Is the Electoral College a fair and equitable way to elect the president of the United States?
The Electoral College is not a fair way for the president of the United States to be elected. The people should be the reason a person is elected. Citizens know way more of whatś going on in their lives and the needs of everyone around them more than upperclassmen do. I would have to be against the Electoral College in my argument. Proving my point will sound simple because I know many other felt the same after this past election.
Recent Election
This recent election that took place on November 8, 2016 included candidate Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Towards the beginning of the election the results seemed that Hillary would win and was taking
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It was shown that over half of the votes were not even taken or used in the entirety of the election. Meaning that many votes weren't even considered to be counted for the people who waited hours in line to have their opinion heard, did not get a single say in their future president.
Citizens deserve to be heard
For citizens of the U.S. waiting until the day they turn eighteen years old to be able to have the right to vote, votes not being counted is unacceptable in mine and many others opinion. The rights we have in America is what makes us a free country, ¨land of the free¨, as we say and we citizens take so much pride in all of our rights and freedoms. To have that feeling taken from our right to vote and be heard in what we feel is important, the leader of our entire country, is just wrong.
CONCLUSION
A group of people in upper class that decide what votes count and what votes do not, is not fair in any way. The people should be heard, citizens that deal with tax or money problems, and everyday struggles of life deserve every right they were promised from the beginning, including voting
The Electoral College is not the best solution to elect the president, as it has become obsolete (Dayen). The Electoral College was a solution for the problems that were relevant when it was first established. Now, these problems cease to exist. The Electoral College was an idea that was feasible when first instituted, because communication was limited and national political parties had yet to be established. Travel and communications are no longer problems. The Electoral College needs to be replaced to fix the current problems, not the problems of the past.
Some of the recount controversy was about the hanging chads or the butterfly ballot which caused some voters voted for a third party, but didn't mean to. All five news networks (NBC, CBS, FOX, and ABC) all made incorrect guesses to who was president. They all assumed that the poles in Florida closed at 7:00 p.m but they didn’t. Senator Daryl Jones said they that was roadblocks they could keep
The Electoral College should be abolished because it overpowers the people’s vote. As stated in the Document G in the presidential election in 1876, 1888, and 2000 the winner of the election didn’t actually win the popular vote. For example, in the presidential election in 1888, Hayes got 5,443,892 popular votes and 233 electoral votes. Tilden got 5, 534,488 electoral votes and 168 electoral votes. Given this evidence, the popular vote (the people’s votes) doesn’t actually count towards the actual election. The Electoral College is what actually decides the election. Therefore, if the majority of the people vote for a president, the president might not be chosen all because only the Electoral College votes count not the people’s. Furthermore, the population of Illinois was more than the population of the 12 states and the District of Columbia combined, yet Illinios only had 20 Electoral votes while those 12 states and the District of Columbia had 44 electoral votes, according to Document D. This proves that the Electoral College doesn’t make everyone’s vote equal. The votes of the people who live in the 12 states and
The Electoral College is unfair. The electoral college is not democratic, and also the winner-take all system and the disaster factor is not fair.
The Electoral College is currently the system the United States employs to elect our president. However, the Electoral College should be abolished due to the fact that it can go against the choices of the majority of people, it brings too much attention to swing states and states with large populations, and it annihilates political equality. First of all, the Electoral College goes against the will of several citizens. There have been five instances (including the 2016 elections) in which the candidate who won the popular vote did not become the president. According to Doc.
The term Electoral College gained a vast amount popularity in the presidential elections of 2012 and 2016 which brought many controversial arguments in favor and opposed to the Electoral College. If you haven’t heard or don’t know much about it, as a voter and an American citizen, it is important to know what it is and how it affects our community.
The Electoral College is a system that creates a compromise between the election of the president by a vote in congress and a popular vote from the citizens of the U.S. This results in a total of 538 electors from congress and to win the presidential election you must have over 270 Electoral votes. There is people who do not like the electoral college because the system is old fashioned and not democratic according to the two articles In Defense of the Electoral College by Richard A. Posner and Time to End the Electoral College by The New York Times. There is people who do agree with the Electoral College process. The Electoral College should not be abolished because the system gives an opportunity to political parties to express themselves in the American government, gives small states a chance in the elections, and the system is determined by the constitution. If presidential candidate does not get over 270 votes then the House of Representatives decides with votes from the top three other presidential candidates with the most electoral votes and same goes for vice presidential election except Senate decides with only top two.
There are many arguments against the Electoral College. The most common attack on the system is that it enables a president to lose the election when they have won the majority of the popular votes (Polsby and Wildavsky 171).
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.
The Electoral College is the name given to a group of electors who are nominated by political activists and party members within the states. The electoral college really isn't necessary and should be abolished. There are numerous reasons why this is so. With the Electoral College in affect third parties don't have a chance to become the president, which isn't fair. Electors are expected to be honest but in the past our country has caught some untruthful ones. The electoral College was created so long ago that it is now outdated, so we shouldn't even have electors. People of the U.S. may think that they are participating in a direct election for the president, but with the Electoral College system
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.
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 arguments to modify or eliminate the Electoral College system are all derived from the notion that it is outdated. Under the current system if a candidate wins a large states like California, then they win twenty percent of the needed votes even though California only accounts for eleven percent of the U.S. population. What's more is a president can be elected without winning a majority of the popular vote. This has happened 15 times in U.S. history. The
Is the presidential election process fair? Countries throughout the world elect their leaders using all kinds of methods, and in the United States, we elect our President using an Electoral College. This process is long and complicated, and many believe that it is inequitable and that we should elect our President based off the popular vote. On the contrary, an election based off the popular vote creates a democracy, and goes away with federalism. Our current election process is archaic, and an election by popular vote obviates smaller states from being heard and goes against the foundation of America, however, a system derived from electoral votes per state being distributed to the top two candidates in that state, predicated on that states popular vote, allows each state to be heard, as well as the individual voters.
Voting is a vital portion of conducting everyday life. Americans have more freedom than many other people in countries around the globe; therefore, it is pertinent to express that freedom in many ways. Up until 1965 when the Voting Rights Act was signed into law, many people of color, gender, and all other classifications in the United States fell under one umbrella: not having the ability to vote. (massvote.org) As far as Americans having the ability to vote, 218,959,000 people have the eligibility to vote as of August 16th, 2015. Out of that significantly large number, 146,311,000 are actually registered to vote. (statisticbrain.com) This large gap in people with the eligibility to vote, and actual registered voters, is very alarming. As an American, it is the right and duty of a citizen to exercise all attainted rights by voting in all elections, even if the favored party seems to lose to no avail. (theodysseyonline.com)