The Legitimacy Of The Electoral College

Every four years that a Presidential election comes to pass the Electoral College is responsible for the formal election of both the President and Vice President of the United States. As an example of an indirect election, where people in each state at large vote in order to decide which individuals will be delegated the responsibility of casting votes for President and Vice President in accordance with the popular vote of the state which has entrusted them to provide such representation, the Electoral College works to ensure that smaller states are not denied the right to have the equal power of influence in our national election for President (Neale, 2004). The Electoral College itself has been in existence since it was introduced

Established in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, the Electoral College is a system utilized in The United States of America to select the President and Vice President. This process was established by the Founding Fathers in 1787, when the Constitution was written. The original purpose of the electoral system was to ensure that those who select the leaders of this nation were the most knowledgeable and informed people that America had to offer. The electors - the elected officials that make up the Electoral College - are elected to office through a general election wherein the entire national population has the right to vote. The President of the United States, however, is actually elected to office by the Electoral College only, regardless of the popular vote of the citizens in general. Thus, the Presidential election is the only federal election in our nation where the vote of the citizenry does not directly determine the victor. Despite the fact that this electoral system has been in place and operational for over two hundred years, the Electoral College is looked upon by some as an honorable system, whereas others view it as faulty. The Electoral College is not fair and equitable because it is based on population, it is not trusted by the people, and it is unjust to the wishes of the citizens.

“While imperfect, the electoral college has generally served the republic well. It forces candidates to campaign in a variety of closely contested races, where political debate is typically robust,” William M. Daley former chief of staff at the white house. What Daley is talking about is the system by which we elect the President of the United States and other officials. The officials serve in the three branches of government judicial, legislative, and the executive. The executive branch is the one that will be focused on in this paper. The President is elected normally every four years by voting of the people and a group of electors who are not in Congress. Some people say that the electoral college is an outdated system and should be abolished. While this may be true the system does work and is still a viable system in this day and age. The U.S. electoral college does not need to be reformed

When the Constitutional Convention gathered in 1784 they had the difficult task of determining how our government should be assembled and what systems we should use to elect them. They quickly decided congress should have the powers to pass laws and the people should elect these people to ensure they are following the will of the people. But who should elect the president?

In the “Point: Abolishing the Electoral College,” Benjamin Bolinger, a licensed lawyer who can practice law in Colorado and Pennsylvania, argues that the Electoral College needs to be abolished for the American democracy. Bolinger examines that some states with a little population have large number of electoral college compare to those states with larger populations. He believes that the Electoral College damages the value of democratic government by leaving

The voting process in America appears straightforward, but it is a very complex, complicated system. The Electoral College is America’s current voting system. The Electoral College still serves its intended purpose, but with increasing political activity among Americans it has caused a need to reform this process. Research suggests that the Electoral College system should be amended because it poorly illustrates democracy, is outdated and the majority of Americans are in favor of abolishing the system.

The Electoral College was created in 1787 to protect this country’s voting system. It is a group of 538 members that directly cast the votes to determine who the next president will be. (Green) However, the issues of the present day can’t help but wonder, is the Electoral College’s system outdated and corrupt? My dialogue’s purpose is to defend the Electoral College and show how it still protects us to this day by using evidence from the most recent 2016 election, and prove that it gave us the best candidate suited for the role of the President of the United States.

The electoral college should be kept. Five times has a candidate won the electoral vote without the popular. The most recent being our last election. Each time, it sparks a debate on whether or not to do away with this system of voting. In fact, there have been 700 proposals in the last 200 years to get rid of, or modify the electoral college.

Over the course of American history, the electoral college has frequently been a controversial portion of the American political system, especially in with the recent election of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. Clinton lost the election, despite winning the popular vote by roughly three million votes. This election’s outcome although unique in its politics, isn’t at all rare within U.S. Political History, winning the election without the popular vote previously occurred four times. Recently, this has sparked notable discussion of the abolition of the electoral college, a move that would greatly benefit American politics. While some would argue the foundation of the college are sound, the actual origins are actually erroneous, and

Many common fallacies exist in alternative arguments to the electoral college such as the idea that the popular vote would give more influence to the voters. This is false in the case of California. If you divide California 55 electoral votes by 270 which is the number of votes you need to win you get 20.4 percent.California's electoral votes influence is represented by this percentage. Hypothetically if we used a popular vote system we could use her 8.7 million votes she received and divided it by the number of votes it would of took to beat Trump in a popular vote which would be about 63 million. This percentage out to 13.8 percent and would represent how much influence california would have in a popular vote race. As you can see numbers

In the “The Electoral College Is Important Because It Reflects the Will of the States,” Charles Fried, a law professor at Harvard Law School and was solicitor general of the United States, argues that the Electoral College should continue. Due to the U.S.A being a direct democracy, the representatives and members of the electoral college are chosen by the citizens; however, they do not elect their presidents directly. He expresses that the states have their own political culture, personalities, and traditions, and they are not the administrative elements of the the federal government; therefore, they can only elect their governors by popular vote. Ultimately he concludes that it is not always the popular vote which determine the winner; sometimes

Most Americans think the Electoral College is a nuanced and complex system designed to safeguard democracy. It seems that dividing electoral votes among states and awarding each state's electors to one of the primary candidates would be an effective system and one that would preserve our nation’s freedom. And so society blissfully forges on believing our current system of election is both impartial and up to date. But little do most American citizens know that they are lacking the knowledge and context to understand how malignant the Electoral College is. The Electoral College needs to be abolished because it ignores the popular vote and what most citizens want, it causes candidates to focus too much on swing states, and the old reasons for using are now irrelevant.

Every time there is an election in the United States, the debate of Electoral College always heats up, and suddenly everybody seems to know about or at least they are interested in learning about it. The Electoral College is firmly established under the United States Constitution to elect the president and the vice president of the United States indirectly. A slate of “electors” are chosen from each state, and they are the ones responsible for voting for president in the general elections depending on which party the candidate is vying with. From this statement, what it means is that one does not choose his or her preferred leader directly and this has made many suggestions that the Electoral College is not a true representation of democracy. This paper will look at the strongest arguments for and against the Electoral College, analyze whether the current Electoral College should be re-engineered or scrapped in favor of direct vote and finally determine if the Electoral College is consistent or contrary to democratic principle.

I appreciate the love, and optimism that your words carry. But as a teacher you and along others have always encouraged me to think critically and to empower myself, so here is my reply to your stance:

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