In november of 2016, many of us went to our designated voting polls to cast a vote for our next President of the United States. Our government creates this allured idea that our votes matter, however this isn’t the case. The Electoral College is the process which is responsible for electing the President of the United States. In 48 states, after all the votes are accounted for, the political party whose candidate received a majority in a particular state is given all of the votes for that state. For example, if the majority votes are republican in Virginia, then all 13 of Virginia’s votes go towards the republican candidate, even if 49% of the votes are democratic. As you can see, this system is unfair and flawed; therefore, the government …show more content…
This system isn’t based on the will of the people but instead the 538 people in congress, and the 2016 election was perfect example of this. Hillary Clinton lost the election to Donald Trump, even though she won the popular vote. Clinton received about 2.9 million more votes nationwide; however, Trump won the presidency because he won a total of 306 congress votes, whereas Clinton had 232 votes. If the electoral college was based on the will of the people then the popular votes should decide the presidents. The Electoral College is so inequitable that, According to a study done by Jesse Ruderman, “A presidential candidate could be elected with as a little as 21.8% of the popular vote by getting just over 50% of the votes in DC and each of 39 small states. This is true even when everyone votes and there are only two candidates. In other words, a candidate could lose with 78.2% of the popular vote by getting just under 50% in small states and 100% in large states. Even President Donald Trump, who benefitted from the system, stated after the 2016 election that he believes presidents should be chosen by popular vote: "I would rather see it where you went with simple votes. You know, you get 100 million votes and somebody else gets 90 million votes and you win". The fact is that Electoral College isn’t based on the people, but the 538 congress members that vote on our …show more content…
Under the Electoral College, A candidate can become president with only 21.8% of the popular vote. Meaning that 78.2% of people wouldn’t of chose this candidate for president. Also swing states unfairly allow for only the major two political parties to win, even with a majority votes for a independent party. Another unfair issue is that Smaller population states have a superior role in the election process than a higher population state. For example, Wyoming has one elector for every 177,556 people and Texas has one elector for about every 715,499. Based on theses facts, the Electoral College should be abolished and replaced with a fair and just
I think we should keep the Electoral College. Electoral College is defined in our textbook as; “An unofficial term that refers to the electors who cast the states’ electoral votes” (Patterson, T.E., 2013). Electoral voting is tied in with the states popular voting. Choosing electoral college adds to the cohesiveness of the nation by obliging an appropriation of popular support to be elected President, improves the status of minority interests, contributes to the political dependability of the country by promising a two-party system, and keeps up an elected arrangement of government and representation (Kimberling, W.C., 2008). I think that the Electoral College system is a big part of the cohesiveness of our country and it requires the distribution
People vote for the candidates by voting for the electors that reflect the viewpoints of the particular candidate and their personal political opinion. With that said, the Electoral College is a winner take all system where the states have voted and the majority vote of the presidential candidate goes to the electors that then cast their votes for the states. The Founding Fathers created the Electoral College in the Constitution for a couple of reasons. Schulman (n.d.) states the first reason it was fabricated “was to create a buffer between population and the selection of a President” (p. 1). Although, another significant reason that the Electoral College was created was for equal representation in voting
Our literate population combined with an abundance of modern technology gives the masses the ability to make informed voting decisions making the Electoral College’s original purpose no longer relevant in today’s world. The Electoral College has also given rise to “swing states,” or states that fluctuate from election to election which side of the political spectrum they favor. As a result, presidential candidates have been forced to focus the majority of their time on these few states. This causes politicians to make campaign promises catered to them just to gain political favor which translates into policies once someone is in office that do not impact the majority of the country. For example, candidates in the latest election discussed coal and how to save coal jobs even though there were only about 68,413 US coal miners as of 2015.
The outdated and undemocratic notion that a small group of people should choose the leader of the country because of their deeply rooted classism is preposterous and oligarchic. Disregarding the Founding Fathers’ prejudices, the system itself is problematic in that it has failed to choose the candidate with the most votes several times throughout our history, and electors, instead of critically analyzing the candidates, have simply voted for the winner in their state. Furthermore, it discriminates against voters by giving too much leverage to some states over others, diminishing or increasing the influence of voters based on where they live. The Electoral College was created with undemocratic intentions, but it is because it continues to subvert fair and representative democracy with its flaws and weaknesses that it should be abolished and
The Electoral College was a part of the federal plan that our forefathers set for the American people. While it made a place for the stars, as well as the people living in them, by giving them a say in the Federal process and preventing bigger cities from taking over in the presidential election, opponents believe that this is not the case. Even after difficulties that the United States has been through, the states have control over a large number of laws, management, and finance which impact the lives of citizens. Each and every state has their own political cultures, ways of behaving and traditions that continue regardless of our short-term population, a connected economy and news media. The Electoral College was meant to be a way to solve the problems with one large state dominating over another small state based on the population.
