A Popular Vote System

One of the reason why the Electoral College should not be destroyed, is that it helps the candidates who may struggle with the popular vote. In 1980, for Presidential Election, candidate Ronald Reagan barely won the popular vote (50.7%). With the help of the Electoral Vote, Reagan took 91% of it, which then made him the winner (Doc B). Also in 1992, Candidate Bill Clinton, did not even have half the country on his side (43%). With the help of the Electoral Vote, Clinton

Though this would be unlikely in the present day, it is still possible. This past election of Trump versus Clinton has been one of the most entertaining for the electoral college due to the polar opposite candidates which is why the electoral college is being put into questioning. I believe the electoral college allows all states big and small, to have power. The electoral college creates a clear cut winner in cases where the popular is very close and allows smaller states and swing states to be noticed. Large states such as Texas and California may be large but since Iowa is a swing state, it allows candidates invest more into persuading that state to side with their political party. With this focus on the swing states, those states are able to get special benefits. I believe keeping the electoral college exactly the way it is currently for the 2020 election is the best system with the least amount of flaws and shouldn’t be abolished or amended.

The electoral college is a system that was put in place by the framers of the constitution for many reasons. The main reason the electoral college is that the framers did not fully trust democracy for they believed that people were not educated enough to vote. After reading an article from Business Insider called The Electoral College Is Brilliant, And We Would Be Insane To Abolish It by Walter Hickey, I agree that the electoral college is necessary for our presidential elections. According to the article the electoral college is good because it keeps errors local, is a testament to a candidate's desire to win, and most importantly, forces majority. In the article opposing the Electoral College I found many of the arguments to be invalid or full of what ifs or buts, and that is why I do not have any reason to believe the electoral college is good.

The Electoral College is not the best solution to elect the president, as it has become obsolete (Dayen). The Electoral College was a solution for the problems that were relevant when it was first established. Now, these problems cease to exist. The Electoral College was an idea that was feasible when first instituted, because communication was limited and national political parties had yet to be established. Travel and communications are no longer problems. The Electoral College needs to be replaced to fix the current problems, not the problems of the past.

The Electoral College is a group of people who are “appointed by a larger group” of people to represent each state in the U.S. who then vote for the presidential elections (Dictionary.com 2015). The founding fathers created the Electoral College so that qualified citizens could vote for the president. They believed that the average American is uniformed, so they decided that a few educated people would make the correct choice for the entire population. The founding fathers also thought the Electoral College would be effective because at that time the only way of communication was through word of mouth and through letters. With the Electoral College, it was a more simple way to get the votes to one place and count them. A major criticism of the Electoral College is the popular candidate may lose to the electoral vote. This means that if majority of the population voted for candidate A, but majority of the electoral votes were for candidate B, the president of the nation would become candidate B. This situation has occurred four out of the fifty-six presidential elections that have been held in the United States. I believe that the Electoral College should be abolished so that the popular candidate would win the election, people would feel that they are making a difference in the society they live in, and we should replace the Electoral College with popular choice or allow our house of representatives to vote for the presidents instead.

The last reason I want to keep the Electoral College is because a direct popular election would cause chaos. America is already screwed up enough; we don’t need a presidential election to make it worse. There would be too many petitions, riots, and all kinds of things going on during the election. The people and congress like the way the Electoral College is set up. Also, we don’t need to change it. Doing that would take forever, because if we switch to a direct popular election, many presidents would only win by popular vote. The electoral votes should determine who is president, not how popular he or she is. No one region has the absolute majority of electoral votes that is required to be president. In very close popular elections, it’s possible that the candidate who won a slight majority of the popular vote may not be the person who is elected president. Whether the popularity of that one candidate is concentrated on very few states or spread out across America. The popular

The electoral college system is unnecessary at this point in time. When the electoral college system was thought up in the 1700s by the framers of the constitution, they believed that electors to represent the peoples’ vote would be more efficient since it was extremely difficult to get information to and from places quickly, meaning that citizens would be late on news. To to combat that, the framers created the electoral college system, a system where electors elected by a political party would represent the peoples’ vote, gather in Washington, and vote on their behalf. Because of the lack of technology, this method wasn’t a bad way to vote for presidents efficiently. But technology improved, negating the problem of Americans not knowing the news in Washington and concerning their candidates. Today, Americans have access to current and reliable news regarding their candidates and are generally up-to-date with politics. So with the technological advances present today, why do we still employ an electoral college to vote for our next president? There isn’t a pressing reason to keep it.

