On the morning of November 9, 2016 the great citizens of this country discovered that Donald J. Trump won presidential election. His win would set off a firestorm of protests against his victory and against the archaic process that carried Trump to victory; the Electoral College. However, what followed was people from all over complaining about how Trump won the Electoral College and how come if Clinton won the popular vote that she didn’t become the first woman president. In my quest to understand the voting process, I learned there are many people that find the whole election process to complicated and are not even the slightest bit interested in learning what part the people play in electing the president.
Reading about the Electoral College, the winner-take- all process, and the popular vote helped me understand that our election process is exactly that; a process. Americans head to the polls to cast their vote for a new president every four years but the tally of those votes, which is the popular vote, does not determine the winner.
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I understand that in the winner-take-all process the candidate with the highest numbers of votes is able to capture all of the state’s electors and their competitor is left with not one single elector, regardless of the number of votes they captured. I also understand why many people, in the wake of the current election, where the Democratic candidate won the popular vote, meaning they received more actual votes than the Republican candidate, but did not win the election, would rather replace the Electoral College process with the one person, one vote so that one person's voting power is equivalent to another person's within the
This system needs to be put to an end. The American people are well enough informed to elect their own president without the aide of an Electoral College. The electors in the Electoral College do not actually make decisions anyway. They are just figurative for they should vote along their state’s popular vote, even though most are not legally bound to do so. Even though the electors’ votes reflect that of their state’s popular vote, the views of the people are not always represented. If one candidate receives 50.1 percent of the popular vote, and the other candidate receives 49.9 percent, the candidate with only .2 percent more of the popular vote receives all of that states electoral votes. This system is also very unfair to the third party candidate. He/she has very little chance of receiving any electoral votes. In 1992, Ross Perot won 19 percent of the national
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
The winner take all system states that the candidate who gets the most votes (or a majority) more than any other candidate wins all of a state’s votes. Despite the system having its own advantages, it still leaves some difficult decisions that candidates have to face such as allocating what resources to use or focusing on not only competitive states, but swing states and large states where candidates will spend most of their time or their money and attempt to attract the media. This winner take-all system takes an enormous toll on third party candidates. While third parties can attract popular votes, it is extremely difficult for them to attract any electoral votes because they have a very slight to no chance of winning a state. Because they can’t win many electoral votes, it takes a large toll on their ability to raise funds and gain other campaign resources. While the Electoral College has been beneficial in many ways, there are some citizens who believe that it should be abolished. That actually is not such a good idea and there are many reasons why. One is that it would require an additional constitutional amendment and it would take the majority of the states to pass it. As most to all of the states favor a two-party system, the chances of abolishing the Electoral College are slim to none. Another reason would be that competitive states appreciate the Electoral College. While states such as California and Texas already have their minds set, states such as Ohio and Iowa favor the system because in the past and present, their vote has gone on to help elect a candidate into
Many people argue that the Electoral College is an outdated system. After all, many things have changed in the last two centuries. For one, technology is much more advanced now than it was two hundred years ago. With the internet and television, we can now learn everything about a candidate regardless of where the come from in the nation. It is feasible to have direct election of a president because of these improved methods of communication and the evolution of technology in general.
Second, there are the critics who want to abolish the Electoral College for various reasons. One of the top arguments mentioned is that it is undemocratic. As Alex. K. Rich and Heather Newton explain in their book “Point: The Electoral College has Destroyed Democracy,” the “one-person, one vote” does not exist within the Electoral College. People vote for an elector without knowing who he/she is, who then casts a vote on their behalf. Due to the “winner-takes-all” (in 48 of the 50 states) process, the winner of the plurality of the votes in a state receives all of the electoral votes. Therefore, not all of the votes originally cast count (2).
Rhetorical Analysis: The primary audience for this paper includes every citizen aged eighteen and above eligible to vote in the United States. The proposed topic mostly concerns these individuals due to the fact, they are affected by presidential voting institutions. Throughout this paper, I will be arguing in favor of the Electoral College, with an end goal of persuading my audience of the benefits of the system.
First of all, the Electoral College ignores what most citizens want and undervalues their votes. Because people in each state are voting for electors that are assigned to each party rather than the actual candidates, the decision for president is really up to 538 electors instead of the population of more than 300 million Americans (The Electoral College: Top 3 Pros and Cons). 48 states use a winner-take-all system, where the dominant candidate in each state gains control of all the electors. The only states that don’t use this system are Maine and Nebraska ( ). This system the election about winning states in order to gain electors, and not about each citizen's individual vote. It’s so focused on winning overall states that it completely neglects the popular vote. It is mathematically possible under the Electoral College system that a candidate can win only 21.8% of the popular vote and still win the presidency.. This is due to the fact that the 39 smaller states have too many electoral votes for their population, and because of the winner-take-all system in every state except Nebraska and Maine, all a candidate needs to do is win 50.01% of the popular votes in those states, and he/she can clinch the election (Why We Should Abolish the Electoral College). Events similar to this have happened in history where the candidate who received more popular votes didn’t win the election. For example, in 1876
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.
Every year on the fourth of November an election is taken place to select the next president of the United States. Just recently, in the 2016 election, Hilary Clinton won the popular vote and Donald Trump won the electoral vote, in which he was elected president. This made many Americans question if the electoral college system is outdated and unfair and if the direct popular vote is a more effective way of electing the president. This has happened twice where the candidate who has the popular vote did not win the presidency. The problem that has arisen is that the rules of the presidential election need to be replaced so that it will reflect the true opinion of the U.S. citizens. According to Edwards III, under the constitution, the
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.
Another problem surrounding the Electoral College system is that it allows one-party states, states that almost always go to one party. In this context, a Democrat who casts a vote in a mostly Republican state feels that his vote is wasted because of no way that state will be won by a Democrat. Besides, the system is based on two-party elections, the Democrat and the Republican leaving Americans with two candidates to choose (Belenky, 364). The voters end up picking the candidate with fewer issues rather than the one they support. In my opinion, people feel that Electoral College has single-handedly defeated
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.
The political system many of us know today as the Electoral College is one that has been in place in our country for over 100 years. The Electoral College is a system that helps determine who is elected as President and Vice President during major elections. The Electoral College is the primary source of determining who is elected. This system although having withheld through the times and stayed in place is not effective to me, and can lead to unfair elections in the eyes of some American People.
The election process in the United States is a valuable process to the election of the proper officials to satisfy the people. The people run the country which is why we live in freedom because we control what happens with major decisions by choosing whom we want to decide these decisions. The whole country goes to vote on a certain day and by the end of that day we will vote to select who will run the country, state, county, or city political positions. The most complex decision and one with the biggest impact are selecting who the President of the United States shall be. We examine what their views are and who would do a better job. Then vote in our respected states with a certain number of electoral votes