Constitution Established: Electoral College

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, yet Donald Trump is president because he won the Electoral College. The Electoral College is the system that the United States of America uses to elect the president and vice president. A couple of groups have a problem with how the Electoral College currently operates with people like Barbara Boxer, a California Senator, stating that “94% of campaigning by the presidential candidates in 2016 took place in 12 states. That was it. Two-thirds of these general election campaign events took place in 6 states.” (Congressional Digest, page 21). The idea that the Electoral College and presidential elections is ignoring the majority of the states has spurred different groups to attempt to reform the Electoral

If the electoral college was abolished, then America would have a more pure vote. The electoral college delegates how much say a state has in government and limits some states while promoting the powers of others. The electoral college also has many deformities, including the winner take all system, a less pure vote, and a more concentrated support for a candidate from certain states that make it perfectly reasonable to abolish it.

The political system many of us know today as the Electoral College is one that has been in place in our country for over 100 years. The Electoral College is a system that helps determine who is elected as President and Vice President during major elections. The Electoral College is the primary source of determining who is elected. This system although having withheld through the times and stayed in place is not effective to me, and can lead to unfair elections in the eyes of some American People.

When Americans vote for president, they are actually voting for presidential electors, who are known as a whole to be the electoral college. These electors, who are elected by citizens of the United States, are the ones that elect the chief executive. The electoral college has shaped the past, present, and future of the United States ever since it was constructed by the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The electoral college was created with fair and good intentions.

the framers of the constitution debated many options for determining how the President of the

In June of 1804 the states had ratified the Twelfth Amendment which enacted the Electoral College in time for the 1804 election. When election time comes, Americans vote for the President and Vice President who are chosen by Presidential electors, who as a whole are known as the Electoral College. As a decision was needed for a method of choosing candidates, the Constitutional Convention of 1787 contemplated many different ways of electing the President, but toward the end of the proposals and ideas the matter had to be taken to the Committee of Eleven on Postponed Matters which is the committee who conceived the original Electoral College. In recent years, much debate has been stirring regarding whether or not the Electoral College has a place within this country's elections. For many states this method of tallying and casting votes is great because every state receives a minimum of three electoral votes considering each state has two senators and at least one representative (Lewis). However, these minimum electoral votes make the distribution of electoral college votes uneven throughout the fifty states, making each American citizen's vote count less or much more which is cause for change. If the information on these weighted votes is analyzed it can be concluded that states with a population similar to Wyoming has one “elector” for every 177, 556 persons while Texas has one “elector” for every 715,499 persons. While the Electoral College has worked for generations, there are some negative factors that give cause to abolish this practice, such that are; faithless electors, the winner take all system, and finally, safe and swing states.

The electoral college, per Wikipedia, is a mechanism set up to select the president and vice president of the United States. (The Electoral college, 2016) It was during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that the founders established Article 2. Article 2 Section 1 details the innerworkings of the executive branch of government. The constitution states, “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress”. (The Constitution of the United States, n.d.) The framers of the Constitution had many different ideas about how the selection of our president should go but ultimately

Established in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, the Electoral College is a system utilized in The United States of America to select the President and Vice President. This process was established by the Founding Fathers in 1787, when the Constitution was written. The original purpose of the electoral system was to ensure that those who select the leaders of this nation were the most knowledgeable and informed people that America had to offer. The electors - the elected officials that make up the Electoral College - are elected to office through a general election wherein the entire national population has the right to vote. The President of the United States, however, is actually elected to office by the Electoral College only, regardless of the popular vote of the citizens in general. Thus, the Presidential election is the only federal election in our nation where the vote of the citizenry does not directly determine the victor. Despite the fact that this electoral system has been in place and operational for over two hundred years, the Electoral College is looked upon by some as an honorable system, whereas others view it as faulty. The Electoral College is not fair and equitable because it is based on population, it is not trusted by the people, and it is unjust to the wishes of the citizens.

The Electoral College should stay the same because if neither of the candidates win the electoral votes the House of Representatives are able to select the new President. Therefore each state is allowed to choose who they want for President although if the candidate does not get 270 electoral votes the House of Representatives decide who the next President will be. Although the question is if the Electoral College should stay the same, be abolished, or be changed. However, keeping the Electoral College the same would be more simple because most people understand it and it has been working ever since the government started it.

1787 saw the creation of the Electoral College due to he public lacking enough knowledge to make an enlightened decision on whom to vote for. However, now things are much different in the 21st Century than they were in the 1700’s. Due to new technological innovations, we are able to actually look into our candidate and truly decide if he/she is the one we want to vote for. It for this, and many other reasons that the Electoral College is outdated and unfair, and the Government should shift to the more direct popular vote.

This has been a controversy for ages. Does this give us freedom or take it away? Is our voice being heard? Election after election have brought new thoughts and situations to the table. In 2000 there was disappointment when the people thought they lost their voice. The question remains. Does the Electoral College stand for the rights of the American Citizens or does it mute their voices? By looking into how the Electoral College is structured, the comparison between the popular vote and the electoral vote, and the value of a citizen’s vote, one can see how the electoral college is in fact an important piece in our government.

It would seem that the founding fathers were a lot smarter than we give them credit for in 1792. This was the year the College, as we call it today the Electoral College, ratified in the Constitution of the United States of America by the colonies. This would also start the longest continuous debate our nation has ever experienced over a single political issue that continues even today. This debate came center stage during the election of 1800 when Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr (Jefferson’s Vice President running mate)received the same number of electoral votes for President even though they were running mates (http://www.ushistory.org/us/20a.asp). This tie would lead to changes to the Electoral College of their day and the foundation for the 12th Amendment to our Constitution.

The United States, well known for its democracy, holds elections every four years to elect its President. Every American citizen over the age of 18 has a right to cast a vote in the presidential election. The voting process, although it seems easy and straightforward, can be very complicated. In the 2000 election, Al Gore captured the majority of votes, but George Bush won. The reason for this strange outcome and why Al Gore lost was because of the Electoral College. The Electoral College is voting system where different states are given a certain amount of votes in the election, and which ever candidate wins a state, is given that state’s votes. The Electoral College is out of date, and should be replaced by the Popular Vote system,

Throughout the years, whenever a policy has seemed outdated or irrelevant in US policy, it has generally been gotten rid of. Slavery, prohibition, and discriminate voting laws were all done away with once people realized that they did not belong in the modern world, but there is still one piece of US policy that has long overstayed its welcome. This piece of policy is the use of the electoral college in our presidential election system. The electoral college is a group of individuals who each cast a direct vote for the president. The way that this works is complicated but essentially it boils down to this. Each state has a number of electoral college votes equal to the number of seats they have in the senate plus the number of seats they have in the House of Representatives for a total of 538 votes. Before each election, each party picks a group of people who they tell to vote for their candidate from each state to be their electors. When a citizen votes for president in November of election years, they are not voting for the president directly. They are voting for which party gets to send its group of electors to cast their vote in the electoral college. These electors then cast their votes in early December, and from those votes a winner is declared. Does it seem convoluted and overly-complicated? That is what I think. So, I say that the electoral college should be abolished because it causes problems in presidential elections, the arguments for the electoral college are

The original Electoral College plan was very popular in its inception, among most delegates at the constitutional convention of 1787. The goals of the original Electoral College were as follows; to accommodate differing state and federal views, incorporate a popular vote feature to the election, protect the smaller states with less population, separate the executive and legislative branch, and make it hard to politically manipulate the election. The Constitution designated that the original Electoral College consists of an equal number of electors to the number of legislators in the House of Representative in each state. Two electors would be added to each state; to equal the number of senators in each respective state. All of the electors