Although this is true, the wide selection of canidates would also allow the American people to have a better selection of canidates. Instead of selecting two canidates which the electoral college promotes, they can choose from a lot more, selecting a canidate which they can identify with, and supports the issues they also support. The popular vote system presents a flawless way of electing a president, with absolutely not threat of electing a minority president. It is the best voting system for the United States and should be instated in place of the outdated electoral college.

Many people ask themselves this question: should the electoral system be abolished? Some answers are yes, others are no, others maybe don’t know. I think that Electoral College should not be abolished but instead it should be reformed. First of all let’s define what the Electoral College is and how it works. Many do not believe that voters are not well informed about the candidates and cannot make good elections, which is why the Electoral College was seen as a way to help with this issue. “The Electoral College, is the institution (whose members are selected by whatever means the state legislature chooses) that is responsible for selecting the president of the United States.” (Bond, pg. G-4) The

A national popular vote is another voting method, but a horrible one. Having a national population votes sounds like it would be the best idea and it makes sense how it can nominate the most worthy candidate. Simply people vote the candidate they like the most and everyone then becomes happy for the majority of the country when their vote got them the candidate they want. However it would be a complete nightmare if we had to do any recounts for plus 320 million people. Possibly instead of candidates visiting each

The Electoral College consists of 3 major defects. The first defect would be that this system makes it possible for a candidate in the presidential election to win the popular vote, but lose the electoral college vote. This situation creates a hideous mess every time, and is more than a theoretical possibility. The most recent occurrence of this would be the elections of 2016 where Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, but lost the electoral college vote to Donald Trump, who is our current President of the United States. Moreover, nothing in the constitution or any federal statute requires that the electors must vote for the candidate favored by the popular vote in their state. This goes to show that the people really don’t have a say in who

Do you believe the electoral college is the ideal method to vote for the next president of the united states? I do not agree with this method of choosing the president and I think the popular vote should be the method of voting instead. In the Electoral College you vote for someone to vote the president for you which defeats the purpose of voting. Especially since that person legally doesn't have to vote for who you want. Also the electoral college makes voting more complicated which differs from the popular vote method which is easier by just counting votes and the winner would be who has the most votes. My last reason for abolishing the Electoral College and using the popular vote method is it would help other parties instead of just the Republican and Democratic parties. As third party candidates never won due to the electoral college being more helpful to the other parties.The electoral college is a complicated and not fair way of voting for the president. The process defeats the purpose of voting and most of the time helps only two parties which give the other parties a very low chance of winning.

When the Electoral College was put in place as part of the voting process it seemed a good idea. “Our framers distrusted democracy and saw the Electoral College as a deliberative body able to correct bad choices made by the people.” (Anderson 519). Times have changed and today’s society is a lot different that it was when George Washington was President. It’s about time that the U.S eliminates the Electoral College and makes America more of a democracy by making the popular vote the deciding factor in electing the president.

The arguments to modify or eliminate the Electoral College system are all derived from the notion that it is outdated. Under the current system if a candidate wins a large states like California, then they win twenty percent of the needed votes even though California only accounts for eleven percent of the U.S. population. What's more is a president can be elected without winning a majority of the popular vote. This has happened 15 times in U.S. history. The

The Single Transferable Vote system is a system that was invented by a mathematician whose processes are lengthy and confusing to the people who actually use it to implement change: voters. The currently used Single Member Plurality system is widely understood and the best system for Manitoban voters. While some may argue that the Single Transferrable Vote system is a superior method of electing members of government in Manitoba, due to the unfamiliarity with candidates, lack of voter involvement, and confusing nature of the system, the current Single Member Plurality system is more effective and reflective of the actual views of the electors.