There you are, standing in the booth looking at the screen and all the candidates to choose from. You have entered all your votes except for the most important one. Who will you pick to be the president of the United States? You have been thinking about this decision for months. Who do you want to vote for? That is the question that plagues Americans every election year. The problem is most people do not have a complete understanding of the issues our country is facing. As well, they do not understand the plans each candidate has to deal with these issues. Another issue we face is that one out of every 10 Americans does not care about politics at all. This begs the question, how can we elect a president when so many people in our country are …show more content…
They have an equal chance of making an impact on the election. If we did not have the Electoral College, states such as Rhode Island or Delaware would not have an impact on the election. The election would be determined by highly populated states such as California or Texas. On uselectionatlas.org it states “This is so because the voters of even small numbers in a small state make the difference in the electoral vote.” Without the Electoral College, the votes from less populated states would be overwhelmed by the national vote. For example, if you lived in a smaller state such as Connecticut your vote would not do much on the grand scale. With the Electoral College, those votes matter because they can be the difference in who gets the electoral votes from that state. People who would oppose my argument may say that the electoral college can deter voters in large states because if their state is largely made up of one party and you support the other party why go vote? This may be true, but just because the majority of the state went one way, you can still help your candidate by showing your support for them. Also in battleground states, which are states that have a large impact and may go either way with their vote, there was a larger than normally turn out this past …show more content…
Having the Electoral College in place ensures that smaller states have a significant say on the outcome of the election. The electoral votes placed on these less populated states in some instances can be the deciding factor in an election. Furthermore, the Electoral College forces there to be a two party system. Without the two party system, we would have a chaotic system of government with extreme changes in policies from one administration to another. In addition, the Electoral College requires that there is a distribution of votes rather than a candidate being able to focus on a single region of the country. Our country is very diversified in its people and we need a president that can represent most, if not all of the people rather than a president who only represents a few people. Our generation now must step up and take responsibility. We must educate ourselves on the issues that our country faces, and how we can solve those problems. It will not be easy, but if we want to get it done, we will find a way. We must take it upon ourselves to run for public office and make changes that will positively affect our country. On fivethirtyeight.com it says “About 57 percent of eligible voters cast ballots this year, down from 58.6 percent in 2012 and 61.6 percent in 2008” As I said before, that means that about forty percent of eligible voters in the past twelve years have decided not to
Though our founding fathers created the Electoral College over 200 years ago, it has been changed with time to accommodate modern needs and is still an important and necessary part of our electoral system. The Electoral College ensures political stability in our nation by encouraging the two-party system and also protects the interests of minorities. Furthermore, the Electoral College helps maintain a united country by requiring widespread popular support of a candidate in order for him or her to become president.
Another problem surrounding the Electoral College system is that it allows one-party states, states that almost always go to one party. In this context, a Democrat who casts a vote in a mostly Republican state feels that his vote is wasted because of no way that state will be won by a Democrat. Besides, the system is based on two-party elections, the Democrat and the Republican leaving Americans with two candidates to choose (Belenky, 364). The voters end up picking the candidate with fewer issues rather than the one they support. In my opinion, people feel that Electoral College has single-handedly defeated
Some people may believe that having the electoral college takes away the rights and needs of the states, but it does the complete opposite; it allows the president to meet the state’s needs and give them the power that is promised “The Electoral College makes sure that the states count in the presidential elections. As such, it is an important part of our federalist system...”(Document C). Document C shows us that the states are represented and have been represented for centuries due the to system in which certain powers are given to the states in order to keep the federal government in check. Consequently our states rely on the Electoral College to
Most states are always republican or democratic in the way they vote. So the amount of votes is already in favor of one candidate or another before voting actually arrives.(Document 7). Since the candidates are always insured a certain number of votes, the candidates only have to worry about “swing states” or states that change their decisions every election. Since the non-swing states never decide in favor of one candidate or the other by themselves the power to elect a new president resides with whom the citizens of swing states vote for. Without an electoral college, each citizen's vote would be worth more and everyone could help determine a new president instead of the select few who are living in “swing states.” All of these reasons help to make it clear that the electoral college is a corrupt
The electoral college is a system that was put in place by the framers of the constitution for many reasons. The main reason the electoral college is that the framers did not fully trust democracy for they believed that people were not educated enough to vote. After reading an article from Business Insider called The Electoral College Is Brilliant, And We Would Be Insane To Abolish It by Walter Hickey, I agree that the electoral college is necessary for our presidential elections. According to the article the electoral college is good because it keeps errors local, is a testament to a candidate's desire to win, and most importantly, forces majority. In the article opposing the Electoral College I found many of the arguments to be invalid or full of what ifs or buts, and that is why I do not have any reason to believe the electoral college is good.
