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Electoral college pros and cons essay
What are the disadvantages of the Electoral College
Electoral college pros and cons 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.
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 United States government is one of the most admired and complex in the world, On the contrary one of the fundamental components that has an extensive impression on the American People and the Election is the Electoral College. Our founding fathers created The Electoral College over two hundred years ago, and it is still in effect today. They feared that having just the Popular Vote would give too much power to one person. In this paper, we will be discussing what the Electoral College is, the benefits and disadvantages of the Electoral College as well as if the Electoral College should be abolished or reconstructed.
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 is one of the most controversial features of the American political system. It has been around for many years and has played a significant role in politics. This complex system comes with many advantages and disadvantages. The Electoral College is a system that is used every 4 years when voters nominate a set of electors who are responsible for electing the President and Vice President.
I think the Electoral College was a decent idea in the past when the government was just starting out. Now, I believe we should get rid of it and move to a direct voting system. The reason being that there are several things wrong with the Electoral College system. To start out the candidates already have a good idea what states they are going to win. So a republican’s vote in a democratic state such as New York is not going to matter at all.
The Electoral College is an atrocious system that completely contradicts the idea of democracy and only gives power to a small margin of people. To start with, the state in which you live in can change the effect your vote has on the election. To have less population in your state, gives you a higher amount of people per electoral vote. Wyoming is small and has 3 electoral votes, 1 vote for every 195,000 votes. Comparing this to a state such as California with a huge population has 55 electoral votes, 1 for every 709,000 votes.
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 exists, according to the Federalist Papers, in order to account for the opportunity of the tyranny of the majority or factions. It gives us the responsibility of choosing the President and members that are the best for us that prevents from bias opinions on who is chosen. The reason that the Constitution calls for this extra layer, rather than just providing for the direct election of the president, is that it will harm us a whole. James Madison worried about what he called "factions.” Until today, we are afraid of what Madison called, "the tyranny of the majority" – was that a faction could overgrow 50% of our population, at which point could sacrifice the rights of other citizens.
Ever since the election involving Bush and Gore, the viability of the Electoral College has become a heatedly debated topic. The question is whether the Electoral College is still an effective system considering the conditions the United States faces today as opposed to the conditions that the Founding Fathers faced when they created it. For over one hundred and fifty years, the United States has used this system, and controversy has followed it ever since. It was created in an effort to protect the people and institution of America by putting the final vote of the presidency in the hands of a trusted and respected few. These few have the power to disregard the popular vote due to the fact that there is still no federal law demanding electors
This can either be a great or a bad thing for many citizens who are not aware of how the Electoral College takes part in the presidential voting process. There are quite a few reasons why the process is ineffective, but there are three in particular. The first being there are no types of guarantees that the popular vote will win, because there is still the possibility that the defeated by popular vote can be elected for presidency. The second being it can often discourage citizens from voting because there is more to the process than meets the eye which creates the idea that there votes are unworthy. The third being it is harder for smaller states, because of the smaller population one citizens vote will not equal as one vote.
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.
