In the United States, the Electoral College decides the victor of a national race. Each state has its own number of electoral votes, which is controlled by state populace. This framework is a "champ takes all" framework. Which implies the hopeful with 50 percent or a greater amount of the votes in an individual state gets the majority of that states electoral votes. A few people have seen this framework as obsolete and unreasonable. Many are taking a gander at an approach to change the framework and others might want to get rid of the framework Understanding the variables that justified the formation of the framework is fundamental. At the point when the constitution was being made, the designers needed to abstain from making a solid official branch. One thought the designers made was to have congress straightforwardly pick the president. Be that as it may, the thought was rejected on the grounds that some felt that settling on this decision would be excessively troublesome and leave ill will in …show more content…
Competitors won't intensely crusade in states they know they can't win or states they know they can't lose. Seeing an applicant vigorously battling in states that reliably vote a specific gathering, for example, New York (Democrat), California (Democrat), and Texas (Republican), is exceptionally uncommon or even non-existent. Rather, hopefuls will intensely battle in "swing states", expresses that don't generally vote a similar gathering, for example, Ohio, and Florida. Another contention against the Electoral College is that littler states are over spoken to, due to the way the votes or appropriated. In his article, ”10 reasons why the Electoral College is an issue”, writer Eric Black expresses, " An individual citizen in Wyoming has more than triple the weight in electoral votes as an individual in California" (Black,
There are many proposed plans to run the government and decide the next president. Ideas including the District Plan, the Proportional Plan, the Direct Popular Election, the National Bonus Plan, and the National Popular Vote plan are in mind to fix the current system yet none have been decided. Currently, the president is decided by a method known as the Electoral College; however, this method has many disadvantages. In the United States today, the government runs a system known as the Electoral College.
The Framers of the Constitution created the Electoral College as a compromise between electing the President directly by popular vote and having Congress choose the President. At the time, there were concerns about electing the President directly, such as the lack of communication and travel infrastructure to facilitate a national election and the possibility of uneducated voters being easily swayed by popular demagogues. Additionally, the Framers were concerned that smaller states would be overshadowed by larger ones in a direct popular vote. The Electoral College has several pros and cons.
Did you know that the Electoral College was created as a compromise between those Founding fathers who wanted the president elected by Congress and those who wanted direct election by the people? Presidents are elected by a group of 538 electors, acting on behalf of the states and not by the citizens. This arrangement is called the Electoral College. Every four years, millions of United States citizens vote for a president and a vice president of the United States.
Individuals in each state place a ballot for whom they want their next president and vice president to be. The elector places their vote based on the majority of the popular vote within their represented state. All electors in the state vote the same, excluding two states. 100 votes are reserved for the senators, while 438 are divided within the district. A candidate needs 270 electoral college votes to win.
As an excerpt from an original document about ‘The Pros and Cons of the Electoral College System’, by William C. Kimberling, states, “...the distribution of Electoral votes in the College tends to over-represent people in the rural states” (10). In 1988, people from less populated states combined had the same voting strength as a more populous state that had three times as many people (Kimberling 10). As a result, the more populous state’s potential votes held less weight than the potential votes in the other, less populated states. Many states’ votes are deemed less important than other states due to the Electoral
Advocates of the Electoral College may think that if a popular vote was instated, candidates would just focus on the larger populated areas; however, don’t they
First of all, with the Electoral College system in play, small states are highly over-represented. “No matter how big or how small, each and every state in the US is allocated at a minimum, three electoral votes; two senators and one representative or more depending on the population of that particular state.” (Document A) In order to make this possible, bigger states must give away some of their electoral votes to the smaller states, making smaller states highly represented and bigger states not so highly represented. For further example, here is an excerpt taken from “The Indefensible Electoral College” written by Bradford Plumer, “Because each state casts only one
The battle for the Electoral College vote is usually a tough one and it reflects upon a supposed popular majority. The reason it’s difficult is because often times less populated states are over-represented in the winner-take-all type of situation, when they win the Electoral College the chances of them winning the election for President skyrockets. However, if there is a tie the House of Representatives will chose who is best based upon the top three candidates.
“The Founding Fathers established The Electoral College 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.” according to archives.gov. The Electoral College was an option out of four ideas as stated in a peer-reviewed article by William C. Kimberling, a Deputy Director FEC Office of Election Administration. He stated that during this time, the colonies had a small population and people where very spread out, an idea of a patriarchal figure is very displeasing, those are a couple of problems the Convention had to go through... The Constitutional Convention had a couple of ideas like for example Congress choosing the president, state legislature chooses the president and the popular vote, but they ultimately chose the Electoral College.
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
The electoral college also helps the small states have an opinion that actually is heard in the presidential election. In class, it was discussed that Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota together, though their combined population is less than that of Oklahoma, each of those states has three electoral votes, whereas Oklahoma just has seven votes. Going by electoral votes, a candidate would have a better chance at winning the election if they won over Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota versus Oklahoma. With the electoral college, a candidate could win over all thirty-nine small states and win the entire election. Though the candidate could be supported by less than a quarter of the population,
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
The more populated states in the country have more voting power due to the number of electors in that state. And because of this, presidential candidates purposefully target the more populated states such as California, Texas, or New York. And those big states, determine the Popular vote. But winning the Popular vote doesn’t always mean they will
The Electoral College system the founding fathers devised helps to balance out the power of the large, populous states. This system forces candidates to campaign in all states since they all carry some sway in the elections (“Understanding the Presidential Election”). However, other issues present themselves as well, like states with large independent voters that can be swayed and the issue that a candidate can lose the popular vote and win the election. The first issue is that states that are equally divided between democrats and republicans and hold a large number of electoral votes like Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania are considered swing states. (“Understanding the Presidential Election”)
Tyler Lewis says that one of the problems with the Electoral College is “The distribution of Electoral College votes per state is not equally dispersed.” Lewis is saying that the “playing field” is not equal when it comes to the vote. “It made the value of each citizens vote different from that of someone living in another state” (Lewis). States with a smaller population get more votes per person than a state with a larger population would. The article also addresses the fact that a presidential candidate can win the overall election even though they did not win the popular vote.