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American Electoral Issues

Decent Essays

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

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