One of the greatest accomplishments in the history of the United States was the creation of the Constitution. It was created by the Framers who included many important and specific rules to make sure that the government would be able to sustain itself. The Idea of the Electoral College was first introduced in this constitution as a way to make sure that there was a buffer between the population and the selection of a President. They did not want a dictatorship to arise due to a manipulative candidate. In recent history, the Electoral College has been a very controversial topic. Many people do not agree with it and believe that it should be abolished due to varying factors such as the unequal distribution of votes per state. When the Framers first created the Electoral College, I believe that there hopes of what it would become have not been met and that they would not be pleased with it in today's government.
The Electoral College makes it possible for citizens’ votes in certain states to essentially not matter at all. Since all of the electoral votes go toward the candidate that wins the popular vote in a state, if a state has a majority of people who vote for a certain party and a voter votes for the other party, his vote does not have any effect on the election outcome. The Electoral College system is leaving hundreds of thousands of vote’s discounted and irrelevant. The Electoral College twists each vote’s worth per state, causing the nation’s desires to be misrepresented. The Electoral College does not always show a distribution of support. A candidate could win the electoral votes
The Electoral College is a group of people who are “appointed by a larger group” of people to represent each state in the U.S. who then vote for the presidential elections (Dictionary.com 2015). The founding fathers created the Electoral College so that qualified citizens could vote for the president. They believed that the average American is uniformed, so they decided that a few educated people would make the correct choice for the entire population. The founding fathers also thought the Electoral College would be effective because at that time the only way of communication was through word of mouth and through letters. With the Electoral College, it was a more simple way to get the votes to one place and count them. A major criticism of the Electoral College is the popular candidate may lose to the electoral vote. This means that if majority of the population voted for candidate A, but majority of the electoral votes were for candidate B, the president of the nation would become candidate B. This situation has occurred four out of the fifty-six presidential elections that have been held in the United States. I believe that the Electoral College should be abolished so that the popular candidate would win the election, people would feel that they are making a difference in the society they live in, and we should replace the Electoral College with popular choice or allow our house of representatives to vote for the presidents instead.
Some choose to argue for keeping the electoral college. One reason they do this is because it was part of the Constitution’s framers’ plan, “Historically, federalism [the combination of a central government with some authority given to state and local governments] is central to our grand constitutional effort to constrain power” (Document C). One can assume that the framers put the electoral college system in place to prevent one form of government from becoming too powerful. After much consideration, the Constitution's framers’ believed that the electoral college would be the best way to prevent a tyrannical president from taking office. Another reason why people argue for keeping the electoral college is because it boosts the power of small states,
The Electoral College is a group with too much power, so much power that they cause the average citizen’s vote for president to fail to be significantly substantial, and that needs quite a few changes. The Electoral College believes that they can accurately reflect not only the nation’s desideratum, the group also believes they can reflect the nation’s absolute need. This is a democratic government and an American citizen deserves to have an irrefutable say in who he or she wants as a leader; the country might be a better place to live in if that were to happen; perhaps this generation might not experience it.
The electoral college system is unnecessary at this point in time. When the electoral college system was thought up in the 1700s by the framers of the constitution, they believed that electors to represent the peoples’ vote would be more efficient since it was extremely difficult to get information to and from places quickly, meaning that citizens would be late on news. To to combat that, the framers created the electoral college system, a system where electors elected by a political party would represent the peoples’ vote, gather in Washington, and vote on their behalf. Because of the lack of technology, this method wasn’t a bad way to vote for presidents efficiently. But technology improved, negating the problem of Americans not knowing the news in Washington and concerning their candidates. Today, Americans have access to current and reliable news regarding their candidates and are generally up-to-date with politics. So with the technological advances present today, why do we still employ an electoral college to vote for our next president? There isn’t a pressing reason to keep it.
First, The Electoral College prevents majority rule and should not be abolished. ”The Electoral College gives states with small populations a measure of protection against domination by states with large populations. It levels the political playing field a bit” (Williams, Walter E.). It is said that Hillary Clinton won popular vote majority. Therefore, if the nation were not encumbered with outdated electoral college. Clinton, instead of our present one, would be the next president of the United States. In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote just as Clinton supposedly did. Such outcomes have led to calls to desert the Constitution's Article two provisions for the state electors to select presidents. Before the U.S. deserts the Electoral College, let's consider the purpose it performs. According to 2013 Census Data, Nine states- California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, and Michigan have populations
To start with, the Electoral College system has made this country evolve. According to the Constitution Center, " Electoral college is one of the greatest Compromises". This shows that Electoral College makes this country stronger and organized. Also, we
When the Electoral College was put in place as part of the voting process it seemed a good idea. “Our framers distrusted democracy and saw the Electoral College as a deliberative body able to correct bad choices made by the people.” (Anderson 519). Times have changed and today’s society is a lot different that it was when George Washington was President. It’s about time that the U.S eliminates the Electoral College and makes America more of a democracy by making the popular vote the deciding factor in electing the president.
The Electoral college contributes to the election of the President of the United States. This system requires states to elect a number of representatives to cast their votes in the presidential election. This system allows smaller states to have a bigger impact on the presidential election. In most other countries and even the individual states a popular vote is what decides who will win the election. Many citizens have debated about whether we should keep the Electoral College or resort to a popular vote.