Opinion: It’s time for the Electoral College to End.
The electoral college is a system designed more than 200 years ago, in a vastly different political, economic, and social landscape, that has somehow managed to remain in use in the United States complete unchanged for so long a period of time. To understand the Electoral College, one must first understand where it came from; in the earliest days of America democracy as radical as exists in America today was neither the intention nor the norm for American politics. Instead, the electoral college was put in place so that a small group of faceless party officials could overturn the will of the people in the case that mob rule ran amok, and this group of people felt strongly enough about the
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However, proponents are wrong on both counts. The electoral does not at all help the small states. According to Texas A&M university Professor of Political science George Edwards, who was distinguished for his groundbreaking work by Oxford University’s Rothermere American Institute, the electoral college instead encourages candidates to neglect the states that contain most of their constituents to focus on winning the unsure swing states that play a pivotal role in the outcome of the election. Indeed, especially with small states, because of the 13 smallest states in America, only one, New Hampshire, is a swing state, according to Edwards. The all-or-nothing counting system Electoral College forces candidates to simultaneously neglect the largest and the smallest states, instead focusing on the select few that, by happenstance of state boarders, have close to the same number of predictably liberal voters as predictably conservative. In the 2004 presidential election a combined 57% of campaign funds of both tickets were spent in the three states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida, according to nonprofit organization Fairvote. According to that same report, 70% of a combined metric of
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
Now, when I had heard the name Electoral College, I knew that it wasn't an actual university, but I didn't think it was as complicated as it is. The Electoral College is actually a body of people representing the states of the US, who formally cast votes for the election president and vice president. Now, I know that sounds like the most interesting thing in the world, of course it does, but it's actually really controversial, which I believe is interesting considering the fact that even people who want nothing to do with politics, are willing to state their opinions on this matter. Both sides of this discussion give very valid points as to why this should or shouldn't be abolished or defended.
The Electoral College in the United States was a decent resolution to a problem in the nineteenth century, but today, it is an unnecessary and undemocratic concept that would not be here if it was not a historical tradition. The Electoral College is the way the United States votes on presidential candidates: giving each state a number of electors based on that state’s number of representatives and senators. This process was first implemented when technologies such as the internet and television were not present causing most common citizens to have no idea who to vote for. The citizens would instead decide on an elector to send to vote in their place.
The outcome of the 2016 election left many Americans feeling confused, angry, cheated, and terrified of the future. Somehow, the sexist, racist, homophobic candidate Donald Trump had become the nation’s president, though Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton received the majority of popular vote. This raised many questions over the constitutionality of the Electoral College system, and whether it was unfair to the people of the United States. In the electoral system, created by the Founding Fathers due to their lack of trust in the people, the constituents of each state vote for their preferred candidate, and all of the state’s electoral votes go to the candidate with a majority. Clearly, the Electoral
Electoral College is a block, or weighed, voting system that is designed to give more power to the states with more votes, but allows for small states to swing an election, as happened in 1876. Under this system, each state is assigned a specific number of votes that is proportional to its population, so that each state's power is representative of its population. So, while winning the popular vote may not ensure a candidate's victory, a candidate must gain popular support of a particular state to win the votes in that state. The goal of any candidate is to put together the right combination of states that will give him or her 270 electoral votes.
The Electoral College is a constitutional system written in 1787, in this system “each state selects as many electors as it has representatives in Congress”, members of the college casts ballots for individuals, the individual with the most electoral votes becomes the President of the United States (Shelley 80). It is
The electoral college is an outdated rigid system of voting for president made by the founding fathers of America. In 1787 the constitutional convention approved the federal Electoral College System based on the lack of education of the colonial people on politics. Times have changed and people are more familiar with the political system. Presidential candidates promote their campaigns through social media, television and news articles which allows people to gain knowledge of the candidates and their presidential duties, themselves instead of relying on elected officials to make the decision for them. The electoral college should be abolished for reasons of it disenfranchising the people, unconstitutionally defying the 14th amendment, popular sovereignty, and
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
In order to fully understand the underlying problems of the Electoral College we have to look back at the time that the idea of the Electoral College itself was proposed and see how the culture of the time and the ideologies of the people involved helped shaped the final outcome. Life today is much different than it was two hundred odd something years ago, and it’s fair to say that the political ideals and social norms around our society have changed drastically.
The Electoral College is the process in which each state selects or votes on a group of electors from each political party. The electors with the most votes are then the ones chosen by the state for the presidential campaign. This process is conducted differently than just normally voting for a presidential candidate directly by the people. It’s what occurs before people can directly vote for a candidate to be president. Each state gets a number of votes solely based on the number of senators they have and the number of seats in the House of Representatives which is different for each state because it’s based on their population. The Founding Fathers’ came to an agreement on this so that each state was represented fairly.
Electing government officials is a major part of being an American. The citizens of the United States have the privilege of voting for their officials , representing America’s democracy. Although a big misconception on this is that the people actually do not vote directly for who becomes elected president but rather who gets to elect the next president. The Electoral College has been in place since 1804 and continues to be the system the United States uses to elect the president. The Electoral College is filled with history, a lengthy process , and questionable arguments on its validity.
But the result of the Electoral College today is to give too much power to the small states. In fact, they have more power than the largest states in the union. For instance, California's population (the largest) is approximately 70 times that of Wyoming's (the smallest). But California only has about 18 times the Electoral College votes (55 to 3) (Raasch 1). According to writer Chuck Raasch, that means a vote in Wyoming has potentially four times the impact in the Electoral College (1). Also, in 1988, the combined voting age population (3,119,000) of the seven least populous states (Alaska, Delaware, D.C., North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, Wyoming) had the same number of Electoral votes (21) as the 9,614,000 voters in Florida (Kimberling 1).
I choose to agree with the Electoral College. I don’t want a direct popular election because I want the smaller states to still have a voice, but, if America switches to direct popular election, the way things are, might just go worse. There are some good reasons for a direct popular election, and there are not good reasons for one too. I like the Electoral College a lot, and I would like the voting system to keep it that way. However, our founding fathers created the Electoral College, being the geniuses they are, created a good way to elect a president that would not cause chaos or havoc in the country.
Despite the Electoral College system being founded by the founding fathers in America and being there as long as the Constitution exists, many people still do not have sufficient knowledge on how it works. The Electoral College does not provide honest presidential elections rather it has the potential to undo the will of people at any point from the selection of electors to the vote tallying in Congress (Shaw, 3). Electoral College in the United States has played a major role in depressing the voter's turnout. Every State is given an equal number of electoral votes despite the population and in turn, the system has put in place no measure to encourage the voters to take part in the elections. Besides, the system distorts
What is the Electoral College? The Electoral College is a system that our Founding Fathers established in the Constitution in which representatives from the 50 states elect the President of the United States. The system begins with the people electing representatives to represent them, and then the representatives meet so they can vote for the next President and Vice President. The votes from each representative are then counted by Congress and are able to elect the candidate that has the most votes. According to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (2013), “The Electoral College consists of 538 electors…270 electoral votes is required to elect the President.” Every state has an