Electoral College Democracy

Despite the Electoral College system being founded by the founding fathers in America and being there as long as the Constitution exists, many people still do not have sufficient knowledge on how it works. The Electoral College does not provide honest presidential elections rather it has the potential to undo the will of people at any point from the selection of electors to the vote tallying in Congress (Shaw, 3). Electoral College in the United States has played a major role in depressing the voter's turnout. Every State is given an equal number of electoral votes despite the population and in turn, the system has put in place no measure to encourage the voters to take part in the elections. Besides, the system distorts

The Electoral College is an excuse of the electoral process, proving itself to be undemocratic, false in representation, and harmful to third-parties. Therefore, the Electoral College should be abolished, and the process should rely on the popular vote to have the leading judgement in the election procedure for a new president. The Electoral College has proven that a candidate may not need to win the popular vote of the people of the nation in order to win the presidential election. But first, beforehand, let me introduce the system in which the Electoral Process is based upon. The Electoral Process is the government’s created system of indirect voting in order to elect the nation’s president.

The Electoral College was created in 1787 to protect this country’s voting system. It is a group of 538 members that directly cast the votes to determine who the next president will be. (Green) However, the issues of the present day can’t help but wonder, is the Electoral College’s system outdated and corrupt? My dialogue’s purpose is to defend the Electoral College and show how it still protects us to this day by using evidence from the most recent 2016 election, and prove that it gave us the best candidate suited for the role of the President of the United States.

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.

Most Americans think the Electoral College is a nuanced and complex system designed to safeguard democracy. It seems that dividing electoral votes among states and awarding each state's electors to one of the primary candidates would be an effective system and one that would preserve our nation’s freedom. And so society blissfully forges on believing our current system of election is both impartial and up to date. But little do most American citizens know that they are lacking the knowledge and context to understand how malignant the Electoral College is. The Electoral College needs to be abolished because it ignores the popular vote and what most citizens want, it causes candidates to focus too much on swing states, and the old reasons for using are now irrelevant.

The voting process in America appears straightforward, but it is a very complex, complicated system. The Electoral College is America’s current voting system. The Electoral College still serves its intended purpose, but with increasing political activity among Americans it has caused a need to reform this process. Research suggests that the Electoral College system should be amended because it poorly illustrates democracy, is outdated and the majority of Americans are in favor of abolishing the system.

Every time there is an election in the United States, the debate of Electoral College always heats up, and suddenly everybody seems to know about or at least they are interested in learning about it. The Electoral College is firmly established under the United States Constitution to elect the president and the vice president of the United States indirectly. A slate of “electors” are chosen from each state, and they are the ones responsible for voting for president in the general elections depending on which party the candidate is vying with. From this statement, what it means is that one does not choose his or her preferred leader directly and this has made many suggestions that the Electoral College is not a true representation of democracy. This paper will look at the strongest arguments for and against the Electoral College, analyze whether the current Electoral College should be re-engineered or scrapped in favor of direct vote and finally determine if the Electoral College is consistent or contrary to democratic principle.

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.

In the “Point: Abolishing the Electoral College,” Benjamin Bolinger, a licensed lawyer who can practice law in Colorado and Pennsylvania, argues that the Electoral College needs to be abolished for the American democracy. Bolinger examines that some states with a little population have large number of electoral college compare to those states with larger populations. He believes that the Electoral College damages the value of democratic government by leaving

The Electoral College fails to accurately reflect the nation’s popular will; a group of less than 700 people can’t perpetually know the nation’s opinion, this results in plenty (perhaps a majority of) Americans being disconsolate with whom they have as a leader. The group fails to be

Politics: just the sound of this single word induces a variety of thoughts and facial expressions. Some embrace the inner workings of politics, while others leave the room immediately after hearing anything relating to it. Like it or not, politics is an integral part of the United States and affects our daily lives. Trying to avoid politics is like a stranded person in the desert swimming their way out of sand. Whether interesting or not, esteemed or despised, politics has become an especially frequent topic around the proverbial dinner table due to the recent presidential election. Among the most heated debates in the political scene arising from November’s election is whether the Electoral College should be abolished. Critics of the Electoral College contend the system is not a truly democratic tool and does not always reflect people’s will. However, others believe the Electoral College has performed sufficiently thus far. The Electoral College’s current format should be maintained because the Electoral College protects the nation from electing a president who appeals to only one region, ensures minority interests are still heard, and proposed alternatives for electing a president hold as many or more defects as the current Electoral College.

The Electoral College is one of those things that differentiate the American electoral process from the rest of the world. It is an old institution that has been fundamental to the American political system ever since the Declaration of Independence. There have been calls to disband this way of voting to join the rest of the world with the ordinary populace voting. During the month of November in a presidential election year, every state holds an election in which all citizens who qualify may participate. They cast a ticket for president and his vice president. After this voting, the winning party is allowed to choose a slate of

Rhetorical Analysis: The primary audience for this paper includes every citizen aged eighteen and above eligible to vote in the United States. The proposed topic mostly concerns these individuals due to the fact, they are affected by presidential voting institutions. Throughout this paper, I will be arguing in favor of the Electoral College, with an end goal of persuading my audience of the benefits of the system.

A debate has been brewing in recent years concerning the way we elect our president. The first system is the Electoral College, which is 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 contemplates the bill’s risks and costs are not worth the possibility of gains for certain states. The NPV believes that the US should adopt the National Popular Vote. NPV achieves well in making a clear and concise argument on why the Electoral College should be replaced. The first item that NPV discusses is the shortcomings of the current system. A smart move to describe everything that is wrong with the Electoral College and then immediately follow up with their idea. NPV displays how that the winner-take-all system is the root of the problem. The system allows for candidates to ignore states and candidates to win without popular vote nationwide. The argument is unblemished in the essay, but in the next essay that we read the author says NPV is promoting winner-take-all. Which is creating a problem on both sides of the argument and discredits, causing a weakness. NPV states, “presidential candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, or campaign in states that they cannot possibly win or lose” (Rourke, 145. Their argument is also supported by bringing up

Two hundred and twenty-nine years ago, our founding fathers had debated on which route to take when electing our President. In 1787, the “Committee of Eleven” had come to a compromise, and created the Electoral College, which is a group of individuals elected by the people to cast votes for the presidency. The Electoral College is described as “a compromise between election of the president by Congress and election by popular vote” (Price). The reason behind the Electoral College was to preserve “the sense of the people,” while ensuring that our president is chosen “by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under