Essay On Electoral College

The electoral college is the idea that our Founding Fathers can up with to solve the problem of how the president should be elected, but it wasn’t the first solution brought up. They first thought that Congress should elect the president. Congress electing the president was shot down though because it would interfere with the separation of powers and some feared presidential candidates would bribe Congress so they could be elected. Another idea was to have state legislatures choose. This suggestion was also rejected because many believed that the president would feel indebted to legislatures and would allow them to “erode federal authority and thus undermine the whole idea of freedom” (William C. Kimberling, uselectionatlas.org). A third proposal

Finally, the concept of the electoral college introduced. It would be an indirect election where people voted for electors who then choose the president. The number of elector a state has would be based on their number of representatives in the House of Representative plus 2 for their Senators. The electoral college was amended in the early 1800s because in the old system the person with the most electoral votes became president, and the person with the second most votes became vice president. Candidates, who only days earlier were throwing insults at each other, had to work together to govern the country. The problem was obvious. Therefore, Congress passed the 12th amendment which made electors cast a vote for the president and a separate one for vice

One of them is it does not represent the whole population of a state with the winner take all system in place in most states, excluding Maine and Nebraska. In a state, not everyone supports Democrats or Republicans, but if they are in a “blue” or “red” state, it doesn’t matter because all the votes will go to the popular party in that state. Thousands of citizens don’t think their vote matters because they live in blue or red state. But, with proportional voting or popular vote, those people may start to feel that their vote matters leading to a larger voter turnout. All votes would be equally important with a popular vote. Along with that, why would a voter feel their vote matters when candidates barely campaign in their state? Presidential candidates tend to ignore states they know they either have no chance of winning or are guaranteed to win in. Another argument against the electoral college is that small states are overrepresented. For example, a voter in Wyoming has almost quadruple voting power than a voter in California. California has 1 electoral vote per 712,000 people while Wyoming has 1 electoral vote per 195,000 people. In addition, it is possible for a 269-269 tied vote to happen which mean that the House of Representatives would decide the president. Each state has exactly one vote. Therefore, a states like Texas, New York, and