people of the United States. In my opinion, the Electoral College needs to be reexamined in order to establish a new way of electing Presidents and Vice Presidents. The best way to protect the people's voice in the United States is to establish a nationwide …show more content…

This system can be detrimental to the American people by diminishing the significance of individual votes for the President. The state-by-state method has changed the course of US history and undermined the will of the majority of voters. This has occurred when the Electoral College has elected the loser of the popular vote in five instances[^1^]. These presidential elections were in 1876, 1888, 1960, 2000, and 2016, going against the wishes of US voters. This represents a 9% failure rate for the state-by-state method, which has allowed the popular vote loser to occupy the Oval Office. This issue has had profound effects on the health of US elections and the essence of democracy. The state-by-state method can silence the will and choices of millions of people, as their votes do not carry the same weight in certain key swing states. Comparing this system to the potential benefits of a nationwide vote for the president, the current system is flawed, and a nationwide vote could be the rectification that US democracy needs. The nationwide vote would likely increase voter turnout in America because it will result in greater competition and impact, encouraging people to vote. This is supported by the fact that "turnout in competitive states is usually higher than in the rest of the country"[^2^]. The higher turnout in the swing states is because of the national focus …show more content…

This process was designed by the founding fathers of the United States, and it involves electors meeting in December to vote for the President and Vice President in separate ballots. Alexander Hamilton favored this method, as he believed that a "small number of persons… will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations" [1]. According to Hamilton's vision, if the electors can determine that the candidate the state has voted for is unqualified to hold the office. They can set aside the votes of the state and vote according to the state’s own will and justifications. Hamilton believed this would have safeguards against “evil was not least to be dreaded in the election of a magistrate, who was to have so important an agency in the administration of the government as the President of the United States” U. This has resulted in the "faithless electors," which has occurred in the United States many times in past elections, as recently as 2016 when 7 electors did not vote for the state candidate. However, this original way of appointing electors goes against the core values of true democracy. Hamilton believed that the people were not educated in politics and were not able to select their preferred candidate without the

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Many great presidents were elected through the Electoral College such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. Though it may not always be ideal, everyone knows the rules which makes the complex process simpler. It also promotes the building of coalitions, as support from a broad basis is needed, which allows political parties to compromise. Coalitions would increase decisions made and more would get done which would support the general election and even the needs of households at local levels. (Gaille)

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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.

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When the Democratic System in America was founded in 1787, it was built on the sturdy ideals of equality and fairness. The founding fathers of the constitutional convention developed the Electoral college system with the best interests of the American people in mind, as the average person was highly under-educated and they did not trust them to make a decision as important as the But over time as society and even our democracy has changed, it has become ridden with flaws and corruption especially in the electoral college and voting system. The effects of the Electoral College’s inefficiencies oppose the very ideas our democracy was built off of. Because of the over-representation of small states, the broken promises of political equality, and

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The Electoral College is the best system we have come up with so far. Although it is flawed, other systems introduce larger problems, such as runoff elections, higher likelihood of contingency elections, weakening of the two-party system, unnecessary layers of complexity, loopholes ripe for exploitation by parties both domestic and international, and unequal representation. Although it cannot and should not be completely done away with, perhaps the best solution would be to follow a version of the Automatic Plan- clear the Electoral College of the human factor by having the state’s popular votes directly influence the electoral votes. If better contingency plans are put in place in the case of a candidates’ demise between the elector’s vote

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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.

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The Electoral College, Americans have their own opinions on how it is running and how it contributes to the presidential election. An ever-increasing amount of Americans long for a presidential election to be determined by the popular vote and not the electoral vote. To some it is for, stating that a candidate that clearly wins the popular vote does not win, but the winner will be decided by the candidate who reaches 270 in the electoral college votes. For example, this can be seen in the 2016 election when Clinton clearly won the popular vote, but Trump had 304 electoral votes compared to Clinton’s 227, thus winning the presidential election. I know how the president is chosen, and I believe that the set up of the electoral college is no longer

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Americans in schools, on TV and in newspapers, workers and the oppressed are constantly reminded how lucky they are to live in the “freest, most democratic nation on Earth.” Despite this their electorate system continues to fail them, continues to viciously deny millions of people a strong voice in elections,continues to distort the one-person, one-vote principle on which democracy stands. The American Electorate Collage does not belong in a country that is often perceived to be the greatest in the world, the system is inexcusably undemocratic. The electoral college is, essentially a constitutional relic of a fundamentally different nation, a leftover from a bygone era in which the founding fathers specifically did not want a nationwide vote of the American people to

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The answer is a great example of Federalism, because both the federal and the state government are involved in the process of electing our president. This paper will examine, how the Electoral College works, why we want the states to be part of that Federalists family, advantage and disadvantages of the existing system and, also I will address the most recent election Hillary vs. Trump, where the winner of the popular vote was denied the presidency. For that reason being, we will talk about the possibility of reforming the current system. Going back to the ideas of the Virginia Plan on how we put the constitution together, it stated it the congress is who should choose the president. Kind of like a parliamentary system.

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However, the best way to elect a president is through the Electoral College process. This is because the Electoral College has continued to produce a president, it is fair most of the time, and other methods aren’t as good. First, it has worked for a long time. Hamilton does a wonderful job of explaining the pros of the electoral college.

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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.

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While this is technically true, in the grand scheme of things, it is false. The only states at the end of the day that decide who the president will most likely be, will land in the hands of the swing states. To add on to the swing states, the major populated states such as Texas, California, and New York have a much larger impact on the presidential election rather than states such as Idaho. And yes, every state does have votes on which president they think should be president, not every state has the same amount of impact as others

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Several years after the United States came to be, the Constitutional Convention met to determine how the new nation should govern itself. The delegates saw that it was crucial to have a president and vice president, but the delegates did not want these offices to reflect how the colonies were treated under the British rule. The delegates believed that the president’s power should be limited, and that he should be chosen through the system known as the Electoral College. The Electoral College is a body of people who represent the states of the US, who formally cast votes for the electing of the president and vice president. Many citizens feel that the Electoral College goes against our nation’s principle of representative democracy, while others

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The 2016 presidential election well demonstrated the possibility that the electoral college could generate a different outcome with the one of popular votes. It also brought back the controversy about whether or not we should continue to use this method to elect our president. The Electoral College system, as an indirect election measure, has various drawbacks and should be abolished and changed to a more widely-accepted method to encourage people to cast their votes that truly represent their interests, given the fact that we have reached a point that the technology is mature enough to help us to do

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In Document D, we are shown an example in which we can visually see how one citizens vote weighs more heavily than others depending on the state. While Illinois has a larger population than all twelve states and D.C. depicted

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Candidates tend to spend a large portion of their time in these types of states to try and convert independents and members of the opposite party to vote for them. Some people argue that this swing state idea defeats the electoral college principle of evening out the power among the states, since the swing states get special attention. The other main issue is that the Electoral College often does not align with the popular vote. This argues against the evening out of power since, it matters more that a candidate collects more states than more people’s votes (“Understanding the Presidential Election”). In the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton secured the

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