The method that the United States uses to elect its President and Vice President is known as the Electoral College. Contrary to popular belief, the citizens of the United States do not vote directly for the President. Rather, they vote for designated “electors” who have (usually) pledged to vote for a specific candidate. There are 538 electors because this is the number of seats in the U.S Senate plus the seats in the U.S House of Representatives. Each state receives a number of votes equal to the number of seats it holds in Congress. This leads to a great deal of unnecessary problems. When the Founding Fathers designed the Electoral College, they did so because it was the most efficient system at that time for electing the President. Because …show more content…
Ideally, every citizen’s vote for President should be equal. But with the way the Electoral College distributes its votes among the states, this is not the case. Wyoming, for example, has one electoral vote for roughly every 200,000 citizens. California, however, only receives one electoral vote for every 700,000 citizens. This essentially means that a vote from Wyoming counts for 3.5 times more toward the Presidency than a vote from California. This is because the electoral votes are distributed unevenly among the states, giving small states one or two more votes than it actually should, and populous states like Texas, New York, and California are missing anywhere from five to ten electoral votes had they been distributed fairly. Also, it is easy to predict the winning candidate in a majority of the states. California and New York will always vote Democrat; Texas will always vote Republican, and so on. Candidates will often pander to a small number of swing states while ignoring the ones where they are either certain to win or certain to lose. This essentially leaves the entire outcome of the election up to the few swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and
The electoral vote allotment is based on the population of each state, collected from the census. This method of division leads to severe imbalances between the decisions of small states and the decisions of the larger states. In 2010, Alaska, Delaware, DC, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Montana, North Dakota, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming had a total amount of 44 electoral votes. Illinois, a single state, had 20. This means that one sole state had as many electoral votes as six states put together. While the electoral system is usually unfair to smaller states, in the case of ties, the larger states suffer the most. When the electoral vote is tied, each state can only cast one vote for the final decision, meaning that a “representative from Wyoming, representing 500,000 voters, would have as much say as the 55 representatives from California, who represent 35 million voters,” according to Bradford Plumer, author of the article “The Indefensible Electoral College.” No matter what happens during the election, one group is always being cheated out of their rightful votes. The choice of our country’s leader should not be based on a system that is unfair to a specific group of voters simply due to their state
I like how you used your own personal experience and take a closer look using your sociological imagination to evaluate the reasoning behind J.P Morgan Chase and its military connection to hire veterans. I have to agree with C. Wright Mills opinion of how the “big three” are the true power elite in this country and how they have managed to control “lesser institutions into means for their ends”. (Mills, 2013). The goal of these powerful institutions is to create a society that serves their purpose and constantly keeps them in control without ever losing their power. It is sad when you realize everything in our society revolves around the big three. For example, studying in an Ivy League school, besides being a social status is also
The presidential candidate who receives the majority of electoral votes, which is 270 out of 538, wins the presidency. Many American's are surprised to learn that when they step into a ballot box and vote for a specific candidate, they are essentially voting for an elector appointed by states, not the actual presidential candidate. These electors cast a vote for the presidential candidate that the voters have supported. The purpose of the Electoral College is to provide a sense of stability for electing a chief executive, however, this system has been the subject of criticism for many years, as it has occasionally maligned. Many critics have attempted to reform the system, especially when apparent discrepancies occurred after the election results.
According to Archives. Gov, the Founding Fathers created the Electoral College or “Electors” as it’s originally stated in the constitution, as a way to elect the President and the Vice President of the United States. Alexander Hamilton, one of the Founding Fathers has made up this system of Electors as an easier way to vote for the presidential office.
Jim Crow laws does not play a role really in today's time, but there is still some racial problems. Predominantly white schools sometimes have better education systems, and get paid more on a job than any other race. Sometimes mostly black/Hispanic (lower) communities look nicer than a community with mostly white or higher income communities.
California receives 55 electoral votes, and each singular vote accounts for 712,000 people. However, Wyoming receives 3 electoral votes, and one of those singular votes accounts for 195,000 people. Based on the way the Electoral College is supposed to work, Wyoming is slightly over represented and California is extremely underrepresented. No states get an accurate amount of votes (H). This completely defeats the purpose of “equality among states”. “While the electoral college is based on population, only a fraction of that population is eligible to vote — and even a smaller portion actually votes” (M). The way this system works, leaves out almost half the population, making the Elected President most likely false. Due to the fact that many people have strong opinions on both sides of the argument, there are those that will say the Electoral College encourages coalition building (G). But, what is coalition building anyway? The word ‘coalition’ defines as an alliance in order to achieve a common purpose. Throughout the entirety of the 2016 Election, there has been continuous riots, marches, and protests online or in person that prove that statement to be false. If there was a time that the Electoral College should have worked, it would be
At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the Founding Fathers could not decide if the president should be elected by Congress or elected by a popular vote, so they decided to create the Electoral College (“US Electoral College”). The Founding Fathers did not trust the people to vote on the right presidential candidate, so they decided that an indirect election was the best method (Becker). The Electoral College is a group of individuals who elect the president and vice president in the United States of America (TED-Ed). The number of electors that are given to each state is stated in Article II,
The United States, well known for its democracy, holds elections every four years to elect its President. Every American citizen over the age of 18 has a right to cast a vote in the presidential election. The voting process, although it seems easy and straightforward, can be very complicated. In the 2000 election, Al Gore captured the majority of votes, but George Bush won. The reason for this strange outcome and why Al Gore lost was because of the Electoral College. The Electoral College is voting system where different states are given a certain amount of votes in the election, and which ever candidate wins a state, is given that state’s votes. The Electoral College is out of date, and should be replaced by the Popular Vote system,
The Constitution of the United States of America created a system called the Electoral College where it outlines the rules in which we elect the President of the United States of America. As stated in Article 2, Section 1 of the U. S. Constitution created the Electoral College. Each state receives as many electoral votes as it has senators and representatives. Therefore, each state, including the District of Columbia, will have at least three electors. This is the vision of the Constitution. Now the problem arises when all the Electoral votes from one state are given to the popular winner for that state. This causes a with people’s right to chose their leader as votes of the people that voted for the losing candidate are tossed in the trash. All this while giving the state the ultimate power to elect the president.
In presidential elections, citizens do not actually vote for the candidate of their choosing, instead citizens are voting for electors known as the Electoral College. The Electoral College chooses a President, and Vice President. The Constitution gives each state a number of electors that equals the number of House of Representatives and Senate, which totals five hundred and thirty eight and also includes three electors for the District of Columbia. Each state receives a certain number of electors based on population size. The results in a state determine which electors are chosen. All electoral votes in a state go to the candidate that gets the most votes, and after state elections appointed officials certify the popular vote of each state. Two hundred and seventy votes are needed to elect a President; the candidate with the majority of the votes becomes the president.
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
Under the current system there are five hundred and thirty eight electors. Each state gets one elector, each representative, and a senator. A presidential candidate needs two hundred and seventy votes to win the election. The electors meet after the November popular election to cast their votes and officially elect the president. Electors may vote for whomever they wish. Each state's electoral votes are awarded on a winner take all bases.
When Americans vote for president, they are actually voting for presidential electors, who are known as a whole to be the electoral college. These electors, who are elected by citizens of the United States, are the ones that elect the chief executive. The electoral college has shaped the past, present, and future of the United States ever since it was constructed by the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The electoral college was created with fair and good intentions.
In this paper, I am going to summarize how chronic drug use affects the function of the brain and how this leads to the aberrant behavioral manifestations of addiction. (Volkow & Li, 2005)