Essay On Electoral College

On November 6, 2012, Donald Tump tweeted from his personal twitter account that “The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy”. Four years later, he went on to win the electoral vote for presidency. His opponent had nearly three million more popular votes. The electoral college is a population based system that has decided general elections ever since the

Constitution was written, often falling with the popular vote. It is strange for the electoral not to vote the way of the people, especially since there is nothing thing in the Constitution that pledges electoral votes to a candidate. This disparity between the popular and electoral votes is yet another moment showing how archaic and ineffective the electoral college is as it stands

The first was to appease the Federalists, who did not trust the population in a general election, and the second was to help in the push against a discussion about slavery. The belief was that if each state had a certain amount of votes, it wouldn’t matter how many people in the state, namely just the white men, had voted. For a candidate to win an election, they need 270 votes from the electoral college, of which there are 538.

One highly debated issue about the electoral college is who the electors themselves have to vote for in a general election. Some argue that it should reflect the will of the popular vote, while others say that it was originally created for the electors to exercise good conscience about candidates and vote how they morally believe. There is no clause in the Constitution that indicates the electors must follow the popular vote, but many states have fines if the elector choses a different candidate than the dominant one in the state.

Justice Robert H. Johnson, joined by Justice William O. Douglas in 1952, wrote a scathing attack on the electoral college in Ray v. Blair, referencing the electoral college as

Since then, the right to vote encompasses all citizens above the age of eighteen, regardless of race, sexuality, or gender. We do hold it in high reverence, just as we do the Bill of Rights and other amendments or clauses in the Constitution, and respect it’s power as the final say on the President-Elect, whether or not we think it is fair. In his farewell address,

President Barack Obama said that “the world will witness a hallmark of our democracy… the peaceful transfer of power from one freely elected President to the next”.

In order to form a democracy that is more truly democratic, votes should be cast based on majority vote of an area of three to five districts. Each district will be formed with population and land area taken into equal account to form a group of districts that are equally balanced demographically. The popular vote of each of the three-five districts will be counted as a point to a candidate in a general election, sizing down the electoral college to a mare inclusive voice. In state referendums, each district will represent itself. Districts will be sectioned off by experts on demographics and bipartisan political analysts to make each one more balanced. They will