Electoral College Research Paper

First off, what is the Electoral College? The Electoral College is the process put in place by our Founding Fathers in which America votes for its President and Vice President every four years. The Electoral College was put in place to help prevent abuse of power and corruption by having a separation of government. The Electoral College is made up of representatives from each state based on how many Senate and House of Representative delegates that state has. These numbers range from 3 to 54 with the total number of electors being 538. This system has taken much scrutiny over time. According to Lenz and Holman, “The Electoral College may be the least-known and most misunderstood government institution in the American political system.”

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.

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.

One might question why the country didn't just begin to elect their presidents with a direct election system. Was the idea never suggested? On the contrary, it was suggested before that of the Electoral College. The main reason the thought wasn't taken seriously is because, "…the worry was that, in a vast country with fitful communications, ordinary citizens were likely to know next to nothing about would-be Presidents from afar. Someone in, say, Georgia 'would be unable to assess the qualifications' of an aspiring President from Massachusetts, and thus couldn't vote intelligently," (Solomon). "The prospect of a direct popular vote also upset the small states, which spent the entire Constitutional Convention trying to stop the populous, powerful states (such as Virginia, New York, and Massachusetts) from taking over. When Gouverneur Morris suggested that the President "ought to be elected by the people at large," Roger Sherman of Connecticut offered a Bronx cheer. "The people at large," he

When the Founding Father first wrote the Constitution the only way news got around were the newspaper and written works or word of mouth. In the 1700s most Americans were illiterate and only learned about candidates for president by word of mouth which isn’t the most reliable source of information. So they created the Electoral college to “protect” the American public from their own ignorance. This is an outdated notion for the modern American citizen and the Electoral College should be removed from the constitution in favor of the popular vote because the Electoral College is not the Democracy the framers worked so hard to create, it creates disparency in representation, and voter decisions ultimately don’t matter.

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 should be abolished because it overpowers the people’s vote. As stated in the Document G in the presidential election in 1876, 1888, and 2000 the winner of the election didn’t actually win the popular vote. For example, in the presidential election in 1888, Hayes got 5,443,892 popular votes and 233 electoral votes. Tilden got 5, 534,488 electoral votes and 168 electoral votes. Given this evidence, the popular vote (the people’s votes) doesn’t actually count towards the actual election. The Electoral College is what actually decides the election. Therefore, if the majority of the people vote for a president, the president might not be chosen all because only the Electoral College votes count not the people’s. Furthermore, the population of Illinois was more than the population of the 12 states and the District of Columbia combined, yet Illinios only had 20 Electoral votes while those 12 states and the District of Columbia had 44 electoral votes, according to Document D. This proves that the Electoral College doesn’t make everyone’s vote equal. The votes of the people who live in the 12 states and

The Electoral College was established for minority votes to be heard, otherwise largely populated cities would overrule any votes for small towns. By abolishing The Electoral College we would no longer have a Republic Nation, and would be throwing away everything our forefathers stood for and become a Democratic Nation. The Electoral College is used to have minority votes have a second chance to be heard. By abolishing the Electoral College we are giving into dismantling federalism. By dismantling, and abolishing the Electoral College it will not only be a grave mistake, but also undermined the freedom of the minority.

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

Third, there was always a large portion of society that opposed the electoral voting system and took actions to abolish the Electoral College. Instead amendments were made to offset complaints.

538 is the sum of the nation’s 435 Representatives, 100 Senators, and 3 electors given to the District of Columbia.

Discuss the history of the Electoral College of the United States. Also, explain how it works: The United States Electoral College was created when the Constitution was ratified. The method was determined by a compromise between the Framers who wanted Congress to choose the president, and those who wanted citizens to pick (O’Connor & Sabato 276). Today, the minimum number of electoral votes is 3, because each state has 2 senators represented and at least one representative. If a candidate wins the majority of votes in that state (as in, 51% or more of the voters chose them), the candidate wins all of the votes for that state. If 60% of the voters in Florida choose a certain candidate, he or she would win all 29 of the votes. This is generally known as the “winner take all” system. A candidate needs to win

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 arguments to modify or eliminate the Electoral College system are all derived from the notion that it is outdated. Under the current system if a candidate wins a large states like California, then they win twenty percent of the needed votes even though California only accounts for eleven percent of the U.S. population. What's more is a president can be elected without winning a majority of the popular vote. This has happened 15 times in U.S. history. The