Democracy Now : Abolish The Electoral College

What would you do if you didn't have a say in who runs America and how it is ran. What if you were promised freedom, and told that you had a government ran by the people but you didn’t get any input in the decisions? The direct popular vote doesn’t give the smaller parties a chance, but the electoral college does. Some people believe that the electoral college should be abolished; however, it gives people in rural communities a stronger voice, it allows the President a mandate to meet people’s needs in every state, and it reflects the political opinions of more Americans. Therefore, America should keep the electoral college.

Your vote should mainly matter! Yes, the electoral college should be abolished. The delegates did not believe the president should be chosen by a direct population vote (of the people). They didn’t trust voters would have enough information to make a good choice. The Electoral College is where the president and vice president are chosen indirectly. This system is where all states and the District of Columbia get one electoral vote for each of their US senators and representatives. Also, each state has a slate of electors for each presidential candidate. Another way this system works is by winner-take all method. The winner-take all method is where whichever candidate wins the most votes in the state, wins the state electoral votes. Lastly a candidate must receive a majority (one more than a half) of the electoral votes to be declared president. That is how everything goes in the electoral college. The electoral college should be abolished because 12 states and D.C. total have double the amount of electoral votes but less people than Illinois. Also, the winner of the 1876 presidential election isn’t what people wanted, it was based on the number of electoral votes. Another reason the electoral college should be abolished is that the states with the same representatives dont have the same number of voters. All these issues that continue to happen, need to be resolved by getting rid of this system.

America has been acknowledged as being one of the world’s leading democracies, but to continue implementing the use of the Electoral College creates some distortion to that title. The out of date system does not accurately portray democracy. Theoretically, a democracy is government system that is ruled by the people. In reality, an individual’s vote may not matter depending on the state they reside in. Robert Dahl, a Democratic Theorist stated, “every member must have an equal and effective opportunity to vote, and all votes must be counted as equal.” Political equality is important to the distribution of power. Even if a person is wealthy and of power their vote should be counted the same as someone in poverty.

A debate has been brewing in recent years about the way we elect our president. The first system is the Electoral College which is very complicated. Americans are not knowledgeable about it and worry that one candidate can win the popular vote and not the Electoral College. The opponents of the Electoral College propose a new plan called the National Popular Vote (NPV). The pro-Electoral College party think the bill’s risks and costs are not worth the possibility of some gains for certain states.

The U.S. should also abolish the Electoral College because it depresses voter turnout. For example, during the recent presidential campaign the candidates focused most of their time on what so-called "battleground states," states in which there

The Constitution of the United States of America created a system called the Electoral College where it outlines the rules in which we elect the President of the United States of America. As stated in Article 2, Section 1 of the U. S. Constitution created the Electoral College. Each state receives as many electoral votes as it has senators and representatives. Therefore, each state, including the District of Columbia, will have at least three electors. This is the vision of the Constitution. Now the problem arises when all the Electoral votes from one state are given to the popular winner for that state. This causes a with people’s right to chose their leader as votes of the people that voted for the losing candidate are tossed in the trash. All this while giving the state the ultimate power to elect the president.

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.

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,

Democratic theorist, Robert Dahl once said, “…every member must have an equal and effective opportunity to vote, and all votes must be counted as equal.” This quote greatly summarizes what the Electoral College system means; every person in the United States is guaranteed one vote. Everyone should have an equal opportunity to elect who serves in the government, and we are given that opportunity through this system. This is what the Founding Fathers came up with in order to solve the problems they faced over 200 years ago. However, some have opposed this system is not fit for this democracy, and argue that other systems would work more fairly. On the contrary, I strongly believe that the Electoral College system should be kept because it is the fairest way to elect the President.

The United States government is commonly referred to as a “Duopoly”, which means that there are two established political parties, Democratic and Republic, and that these two parties share the vast majority of the political power in the country. This is because the United States follows a winner-takes-all voting system, utilizing a “single-member district plurality”. The “single-member district” portion means that for each geographic area or district, there is only one elected official, and the “plurality” portion means that in United States elections, the representative or politician who receives the most number of votes, wins the given election, even if it’s less than half the percentage of votes. According to Duverger’s law, a Political Science principle, plurality voting procedures correlationally support the emergence of only two political parties, in contrast to a multiparty democracy.

Our country runs with freedom and democracy. Other countries are not as fortunate as us to have this right as a citizen. Some people in our country take our freedom for granite to exercise that right. In Article II, Section I of the United States Constitution, relates with the topic of the Electoral College. Today, some are very overwhelmed what the Electoral College has brought to our nation. Some people believe that this section of the Constitution should be abolished. However, the reasoning for having this is because the founding fathers did not trust the people. They thought we were all uninformed of our domestic policies as a nation. Consequently, this deems to be universal over Two-Hundred years later. Abolishing the Electoral College

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.

Then there the one-person, one-vote principle of the Electoral College. In the Electoral process each state get one electoral vote for each member delegate they have in the House of Representative and two more for every Senate. “This cause significant overrepresentation of small state in the ‘college’ ” (Black par. 5). According to Lewis “if the amount of Electoral College votes a state receive was proportionate to its population, smaller rural state would be rendered completely irrelevant” ( par. 2). The Mises Institute implies “the mainstream push for our pilgrimage… we all have one vote- no matter how rich, poor, tall, short smart or uninformed, we all get one vote” (par. 2). Yet David Walbert author of Do my vote count? Understanding the Electoral College says “even though people complain since 2000 that if the winner of the popular vote doesn’t become president, then does their vote really count” His answer to that is yes “everyone vote

The United States electoral system is set up with two different elections. The people vote in their state and county officials, that they feel will best represent them. Then the state officials vote on major political candidates. “Lower levels, such as the precinct or county, take on the primary responsibility for voter registration and mobilization, whereas the higher state and national levels are responsible for electing major candidates and shaping party ideology. The party in government is responsible for implementing the policies on which its candidates run, but elected officials also worry about winning reelection”

“If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.” (Emma Goldman). Many people that are not nearly as well educated as Emma Goldman share a similar belief when it comes to the idea of voting. On many occasions we encounter the multitude of people who refuse to vote, or sometimes even register to vote because they feel as though their vote does not count. Many wonder where this belief stems from, but it is very simple: The main two reasons people feel as though their votes do not count are the Electoral College interference in voting, and the two-party system diminishing many of the values of the individual. In essence the only sensible way to increase voter turnout and political involvement from American citizens is to diminish both the power of the Electoral College, and the long-standing establishment of the two party system.