However, Kimberling points out in his article “The Electoral College” that if one is elected with a substantial lead in popular vote, they are insured to the have more electoral votes. If one has barely a lead in popular vote count, both candidates would have the support to effectively lead the nation.(Kimberling) Counting and recounting all of the votes would be an unnecessary waste of time when two nominees have nearly the same backing from the people. The article also predicts that “if we become obsessed with government by popular majority as the only consideration, should we not then abolish the senate which represents states regardless of population?”(Kimberly) Therefore, the only way a person should be picked for the presidency is the Electoral College. Today, Americans throw away their constitution and founders who made the United States what it is today.
Electoral College is the United State’s democratic voting system of determining the next president. However, it poses a problem on how the United States chooses the next president. The Electoral College is a problem because electoral votes are the real determiners of the presidential election, states with more people have more electoral votes, and popular votes do not affect anything. Many politicians, people, etc. have gave their opinions on how to change the electoral college but the best way is to have popular carry significance and to allow each electoral voters to vote individually instead of losing their vote to majority. This way, choosing the president can be improved
The way in which the electoral college was founded was implemented, prevented women and blacks from voting Lastly, different votes are worth more. The system was not set up fairly giving unjust power to some states. Robert Duhl once said, "Every member must have an equal and effective opportunity to vote, and all votes must be counted as
Div Dasani Mrs. Stauffer AP Lang- 4 17 October 2014 Government Should the Electoral College be preserved? Four presidential elections in the United States have resulted in a candidate winning the presidential elections without actually managing to acquire a plurality of the popular vote. Normally this is not justifiable in any democracy; however it has happened numerous times in America due to the Electoral College.
Being a person of politics yourself, you of all people should know that many compromises have been made over the course of the establishment of the United States. However, some of the compromises, like the electoral college, were made because of factors in the past and are now not needed in today’s modern democracy. While the electoral college once worked as a compromise in the past, it is an archaic system that unfairly represents the votes of citizens all across the nation. A popular vote should instead be utilized to fairly choose the people of power in this country and would better represent voters’ opinions. In implementing the electoral college, most states’ votes either go to one candidate or the other, leading to candidates to only campaign in swing states (Bradford Plumer 13).
“The Electoral College is a disaster for a democracy.” Donald Trump, the forty-fifth President of the United States who ironically won from the votes of the Electoral College, declares that this unpatriotic system hinders the people from choosing their president. A “disaster” for the American system, the Electoral College displays an authoritarian structure, giving citizens little to no choice of their leader. Since a president was not chosen by the majority vote in 1824, there has been heated debate on whether or not to eliminate the Electoral College. The Electoral College was created in 1787 during the Constitutional Convention.
A sad truth comes to light as the results of a tight race for the next president starts to roll in. The truth is that the dysfunctional system that demonstrates the whole voting process takes the future of America 's leader, the one who will set many precedents and lessons for future generations to come, into the hands of former politicians and notable political figures, who take on the careless and unnecessary role of an elector. These electors are part of a voting system called the Electoral College. The Electoral College is a group of 538 people that are elected at state conventions to officially vote for the next presidential candidate based on each state 's popular vote. This structure is old and should be banned for several reasons.
First, with the specifications of the electoral college there only needs to be 270 electoral votes to a person for them to win. With this rule only 12 states need to be won CA, TX, FL, NY, IL, PA, OH, MI, GA, NC, and NJ(DOC A) and this is only a part of the overall population of America. While
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
Electoral college has been with us since the birth of the constitution, and to this day we are still using this type of system to this day. The Electoral College is a system that the United States uses to elect our upcoming presidents and vice presidents. Each state has electors equal to their senate member and house of representatives, however who ever gets the highest popular vote in the state gets the electoral vote. The issue is the Electoral College do not give votes to the people, but to the states. Which has some unfair consequences.