Your vote doesn’t count. I realized the truth of this statement after a recent experience. Knowing the Hyde Park Municipal election draws closer, I work to complete my registration. My first time voting, I research the candidates and prepare my voter’s card. I become excited, when in reality, this preparation is in vain. I see a headline that reads, “Hyde Park City 2015 Municipal Election Canceled.” In all fairness, this election stopped because there are only two open seats. And, surprise, there are only two candidates running. In fact, elections have been cancelled all over Cache Valley because there’s no competition. Our votes don’t count for anything. In a fair democracy, each vote carries equal weight. However, the Electoral College does …show more content…
Everything else in the electoral process has been reformed apart from our election of the president. In early America, you could only vote if you were a white male. Amendments changed the constitution so black males, and later women, received voting rights. Amendment XV states, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude” Amendment XIX states, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex” (“The Constitution”). The Electoral College perhaps maintained the balance when it came to voting 200 years ago. In a twenty-first century environment, the Electoral College is unfair. Caroline Jenkins makes this case against the Electoral College: In testimony before Congress in 1997, the League of Women Voters pointed out that apart from the public outcry that would be caused by circumvention of the popular will, there are a number of other serious flaws in the Electoral College system. The Electoral College system is fundamentally unfair to voters. In a nation where voting rights are grounded in the one-person, one-vote principle, the Electoral College is a hopeless anachronism.
The original system for U.S. elections was changed by the 12th Amendment, to the highly controversial method which uses “a number of electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the congress” (5). This electoral college, at the suggestion of their state’s vote count, then casts their votes on behalf of their citizens. In the 2016 election, we witnessed what some would consider a failure of the electoral college, where the popular vote was won by Hillary Clinton, while the electoral college elected Donald Trump. This was a situation that the forefathers did not intend when they created this system in order to prevent a monarchy in America, but it does pose a question on whether we should reconsider our election process. Article III establishes the judicial branch and its’ power, which extends to “all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this constitution, the Laws of the United States” (7).
Further, through the Electoral college all votes from each state goes to a given candidate, it is a winner take all system. Also, if your state is not a battleground state it is largely ignored and the battleground states are shrinking Levinson states, “by 2004, only 13 states, with 159 electoral votes, were battleground states.” (88) This results in the majority of the population becoming irrelevant. This is yet again an example wherein a minority of the population exerts control over the majority. Levinson’s solution to the electoral college is a national vote with a runoff system to ensure a majority vote for the president.
Currently, the electoral voters are the only ones with a direct vote in the election. In order for the election to be more reflective of the citizens’ wishes, the popular vote should become more significantly tied to the election. The Electoral College should not be the most prominent voting process, when the popular vote should be more important. The risk of untrustworthy electors increases, which causes the voter to feel that they are being cheated out of their votes, which may discourage them from voting in the future. There is also the high possibility in which neither candidates receive the majority of electoral votes required to win election, such as what occurred in the 1824 election, meaning the House of Representatives would have to decide who becomes
In fact, over time more than 700 constitutional amendments to change the Electoral College system have been proposed. The Electoral College system distorts the one-person, one-vote principle of democracy. Electoral votes tends to over-represent people in rural States. This is because the number of Electors for each State is consist of the number of members it has in the House of Representative, which overall reflects the state 's population size. It also consist of the number of members it has in the Senate, which is always two regardless of the State 's population.
The Electoral College is a fair process of government for everyone. The Electoral College is a trustworthy method of government. Certainly, this way is a fair to the citizens, the states and the country. If the government was to develop a new system it may not give everyone this power. The Electoral College also helps uniformed voters not have a have a huge say in government.
On November 6, 2012, Donald Tump tweeted from his personal twitter account that “The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy”. Four years later, he went on to win the electoral vote for presidency. His opponent had nearly three million more popular votes. The electoral college is a population based system that has decided general elections ever since the Constitution was written, often falling with the popular vote. It is strange for the electoral not to vote the way of the people, especially since there is nothing thing in the Constitution that pledges electoral votes to a candidate.
