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What Are The Pros And Cons Of The Electoral College

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I. The Electoral College is an unnecessary institution that undermines democracy by not ensuring the victory of the presidential candidate who wins the plurality of the popular vote, by creating a system in which not all votes are equal, and by incentivizing politicians to focus on the needs of specific states while ignoring others. II. A. The Electoral College is a body of people that represent each state within the United States and formally cast votes for their state in the election of the president. Votes are distributed among the states based on relative population. California has the maximum number of votes at 55; the minimum number of votes per state is 3. B. A hanging chad occurs when a punch card based voting card is not completely …show more content…

In 1824, Andrew Jackson lost the presidential election to John Quincy Adams despite winning the largest percentage of the popular vote in what is now known as the corrupt bargain. The voting was sent to the House of Representatives after none of the 4 candidates in the race won enough votes to secure a majority in the electoral college. In the house, John Quincy Adams compromised with speaker, Henry Clay, who arranged for Adams to win in exchange for the position of Secretary of State. The man that the largest percentage of Americans wanted to be their president lost. b. In 1876, Samuel Tilden won the United States popular vote but 20 votes in the Electoral College were disputed. Through the Compromise of 1877, the 20 votes went to Rutherford B. Hayes who won the presidency and in return for the votes, ended reconstruction. Again, the man that won the majority of votes did not win in the Electoral College. c. In 1888, Grover Cleveland won the popular vote by 100,000 votes. However, he lost the Electoral College by 65 votes. No compromise or bargain was used to settle the election, revealing that even without under the table deals, the winner of a popular presidential vote could fail to win the Electoral …show more content…

In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by slightly under 3 million votes. However, she lost the Electoral College by 77 votes. For the 5th time, the person who won the largest portion of the popular vote lost in the Electoral College. Thus, the Electoral College inhibits democracy by preventing the candidates who the American people want to win an election from actually winning said election. IV. The Electoral College undermines democracy by creating a system in which not all votes are equal. a. Under the Electoral College system, votes in small states are worth more than votes in large states. For example, the state with the largest number of electors, California, has 1 elector for every 680,000 people while the smallest state, Wyoming, has 1 elector for every 190,000 people. This gives a vote from Wyoming more importance in the Electoral College than a vote from California, undermining the one person, one vote basis of democracy. b. If there is a tie in the Electoral College, the vote goes to the house where every state receives 1 vote. If a state is gridlocked, meaning that it has an equal number of electors voting for each candidate, it doesn’t receive a vote. This facet of the electoral college undermines democracy by giving each state a maximum of one vote, regardless of the number of people in the state. This further limits a one person, one vote system of

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Walter E. Williams discuss how Hillary Clinton blamed the electoral college for her losing the presidential election. Williams stated that many individuals believed that the electoral college is dangerous when it comes to American politics. Individuals also claims that there are three electoral votes, or one electoral vote per 200,000 people in the state of Wyoming which was another factor that weight in the presidential election. In California, one electoral vote equals 715,000 people. Williams also stated that there a lot of individual who complain about using the electoral college since they believe that it’s undemocratic.

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Sophie Goldenberg Honors Civics Electoral College DBQ Should the Electoral College be Repealed or Remain as is? On every first Tuesday in November of every fourth year, many Americans go to the polls to vote for their favorite candidate. Little do they know that they are actually voting for electors who then go vote for the president. This process is called the Electoral College.

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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.

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The outcome of the very close election of 1824 surprised political leaders. The winner in the all-important Electoral College was Andrew Jackson, the hero of the War of 1812, with ninety-nine votes. He was followed by John Q. Adams who secured eighty-four votes. William Crawford trailed well behind with just forty-one votes. Although Jackson seemed to have won a narrow victory, receiving 43 percent of the popular vote versus just 30 percent for Adams, he would not be seated as the country 's sixth president.

