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Electoral college explained paper
Pros and cons of electoral college essay
Pros and cons of 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.
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.
The number of votes a state receives in the Electoral College is based on the state’s population. The presidential candidate who reaches 270 electoral votes is declared the winner. This system was designed in order to prevent large states from overpowering smaller states. However, there are many flaws that come with this unique system.
The electoral college was defined in the book of Sidlow as the group of electors who are selected by the voters in each state to officially elect the president and vice president (2016, p. 194). This is the so-called "Committee of Eleven" in the Constitutional Convention proposed an indirect election of the president through a College of Electors. Based from my readings, I think the founding fathers put the electoral college in our Constitution as the solution to the problem that they were trying to solve. They faced the difficult question of how to elect a president in a nation that was composed of thirteen large and small states. This is to create a buffer between population and the selection of a President.
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.
People vote for the candidates by voting for the electors that reflect the viewpoints of the particular candidate and their personal political opinion. With that said, the Electoral College is a winner take all system where the states have voted and the majority vote of the presidential candidate goes to the electors that then cast their votes for the states. The Founding Fathers created the Electoral College in the Constitution for a couple of reasons. Schulman (n.d.) states the first reason it was fabricated “was to create a buffer between population and the selection of a President” (p. 1). Although, another significant reason that the Electoral College was created was for equal representation in voting
It’s Election Season in some obscure year, no different than 4 years ago, or 4 years before that, still Republican v Democrat, maybe a 3rd Party mixed in there somewhere. Where are you right now? Sitting at your desk, or at your desk? Watching TV. Well, whatever it is you're doing, it can’t help but think about the election.
The Electoral College is a way of voting indirectly for the president of the United States. The Electoral College is made up of the number of senators and members of the house of representatives in the state. An example of this is Wisconsin, Wisconsin has 8 members of the House of Representatives and all states have 2 senators, therefore Wisconsin has 10 electors. The idea of an electoral college is very controversial because many people believe that the president should be voted in directly by the people.
According to the Huffington Post, “The electors are usually state-elected officials, party leaders, or people with a strong affiliation with the Presidential candidates” (“What is the Electoral College?”). Furthermore, the process for nominating electors in each state varies. Typically speaking, each political party “either nominate slates of potential Electors at their state party conventions or they chose them by a vote of the party's central committee” (“About the Electors”).
“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” - Winston Churchill. This belief that the average voter is incompetent is the reason why the electoral college was created; the electors provide a barrier between the ill-informed public and the government. The founders of America, the unquestionable champions of democracy themselves, did not trust the average American to choose what is best for the country. But were they right?
Your vote doesn’t go to an "elector", Instead your vote automatically goes to the presidential candidate you voted for. This seems much fairer since your vote isn't being controlled by someone else. Many people don't know the difference. As stated at the beginning of the essay it's pushed aside and forgotten about. There have been many people who argue that the electoral college is good where it's at.
When an individual decides to vote for the up coming election for the president of the United States of America they are in fact not voting for a candidate but for an elector instead that will cast your vote in your place instead. Although some might believe that they voted for the next president, 538 electors will make the vote. The method of selecting an elector to vote for the president instead of individuals choosing the president through their own vote is a system known as the “The Electoral College”. According to “We the People: An Introduction to American Politics” an electoral college is defined as “ the electors from each state who meet after the popular elections to cast ballots for president and vice president”.
