A Smarter Election 2016. Last Night

It doesn’t take a political expert to see that the 2000 presidential election between Bush and Gore was extremely illegitimate. This can be observed through the recount incident which took place in the state of Florida. Many people, especially seniors, felt that they had not voted for the right candidate, which was due to a confusing ballot setup. The ballots were called “butterfly ballots”. These ballots, as one could imagine, had candidates on either side which the voter could choose from. Seems simple enough, right? Unfortunately, that was not the case. The font on the ballots were extremely minuscule, as well as condensed. To add to that, the voter had to use a pin to make a puncture next to their selection. Some people, who were either

Undoubtedly, the last 80 years have brought the biggest change to the election process - polling. Beginning with the Gallup poll in 1936, the industry has become a titanic business, growing unregulated by the United States government. Frequently, polls have come under fire for their inaccuracy, or for their role in blocking the Democratic process (the 2000 and 2004 elections come to mind). Nonetheless, the 1992 election was not notable because of alleged bias, but because of what the polls said about

As the pillars of the electoral college collapse under the tests of time, the institution itself becomes obsolete. First, the concept of, “Winner Takes All,” means that if an election splits 49%-51%, then the smaller party’s votes are virtually erased. This system represents only the majority party in each state, thus effectively silencing all other parties. Additionally, basing the number of electors on the members in both houses of Congress creates an unequal distribution of votes across the states. Due to their infamously low population, Wyoming should statistically have only one elector, but the addition of their two senators brings them to a total of three electors. This means that each of Wyoming’s votes represents less people than every other state. For instance, each of Texas’s 38 votes represents 733,157 people while each of Wyoming’s votes represents 195,157 people. Therefore, the votes of the people of Wyoming are worth 26.62% more than that of Texans. The inequality of voting power between states combined with the “winner take all” system method of tallying votes projects an inaccurate portrayal of will of the American people.

In the Albert Gorse versus George Bush election of 2000, Albert Gorse won the popular vote by 547,398 votes. However, George Bush won the election because of the Electoral College process. Normally, the winner of the popular vote wins the office or election. However, during this election it was not the case. Albert Gore did not win by a landslide; nevertheless, he still won the popular vote (Deatrick, 2012). While the typical American citizen may say that this one case is insignificant compared to the other elections, the significance recides in the mind of the person who was running for President and for the American citizens who voted for their

A version of this article appears in print on December 4, 2016, on page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Maine Adopts New Way Of Counting Ballots. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

A number of Americans fail to realize that when they vote they are not voting for the president and vice-president directly, but for electors who then cast their ballots in the Electoral College. Until the recent battle between Gov. George W. Bush and Vice-president Al Gore for the presidency, this new generation of American voters has never witnessed a controversial election. Historically, there have been problematic elections allowing voters to question this system. The Electoral College is now a process open to criticism and debate, specifically because many do not understand its origin or purpose today. On November 7, 2000, Election Day, I was excited to become an official voter.

As in the past, the media was covering the all important election. They had always relied on exit polls as the polls closed across the nation. In reality, the Florida results were just too close to call. Nevertheless, that did not stop the media from doing so. Not once, but twice, major news media outlets were erroneous in their report. Around 8pm, it was declared that Al Gore was the projected winner of the electoral votes in the state of Florida. However, a couple of hours later, the projection was retracted and restated as Florida as being too close to call. Then, just after 2am on November 8, the mistake was made for a second time. The major networks declared George W. as the winner. This even led to Al Gore calling the Governor to concede. However, as Gore prepared to address his supporters in Nashville, Tennessee, he was alert to the shrinking numbers in Bush¡¦s lead. The final total was now less than one half of a percent lead in favor of Bush. That immediately calls for a recount of votes under state law. Subsequently, Gore called Bush and retracted his concession. It wasn¡¦t over yet! One thing was, Al Gore had prevailed in the popular vote but without Florida¡¦s tally, the electoral vote was up in the air. The election wasn¡¦t over and the recounts began.

Many people hail the Electoral College as democratic, but the 2016 Presidential Election was anything except democratic. The highly scrutinized leader, Donald J. Trump, won a majority of the Electoral College, sealing his place as the Forty-Fifth President of the United States, but did not receive the majority of votes, as the popular vote went to Hillary Clinton. The results of previous elections have not reflected the people’s opinions, and it disenfranchised millions of Americans. Although the Electoral College is outlined in the United States Constitution, it reflects the needs of an eighteenth century society (Amar, 2016). Because the Electoral College does not meet the needs of a twenty-first century society, it should be replaced by a national popular vote where voter registration is based on a test regarding basic knowledge of the United States government.