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Edward’s point means that votes aren’t population-based and that an individual’s vote may outweigh another’s depending on the state. The Electoral College undercuts the principle of one person, one vote and therefore is anti-democratic and should be

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Like many others great creation the Electoral College has some downfalls. The first con of the Electoral College according to Amelia Josephson " It gives too much power to swing states". What this means is when candidates run for president are more likely to target swing states rather than going to a state that always goes blue or red. Candidates do this because they are trying to sway the swing there way so they can win, which then gives the swing states power into picking the presidency. The second con the Electoral College according Kathleen McCleary

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Under the 23rd Amendment of the Constitution, the District of Columbia is allocated 3 electors and treated like a state for purposes of the Electoral College. Each candidate running for President in your state has his or her own

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The Electoral College has many good attributes some of those include giving equal representation to the small states and keeping the system simple. “The election of 2000 is one of the rare cases where the winner of the popular vote did not also win the electoral vote, but the electoral vote reflected the fact that Bush won in far more states (30) than did Gore, and thus highlighted the federal nature of the system.” The outcome of this election shows how the Electoral College more accurately represents the citizens votes than the popular vote. In this scenario without the electoral college the election would have been swayed in favor of the larger more populous states. “the Electoral Colleges strengthens the two-party system and discourages third-party challengers who could further fragment the existing political system.”

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After the election, the candidate who won was General Ulysses S. Grant. Therefore the republican party won the presidential election. In total, Ulysses S. Grant had gathered 214 electoral votes, where as Horatio Seymour had only a total of 80 electoral votes. At the time the presidential candidate only needed 214 electoral votes to win the presidency because not all of the 50 states were established at the time. In the year 1868 there was only a total of 294 electoral votes.

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Lastly, the Electoral College ignores the will of the people. There are 538 electors and over 300 million people in the United States and only 538 people get to decide who gets to be voted in. Is there a better way then the Electoral College for voting? This question is very opinionated because some people think we don’t need the Electoral College at all and other do. But, I think the Electoral College isn’t that bad of a way, because you wouldn’t want some uneducated adult that has no idea what they are doing decide who they want to run the country.

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It was November 8th, 2017, also known as, Election Day in the U.S. At exactly 2:00 it had been announced that Hillary Clinton had won the popular vote, but the election was not over yet. 2:30. It had been announced that Trump had won the presidential election to the shock of many, prompting the question, is the electoral college was really the best way to decide elections? Yes.

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Picture a system where your vote truly matters, every vote counts for something, and every citizen's voice is heard. This reality could be achieved by abolishing the outdated, misrepresentative, Electoral College. To understand why it should be abolished, first, we must look at the reasoning behind its creation. The founders of the Electoral College aimed to create a system where both small and large states’ interests were taken into account and voting power was not based on state size. Therefore, the Electoral College was designed as a compromise to give each state a certain number of votes based on their population size.

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This shows that the Electoral College undercuts the principle of one person, one vote, and therefore violates political equality. “It is not a neutral counting device... it favors some citizens over others, depending solely upon the state in which voters cast their votes for president” (Document D). Political equality means all citizens are equal and it also allows citizens to partake in state affairs, including the right to vote and the right to challenge elections. The electoral college has trouble endorsing democratic values of the United States. In document E, George Will said “the winner takes all electoral vote allocation tends to produce a winning margin that looks like national decisiveness.”

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Hilary Clinton won the popular vote, but Donald Trump won the electoral vote. Due to the intensity of this election, people were concerned with how important their vote truly is. People do not feel as if their votes matter within the electoral college. This leads to a large issue within the voting system in America because people are not voting.

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The Electoral College is a group of people that cast votes for the presidential election, every 4 years, on behalf of the states. This means that the US is not really an absolute democracy, as frequently believed. The president isn't chosen through the popular vote, but rather through individual representatives who cast votes on behalf of the citizens. But this is not necessarily a bad thing, and this way of doing things does not need to be put to an end.

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