The Electoral College has been around since the Constitution was first written and has been controversial ever since it was started. The process of electing a president includes the Electoral College, which has a rich and interesting history; there are many arguments for and against the College, but the way the Electoral College works now is not representative of the country’s opinion as a whole. The Electoral College is the way the United States chooses a president and it has a rich and interesting history. The Electoral College consists of 538 electors, who are selected by the political parties in each state and voted for in the general election. “When the voters in each state cast votes for the Presidential candidate of their choice, …show more content…
The Electoral elects the President of the United States through a complicated process that has not changed much throughout the 200 years it has been around. There are many advantages of the Electoral College. First, the existence of the Electoral College allows states with a smaller population to have a larger role in the general election. For example, Wyoming does not have enough people in the state to significantly influence an election. However, because it has 3 electoral votes, it can play a role in candidate’s campaigns. “Without the Electoral College, issues pertinent to Wyomans would not likely make it to the national conversation during presidential campaign season” (Wilcox). In 2012, Republican nominees focused on the issue of military bases to gain the electoral votes from South Carolina and Florida (Wilcox). Without the Electoral College, the nominees may have never learned and advocated for that and many more issues. Next, the Electoral College allows for a two-party system. Third-party candidates can only gain the electoral votes from a state if they win the plurality of votes from that state. This is very unlikely because third-parties do not receive the funding and media attention that Republicans or democrats receive. This is positive because it creates more stability in the United States government and citizens are not overwhelmed by all of the parties and their issues. Also, the small
The Electoral College has been instituted since 1787 and is a group of people that elect the United State President and Vice President. The United States citizens do not directly vote for the president, but their vote is considered by electors that have pledged to vote for the winning candidate. There are 538 electors which corresponds with the 100 senators and the 435 representatives plus 3 electors for the District of Columbia. An elector is nominated or appointed by their state’s party and are usually well connected. Congressmen and high ranking U.S. officials are prohibited from being electors. In most states they follow a “Winner takes all” format, where the elector votes for the candidate who wins the popular vote. The Electoral College systems is outdated and illogical for the present and should be abolished.
Though our founding fathers created the Electoral College over 200 years ago, it has been changed with time to accommodate modern needs and is still an important and necessary part of our electoral system. The Electoral College ensures political stability in our nation by encouraging the two-party system and also protects the interests of minorities. Furthermore, the Electoral College helps maintain a united country by requiring widespread popular support of a candidate in order for him or her to become president.
Another problem surrounding the Electoral College system is that it allows one-party states, states that almost always go to one party. In this context, a Democrat who casts a vote in a mostly Republican state feels that his vote is wasted because of no way that state will be won by a Democrat. Besides, the system is based on two-party elections, the Democrat and the Republican leaving Americans with two candidates to choose (Belenky, 364). The voters end up picking the candidate with fewer issues rather than the one they support. In my opinion, people feel that Electoral College has single-handedly defeated
Beginning in America in 1787, the Electoral College was originally created during the Constitutional Convention to help make a fair way for the president to be elected without giving too much power to either the national government or individual states. Over the years, the Electoral College has undergone a few changes in attempt to make it more fair, but there is still much debate about whether or not the Electoral College is the most effective way to elect a president. Some people believe that the Electoral College does an excellent job of creating an equal distribution of votes across all ethnicities and social classes of America. In contrast, others think that the Electoral College does not give an accurate portrayal of the popular
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.
Electing government officials is a major part of being an American. The citizens of the United States have the privilege of voting for their officials , representing America’s democracy. Although a big misconception on this is that the people actually do not vote directly for who becomes elected president but rather who gets to elect the next president. The Electoral College has been in place since 1804 and continues to be the system the United States uses to elect the president. The Electoral College is filled with history, a lengthy process , and questionable arguments on its validity.
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
In order to fully understand the underlying problems of the Electoral College we have to look back at the time that the idea of the Electoral College itself was proposed and see how the culture of the time and the ideologies of the people involved helped shaped the final outcome. Life today is much different than it was two hundred odd something years ago, and it’s fair to say that the political ideals and social norms around our society have changed drastically.
The Electoral College is the name for the electors who nominally choose the president and vice president of the United States. Each of the states receives a certain number of electors, which is determined by the total number of senators and representatives it sends to the U.S. Congress. Therefore, each state has at least 3 electors. The Electoral College was devised by the Framers of the Constitution as a procedure to elect the president by the people, at least indirectly. The framers came up with this procedure for many reasons. Such reasons included the lack of information to make a good choice by the people and it was also a way to control the power of the people. Although the Electoral
The Electoral College is the system used in America to nominate the president and vice president. The Electoral College entails Voters to go to the polls and they will be choosing which candidate receives their state 's electors. The candidate who receives a majority of electoral votes which is 270 wins the Presidency. The number 538 is the sum of the nation 's 435 Representatives, 100 Senators, and 3 electors given to the District of Columbia. There are many reasons as to why the system has not been reformed and in this essay I will elaborate on this further.
The Electoral College is a constitutional system written in 1787, in this system “each state selects as many electors as it has representatives in Congress”, members of the college casts ballots for individuals, the individual with the most electoral votes becomes the President of the United States (Shelley 80). It is
What is the Electoral College? The Electoral College is a system that our Founding Fathers established in the Constitution in which representatives from the 50 states elect the President of the United States. The system begins with the people electing representatives to represent them, and then the representatives meet so they can vote for the next President and Vice President. The votes from each representative are then counted by Congress and are able to elect the candidate that has the most votes. According to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (2013), “The Electoral College consists of 538 electors…270 electoral votes is required to elect the President.” Every state has an
Electoral College is a block, or weighed, voting system that is designed to give more power to the states with more votes, but allows for small states to swing an election, as happened in 1876. Under this system, each state is assigned a specific number of votes that is proportional to its population, so that each state's power is representative of its population. So, while winning the popular vote may not ensure a candidate's victory, a candidate must gain popular support of a particular state to win the votes in that state. The goal of any candidate is to put together the right combination of states that will give him or her 270 electoral votes.
The Electoral College is the process in which electors vote for the president of the United States.
Under the current system there are five hundred and thirty eight electors. Each state gets one elector, each representative, and a senator. A presidential candidate needs two hundred and seventy votes to win the election. The electors meet after the November popular election to cast their votes and officially elect the president. Electors may vote for whomever they wish. Each state's electoral votes are awarded on a winner take all bases.