There is a lot of pressure forced on the candidates because of the knowledge that, “for the last ten Iowa Caucuses, Iowa has identified the nation’s two primary picks for the top runner from both the Democratic and Republican Party five times and from just the Democratic Party six times” (Iowa Caucus). Additionally, “in the past, the Iowa Caucuses have become more of a clearing field in determining which candidates will stay in the race and which candidates will throw in the towel” (2016 Iowa Caucus). These statistics illustrate how important the Iowa Caucus is. History has shown that the Iowa Caucus at times seems to predict the future candidates that will succeed in the presidential election by eliminating the candidates and narrowing the parties

Many African American voters all across the country were disenfranchised by being turned away or not having their vote counted due to errors. Over 1.9 million# Americans cast ballots which were either rejected or not counted, and roughly 1 million of them belonged to African Americans nationwide. Florida’s Gadsden County, which had the highest percentage of African Americans in the whole state, disregarded and did not count 1 out of every 8 ballots cast. One of the reasons votes were not being counted was due to ‘stray marks’. Stray marks render votes invalid as it is unclear who the voter was choosing, because it appeared as if they chose more than one candidate. Another was when the voter writes in a candidate’s name, as the machine or person cannot understand what the intention was therefore the vote goes to neither candidate and is disregarded. In many cases, African Americans wrote in ‘Al Gore’, however, optical reading machines marked these as rejects because ‘Al’ was interpreted as a stray mark. Of the nearly 180,000 ballots that were cast out by Florida officials, 53% of them belonged to African American voters. In the more caucasian districts such as Tallahassee, everything seemed to run smoothly, it was almost unheard of to hear about an uncounted or discarded ballot. In contrast, in the predominantly African American populated districts, hundreds of African Americans showed up at the polls to have their votes simply disappear, and this was even after if they managed to escape the purge

Lane Manley Mrs. Angie Smith English 1020 13 January 2017 Electoral College: Constitutional or Destructive? In the last decade and a half, American people have been left with feelings of doubt and uncertainty in terms of the true value of their vote. During the election of 2000 and now 2016, a presidential candidate has won the popular vote; yet, this candidate had failed to obtain enough votes from the Electoral College. The debate as to whether each individual’s vote had truly counted has become an issue in both the media and in the general public’s minds.

According to recent surveys, the role of the Electoral College is enveloped in mystery as far as the ordinary American voter is concerned. There have been issues pertaining to the legitimacy of the Electoral College and its effect on the democratic voting process. This work seeks to elicit the challenges brought about by the college as well as their implications on the larger political community. To this effect, this work has analyzed political texts to understand the effects of the college on American politics. In addition, this work has given evidence suggesting that the college causes inadequate distribution of power among states, it also allows for minimal oversight as well as undue influence over electors. Furthermore, it creates room

Consider the populations of Alaska and California, 700,000 and 37,000,000 people respectively (Census 2010); incorporating their electoral power of three and 55, a simple inference that Alaska owns approximately one electoral vote per 233,000 residents and California owns one electoral vote per 673,000 residents can be made (Gossett 1970). This basic calculation essentially means the vote of an Alaskan is worth close to three times as much as a Californian vote. Additionally, this unequal value of a citizen’s vote combined with states disparate voter turnout rates further exacerbates the aggregate inequality of votes. Clearly imbalanced in modern times, the Electoral College is an institution in dire need of

As November 8th came to a close, many people were shocked by Donald Trump’s win, since most polls were predicting a win by Hillary Clinton. Nearly every type of poll got this election wrong. In POLITICO/Morning Consult’s final poll before the election, they predicted that Clinton would get 45% of the vote, Trump would get 42%, Gary Johnson with 8%, and Jill Stein with 4%. The poll had a margin of error of three points. We now know that these predictions were off. Trump took 290 of the electoral votes, while Clinton only got 232. POLITICO/Moring Consult’s methodology included an online poll that asked respondents to choose one of the four candidates, and also forced respondents who were unsure of who they were going to vote for, to choose a

How and who can we really trust to count the ballots. In most states the process of counting the ballots are adding and totaling up the numbers of propositions. Then they would eventually look into each machine to add them up however there are no recounts of the actual ballots. After the adding and totaling up of the ballots they would put it through the machines for counting, consequently still not hand counting the ballots. This is considered to be unfair to voters. Not only will it cause a problem with all of the different organizers, actors, and private sectors it will become one of the most embarrassing counting process. There are some states especially the State of Florida that did want to recount the paper ballots. The recount of the ballots in the State of Florida was declared by its State secretary Sam Reed whom believe it was unnecessary to recount (Election Defense Alliance. 2006). For it being such a problem to the political leaders deciding whether the circumstances of recounting the ballots should not be implement is completely against the voters will. The only way that the recounts are allow in Florida is when there are high suspicious that will push the election administrators to recount. Also, not recounting will devastate the optical scan ballots during the election because hackers can get away with voting twice or more on optical scan