What Is The Value Of The Electoral College Essay

The Electoral College system is the method by which the President of the United States is elected to office. Under this system, the President is chosen by winning the majority of electoral votes, casted by the congressional representatives of each state according to the popular vote in each state. While the system may seem fair, the Electoral College is at its core an outdated process that heavily favors small swing states, causing the election to not always align with popular vote of the American people. The necessity of the Electoral College for the means of electing a President is no longer relevant in the United States, as the motivations for establishing the system were specific to the time of early America. One reason for instituting

Each state’s electoral number is equal to its congressional delegation (Mov. 2), which is the number of members of Congress plus two for the senators. The addition of the two senators in electoral value causes the votes of a common person in different states to be unequal. In a state that has a large population, the senatorial value makes a minor difference, but in a small state such as South Dakota, this addition causes its electoral value to be tripled, as cited in Document 2, a description of the Electoral College system during the 2000 election by a Duke professor. Thus, a common vote in a smaller state is worth more electoral value—proportionally—than a common vote in a large state. Even as a supporter of the Electoral College, Document 3, an excerpt from a conservative magazine, admits this imbalance between states, citing that small states are the main advocates for the process. In a system designed to be an ideal democracy, the Electoral College fails to achieve a truly democratic decision by not allowing all citizens to have an equally weighted