This system ensures there is a clear winner. “There is pressure for runoff elections when no candidate wins a majority of the votes cast; that pressure, which would greatly complicate the presidential election process, is reduced by the Electoral College, which invariably produces a clear winner.” (Electoral college). The Electoral College method unlike other voting methods will clearly have a winner. Some may say the district method is better because votes are distributed based on the popular vote winner within each of the state’s congressional districts and statewide popular vote winner receives two additional electoral votes.
In 1787, years after the founding of the United States, the Constitutional Convention met to decide how the new nation would govern itself. The delegates understood that the need for a leader was necessary but still bitterly remembered how Britain abused of its power. The delegates agreed that the President and Vice President should be chosen informally and not based on the direct popular vote, thus gave birth to the Electoral College. The Electoral College is defined as “a body of people representing the states of the US, who formally cast votes for the election of the president and vice president.” Since 1787 the Electoral College has been the system for voting in the United States, but with our nation ever more changing and growing it
According to Article II, Section I of the Constitution, the number of electors in each state will be “equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the state may be entitled in the congress.” Every state has 2 senators (an equal number), which means that states with lower population size are represented the same as states with higher population numbers. Robert Dahl explains this unequal representation as “a situation in which your vote for your representative is counted as one while the vote of a friend in a neighboring town is counted as seventeen” (Dahl 2003). Unequal representation is a “violation” of democracy, completely discounting political equality among all citizens. The author argues that the Electoral College contains additional inherent problems, for example, the fact that the winner of popular votes may not be chosen for President unless they win the electoral votes.
Albeit Electoral College individuals can actually vote in favor of anybody under the U.S. Constitution, 24 states have laws to rebuff shifty balloters, the individuals who don't cast their electoral votes in favor of the individual whom they have vowed to
t 's said we all have one vote no matter how rich, poor, tall, short, smart, or uninformed, we get one vote and elections are the great equalizer as everybody is reduced to "one vote." (Wrong) When it comes to the US presidential elections, some voters have more influence than others. When we vote, we aren’t voting for the President. We are voting to encourage our state’s Electoral College members to vote a certain way. And if the past and current elections hold, it looks like one candidate will win the electoral vote while another wins the popular vote as we saw in the 2017 election.
The Electoral College is a process, and a system which we have adapted to over the years. Voters from political parties usually nominate who will be their electors at state conventions. Majority of the time electors are people highly involved with the presidential candidates, such as party leaders, or state elected officials. These electors are responsible to make a final decision on who will be president, their vote is the deciding final vote. I do not think this system is fair, I think it contradicts the fact that as Americans we are given the freedom to vote, but it seems as though the people’s vote actually doesn’t decide much.
(Black, 2012) So, while it is clear that the Electoral College was set up to ensure all states have a voice, it now seems to have the ability to take away the voice of the people. It is necessary to look at our voting process and make the necessary changes needed to ensure the process of electing our President represents the voice of the people. By switching to a majority vote we ensure that the voice of all people are not only heard, but are represented equally, which is how it should be under the one-person, one-vote
Several years after the United States came to be, the Constitutional Convention met to determine how the new nation should govern itself. The delegates saw that it was crucial to have a president and vice president, but the delegates did not want these offices to reflect how the colonies were treated under the British rule. The delegates believed that the president’s power should be limited, and that he should be chosen through the system known as the Electoral College. The Electoral College is a body of people who represent the states of the US, who formally cast votes for the electing of the president and vice president. Many citizens feel that the Electoral College goes against our nation’s principle of representative democracy, while others
For the sake of expediency, the topics of gerrymandering and faithless electors will be touched upon lightly and will be followed by the conclusion. Gerrymandering, only if it was silly as as it sounded. Unfortunately it only makes our democratic system look silly. Gerrymandering is manipulating the the borders of congressional districts to favor a particular party or candidate. Although it has been used particularly for local and state elections, it can have a devastating effect on the presidential election.