The Electoral College is the system that determines who our next president and vice president will be. The Electoral College is currently made up of 538 electors, with a majority of 270 votes to win the election. Each state gets electors based on how many people in the House of Representatives plus two for each state’s senators. ("U. S. Electoral College, Official - What Is the Electoral College?" National Archives and Records Administration. National Archives and Records Administration, n.d. Web. 05 Nov. 2016.) The electors chosen are usually party leaders, state-elected officials, or people with a strong affiliation with the presidential candidate. Forty-eight states currently have a winner-take-all system. This means that whichever candidate …show more content…
The only states that do not follow this system are Nebraska and Maine. These states follow the Congressional District Method. In this method, the candidate with the most votes automatically gets two electoral votes. The remaining votes are allocated congressional district by congressional district. The popular election is held on the Tuesday following the first Monday in the month of November. Meanwhile, the meeting of electors for the Electoral College is held on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. The electors meet in their own states where they will cast their ballots for who they choose for president and vice-president. Their votes are then sent to be counted by a joint session of Congress on January 6th. The President of the Senate then announces the voting results. The winner of the election is then sworn in as President of the United States on January 20th of the same year. ("U. S. Electoral College, Official - What Is the Electoral College?" National Archives and Records Administration. National Archives and Records Administration, n.d. …show more content…
The way the system is set up, it allows for someone to lose the popular vote, the vote of the people, and win the Electoral College and the presidency. With this being said, it almost seems like a lapse of freedom. What’s the point of voting for a president if your vote doesn’t really matter? In 56 presidential elections, 4 presidents have been elected because they only won the Electoral College instead of the popular vote. This means that over seven percent of the time, the American people have gotten a president that the majority did not want. The 2000 election is the most recent example of this. Al Gore actually won the popular vote but lost the presidency because of the voting distribution in the Electoral College. (10/16/12, By Eric Black |, and By Eric Black | 10/15/12. "10 Reasons Why the Electoral College Is a Problem." MinnPost. N.p., 16 Oct. 2012. Web.) It is also possible for the chosen electors to not vote for the candidate who won the popular vote. This means that the electors can vote against their states interest. However, some states, not all, do have laws on the books to prevent exactly this. Another issue in the
Because of the winner-takes-all system, some presidents have won the election without the majority of the popular vote. In the 48 states that use the winner-takes-all system, whichever candidate wins that state’s popular vote receives all of the electoral votes for that particular state. The data gathered from the 2000 election demonstrates that despite winning the popular vote by about 540,000 votes, Al Gore proceeded to lose the election to George W. Bush by only 5 electoral votes. Florida’s 29 electoral votes were the deciding factor in this election. Because of the winner-takes-all system, when Bush won the popular vote in Florida, he was awarded with these votes, costing Gore the election.
The Electoral College represents votes given by the state, which are normally influenced by the popular vote. Each state is granted a specific number of electoral votes, all based on the state’s population; the bigger the state, the more votes it earns. To win an election, one candidate out of the two must earn at least 270 votes. This process, unfortunately, has both its advantages and disadvantages.
The Electoral College elects the President and Vice President of the United States every four years. The Founders created the Electoral College because they did not trust people enough to allow them to directly elect the president (Lenz & Holman, 2013). Neither one of the candidates are elected from the popular vote. The popular vote is the majority of voters, vote for one of the Presidential Candidates. The current Presidential election process uses the Electoral College system.
However, voters do not vote for a specific elector, they just vote which party they are affiliated with. The popular vote is just as important as the Electoral College vote, but it does not determine the outcome. Fundamentally, the popular vote is just to see how many voters favor which presidential candidate the most. “Democratic and Republican state parties nominate their own slates of electors-some as early as the spring and others as late as October. In many states, elector candidates are picked at congressional district and state conventions, when local activists also pick their delegates to the national convention.”
There are several ways to elect a president who received a minority of the votes. The main way to have this happen is to have three or more candidates split the electoral votes between themselves and then have the house of repersentives vote to determine the winner. This has occurred only one time history which was in 1824 in the presidential election between: John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, and Henry Clay, with the winner being John Quincy Adams. Another issue people often have with the Electoral College is the risk of a faithless elector. A faithless elector is a member of the Electoral College whose state has pledged their vote to one candidate and then the elector then votes for another.
This was proven otherwise in the stolen election of 2000, in which Bush won the candidacy by the 25 Florida electoral votes. This outcome did not serve as an effective system for modern presidency. It makes American’s question whether or not their vote actually counts, in comparison to the votes of the electors they choose to represent their states. If someone who wins the popular vote of the people but not of the electoral loses how exactly does this allow the people to feel comfortable about making a difference with their own vote when the ultimate decision is not left up to them but the Electoral
The Electoral College has been a confusing subject and is now rising up some serious questions. Does your vote really count? What is a faithless elector? How are they chosen? What is a direct democracy?
In this modern era of presidential elections,“the Electoral College ignores the will of the people. There are over 300 million people in the United States, but just 538 people decide who will be president” (Source D). In a country that globalized democracy, the nation itself is now letting the voices of hundreds overshadow the voices of hundreds of millions. Every four
The Electoral College Many people do not realize that when they are voting for their presidential choice, they are really just voting for the Electoral College vote. The person who is nominated to hold the position for the Electoral College then votes for the presidential candidate. The Electoral College was put into place by the founding fathers as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens (Archives). The Electoral College is 538 electors and the President needs at least 270 electoral votes to win the election.
The Electoral College is an intermediary body that elects the president. It was established in Article II, Section 1, of the
The president and the VP of the United States are not picked by an across the nation prevalent vote of the American individuals they are picked by 538 balloters this procedure is spelled out in the United States Constitution. The discretionary school is a gathering of individuals designated by every state who formally choose the president and VP of the United States. Implying that greater states would have more Electoral votes than little states since their populace is greater. The Electoral College is comprised of 538 voters who cast votes to choose the President and Vice-President of the United States. At the point when voters go to the surveys on Tuesday, they will pick which competitor gets their state 's balloters.
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.
The Electoral College is the process to which the United States elects the President, and the Vice President. The founders of the Constitution came up with this process. This was done to give additional power to the small states, and it was done to satisfy them. It works by the citizens of the United States electing representatives called electors. Each state is given the same amount of electors, as they are members of congress.
Every four years we hold an election to decide who will be hold the office for the President of the United States. The founding fathers established the Electoral College to keep a candidate from manipulating the publics opinion and keep them from gaining absolute power. It also was set up so that smaller states would be able to have same power or say as the bigger states (Why the Electoral College). Each state is giving “Electors” based on the number of members it has in the U.S. House of Representatives, and also gets a 2 Electors for the two members they have in the U.S. Senate. Washington D.C. however only has 3 Electors.
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.