This paper explores and discusses how the president of the United States is elected, but mainly analyzes the Electoral College and demonstrates possible positive and negative aspects of the voting system here in our country. The Electoral College is a difficult and intricate voting system that is hard to fully analyze in a pro-and-con fashion. Unless it is understood in its entirety and the past conflicts that brought about its existence to provide a viable method for electing the leader of the fledgling nation. The Electoral College was created during the original time of the 13 new states that composed the young United States of America. The nation was barely getting on its feet and presented various concepts and propositions for presidential elections prior to reaching the system we know today (Webster, 2016). The Electoral College and the Pros and Cons of Electoral Votes and Popular Votes When planning on the election process of the USA during the Constitutional Convention, the politicians of the time wanted to make it so that citizens chose their president indirectly. This was the initial birth of the Electoral College, which is composed of state electors. These state electors make their vote based on their state’s popular vote. The parties …show more content…
271). Voter turnout at the polls has been on a steady decline for many years. Since 1960, when the voter turnout was at 60% of Americans who were qualified to vote, the percentage of voters has declined to 51% in 2000 (Luttbeg, p. 65). The numbers have been decreasing over a period where nothing has gone wrong in the Electoral College, and each President won the popular vote, as well as the majority of Electoral votes. However, it has been up until the most recent election that this issue has been challenged once more by a large margin of difference between the popular vote and the electoral
The Electoral College was founded by, ironically, the Founding Fathers. It is a process which is established in the Constitution, and serves one purpose: to elect a President by fair means. This method involves a combination of votes from both the Congress and the citizens of the United States. The Founding Fathers believed that in order to prevent tyranny, or oppressive government rule, a sort of system should be established. Along with the lack of trust, the Founding Fathers also were concerned about possible manipulation by foreign governments, thus creating the Electoral College (History Central).
The Electoral College is pretty much a process that was established in the Constitution by the founding fathers which was suppose to be a compromise between election of the President by a vote in congress and by the popular vote of citizens. This process consists of the selection of electors, the meeting of the electors is where they vote for the President and Vice President, and the counting of the electoral votes by Congress. In the Electoral College it contains 538 electors and to win the majority they need to have 270 electoral votes. As well as, the number of electors for every state is equal to the number of Representations that the state has in congress which is based on the population and there is also one vote for each Senator. So, each state has at least three electors and votes.
In the early years of America the Founding Fathers created the constitution for everyone to follow. One thing that is in the constitution is know as The Electoral College is a group of electors that decide on who the president will be. Electors are decided by each states party convention before the election takes place. The Electoral College consist of 538 people and to elect a president they must reach a majority of 270. The Founding Fathers of the United States created the Electoral College because they believed it was the best way to elect the president, although there are good things about the Electoral College there are also some fall backs.
Throughout this time, our views on the Electoral College have went in all kinds of ways. The big reason for the Electoral College, was so that the whole country had a more equal say on choosing the national president. In each state the electors gather on the Monday following the second Tuesday of December. Each state has electoral votes according to the number of House members and Senators it has in Congress.
The electoral college is an institution that can be found deeply rooted in the functionality of both the state and federal government. Due to this fact, calls for the abolition of the electoral college may cause for many changes to occur in these systems of government. In order to be able to decide whether or not we as a nation should update our electoral system, we must compare both the positive and negative effects that the abolition of the electoral college would have on these institutions. To start the paper, I would first bring to attention the history behind the winner-takes-all system and the intention of the states to move to this system. I would explain that the electoral college promises two electoral votes to every state, and how this disproportionately advantages smaller states.
Despite encouragement from high profile politicians, like former President Barack Obama, as well as other celebrities to encourage people to go out and vote, recent elections resulting in the electoral college overriding popular vote have people losing faith in the
Every great nation started with a great leader. A person that can provide and lead a nation to greatness and success. Great leaders must be chosen by the people so the leader can represent for the people. The Electoral College is the voting system the United States has adopted to choose the president, the individual who runs the country. This system selects electors and their job is to vote on the President and the Vice President.
When the founding fathers were creating the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, there was a constant struggle between the states because they wanted to have power. With the Electoral College, these smaller states had more power because of the number of electoral votes. For example, in the article it states, “Compare that to ten of the small states by population in America; with only 6,000,00 voters combined, they get 32 electoral votes for president.” Even though the bigger states have a larger population, if the smaller states combine, they can have more electoral votes than the larger states but with a less population. One advantage of the Electoral College would be that the smaller states have a greater say in the
Rio Kuchlyan Mr. Puma AP Language and Composition 2 March 2023 In Support of the Electoral College Voting is one of the most fundamental ways to participate in a democracy, and every citizen in a democracy deserves to have their voice heard. However, in a vast nation such as the United States, how is this achieved? Consider an ordinary citizen, perhaps a farmer living in rural Kansas. They must constantly consider the various things they have to manage, whether it be their crop production or any threats they face.
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).
Electoral College Essay The Electoral College system used in the United States to elect the President was created to make voting a smoother process when the country was first founded. At the time, the fastest way to transport people’s votes was by horseback. To speed up the voting process, U.S. leaders devised the Electoral College system, so the electors who represented each state could keep each other updated without the delay of travel. In today’s world, we have the Internet.
Despite the waning support for amending the constitution to alter the way American’s cast their ballots, throughout each election cycle media outlets discuss the fear surrounding the minority candidate, in terms of the popular vote, becoming the President. In an interesting article published by Forbes magazine just before the 2012 elections Taylor Broderick discusses the fifteenth, nineteenth, and twenty-sixth amendments and explains how these create a precedent for altering the U.S. voting system through amending the Constitution (Brodarick, 2012). He also argues that the Electoral College incites voter apathy in states which are not saturated with campaign efforts. In other words, people are more likely to participate in an election if they live in swing-states where candidates are actively campaigning. For these reasons, along with American’s historical opposition, Broderick believes politicians should gain public support for Congressional action, as Bayh did in the late 1960s, to throw out the current voting procedure.
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
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.