As of recently a debate that has existed in American politics for centuries has flared up again. The debate in question is whether we should keep our Electoral College for the purpose of electing our President or abolish it and elect our Presidents through a popular vote. Those who seek to abolish the Electoral College cite instances -recent and past- in which Presidential Candidates have won the popular vote yet lost the majority of the Electoral College. They also argue that the undemocratic philosophy behind the Electoral College, the thought that the American people aren’t competent enough to choose their own Commander in Chief, is an outdated piece of a backwards past that has no place in modern society and law. Those who seek to preserve the Electoral College as it is state that the electoral system the framers of the Constitution created is as good as it can …show more content…
A simple solution would be to assign the majority of Electors to represent each individual congressional districts rather and only two to represent the states. Each districts’ Electoral votes would be cast for whichever candidate wins the majority of votes in said district and the two state votes would go to whoever wins the majority of districts in each states. This way is more democratic because the people would be represented on a smaller level than the states; for example, Republicans in Upstate New York or central California, or Democrats in southwestern Texas, wouldn’t be subject to supporting presidential candidates they voted against. Yet these compromises would not outright destroy the Electoral College, just slightly modify it, satisfying Constitutional
I think we should keep the Electoral College. Electoral College is defined in our textbook as; “An unofficial term that refers to the electors who cast the states’ electoral votes” (Patterson, T.E., 2013). Electoral voting is tied in with the states popular voting. Choosing electoral college adds to the cohesiveness of the nation by obliging an appropriation of popular support to be elected President, improves the status of minority interests, contributes to the political dependability of the country by promising a two-party system, and keeps up an elected arrangement of government and representation (Kimberling, W.C., 2008). I think that the Electoral College system is a big part of the cohesiveness of our country and it requires the distribution
This article provides some options for Electoral College reforming, and how they operate. One is direct voting from instant runoff voting, which is were voters would rank their candidates from favorite to least favorite instead of choosing just one candidate, then when the votes are counted, if no single candidate has a majority, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated, and then the process continues. So basically they would win the presidency by process of elimination, and this allows voters to pick their favorite candidate without giving a vote for their least favorite directly. This proposal would also not have and negative backfire if only adopted by a few states. All of the other proposals in this article had many negative
Although this seems a reasonable approach this causes more of an issue of fragmentation than congressional district ting. Lastly, there is the Electoral College with super electors. This idea was introduced by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in 2000. he proposed that “... candidates would continue to compete for electors on a state-by-state, winner-take-all basis, but the winner of the national popular vote would be awarded a set of bonus
Ever since the election involving Bush and Gore, the viability of the Electoral College has become a heatedly debated topic. The question is whether the Electoral College is still an effective system considering the conditions the United States faces today as opposed to the conditions that the Founding Fathers faced when they created it. For over one hundred and fifty years, the United States has used this system, and controversy has followed it ever since. It was created in an effort to protect the people and institution of America by putting the final vote of the presidency in the hands of a trusted and respected few. These few have the power to disregard the popular vote due to the fact that there is still no federal law demanding electors
Many people think that the popular vote system is more logical than the electoral system. But there are many reasons why the electoral system works better than the popular vote system. The electoral college gives small states an equal opportunity to bigger states. Many small states are ignored due to their population. The second reason is that it safeguards uninformed voters.
The Electoral College has been one of the most debated topics in politics ever since its inception. The original idea behind the College was that, back in the 1700s, when communications were slow, voters were uninformed, and votes were counted by hand, the Framers needed a streamlined and efficient system for electing the President. The college worked – and made sense – back then. The question is: does it still apply today? Today, Americans have the technology to vote directly for a President, yet they don’t.
Then, to modify the system to make it fair, you must get states to agree on modifying their systems,nonetheless, the party in the states has the lead to rejecting it. It is absolutely grueling for both actions to do, but it’s not impossible! Overall, Hillary would win the popular votes, but regardless the Elector College is an “all or nothing system” which I feel is narrow-minded and unreasonable and that the system should be base on popular
I really enjoyed this video because ever since I grasped the idea of the Electoral College I have disagreed with it. However, I never really did any research revolving what goes on behind closed doors. The premises most definitely lead to the conclusion without any additional points. We see that the Electoral College ruins democracy because citizens of smaller states have a louder, more important voice than their larger neighboring states. This means that the votes of the larger states will, in a sense, be ignored also like the wants, and needs of people in set states.
For both of these reasons, I feel that the Electoral College should not be a “Winner-Take- All” type of system. If we want to have equal representation in all 50 states, we should assign an equal amount of delegates to each state(30, perhaps) , no matter what their population
All through the history of the United States of America, many people have discussed the abolishment of the Electoral College. For many reasons, some believe it is what makes our country have the type of government we have, some believe that it's what limits the power of the government, and many people such as Mitch McConnell believes it is what gives us our freedom and prosperity. While these are valid arguments there is a multitude of reasons to why the electoral college should be abolished. Such as there is only a need for twelve states in order to become the president, popular vote of the people for president can still lose, and the Swing states are given too much power and attention compared to that of the other states. This is why I believe in the abolishment of the Electoral College.
In order to take a more perceptive look into the electoral college debate, we will need to take a look into the history of the debate as well as the Founding Fathers’ intentions for it. The first thing that we need to take a look at would be the Founding Fathers' intentions as well as how the electoral college changed throughout history. In the article “Electing the People’s President: The Popular Origins of the Electoral College” it is stated that “Our Founding Fathers understood that America is a nation of both ‘we the people’ and a federal system of states” (Villegas 202). What Villegas is saying is that the Founding Fathers' looked at the people’s rights, as stated in the promised bill of rights during the Continental Congress. Most people who argue against the electoral college say that the people’s will and saying of “we the people” in the Constitution are violated, but rather it is a compromise between giving the people a chance at a say of the vote, as well as the federal state of
Dissolving the electoral college and instituting a voting system where every citizen’s vote count, could allow for third party members to finally have a strong chance of being a primary candidate for election. This may allow America’s voice to be heard better if everyone had a say in the election. For the most part, Americans have only two choices the primary, Democrat and the Primary Republican, but without the electoral college a lesser candidate that might not be backed with a substantial amount of monetary wealth could win. Finally, a state may be Republican or Democratic, but there are still citizens voting against the majority in the state. Those citizens don’t have say as of right now, but if the electoral college was done away with
The Votes that Should Count The United States should abolish the Electoral College, by amending the Constitution, and use the Direct Popular Vote process for presidential elections. Though the U.S. Constitution Article two, section one, clause two states that the appointment of electors belong exclusively to the states (National Conference of State Legislator), it is seemingly pointless to carry out national voting polls of the public if only electoral college votes will hold the count for the next elected president. Every three years around the United States, candidates who decide to run for the seat of presidency begin their campaign to win the votes of Americans, but for what?
If the U.S. got rid of the Electoral college, it could cause even more problems than the ones people had with it. How would we elect a president? how would we vote for one otherwise? Without the system that kept elections fair, the U.S. would have more problems than they have with it now. If the U.S. were to abolish the Electoral college and replace it with a different system or by popular vote, “To do so would require amendments to the U.S. Constitution” (‘NCSL.”
The Electoral College system assures balanced power between the states, puts the independent parties under control, grants balanced voting, and supports the major political parties. The Electoral College has proven itself to be very sufficient in determining the president and the vice president of the United States. Since this system has been successful since our Founding Fathers created it, there should be no reason as to why we should get rid of the Electoral