Electoral College Should Be Abolished

How would you react if you learned that the Presidential candidate you had cast your vote for, had actually received more of the popular vote than his competition, but was not elected the next President of the United States? Every four years in November over 90 million Americans vote for the presidential candidates, then in the middle of December the president and vice president of the United States are actually elected by the votes of only 538 citizens. Wouldn't you think there was an obvious flaw in the system? I would be willing to bet that the majority of you would, but in the case of the Electoral College apparently the majority doesn't count.

The outcome of the 2016 election left many Americans feeling confused, angry, cheated, and terrified of the future. Somehow, the sexist, racist, homophobic candidate Donald Trump had become the nation’s president, though Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton received the majority of popular vote. This raised many questions over the constitutionality of the Electoral College system, and whether it was unfair to the people of the United States. In the electoral system, created by the Founding Fathers due to their lack of trust in the people, the constituents of each state vote for their preferred candidate, and all of the state’s electoral votes go to the candidate with a majority. Clearly, the Electoral

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.

In my honest opinion, I think the electoral college should be done away with. People may disagree, but here’s my argument. When voting for a president, someone who is going to have a majority of the power in his/her hands, yes some people may think irrationally. But the founding fathers weren’t thinking about the future per say. They were only trying to make sure that for the next couple of years voting would be fair. Were they really thinking 100 years ahead? If we were to do away with the electoral college, we would’ve had a different president today. Instead of making our nation happy, we try to mask the fact that we’re being unfair, while trying to be fair. When a majority of people vote for one candidate, and the other candidate wins, people get upset. We didn’t want to give power to high-populated states, The two main political parties can count on winning the electoral

The Electoral College has been around since 1787 and is how the United States elects the president and vice president. Many people support the Electoral College because the Founding Fathers thought it was the only way to have a democracy without completely trusting the people to elect the president. The Electoral College process is stated in the Constitution so many people think it is the only way to elect the president. Many critics of the Electoral College call it out on the fact that a candidate can win a popular vote but not the presidency. This actually contradicts the fact that the United States is supposed to be a democracy. Many people, including myself, think that the downfalls of the Electoral College vastly outweigh the benefits, so the Electoral College should be abolished. Instead the United States should elect the president based solely on the national popular vote.

In the debate about whether or not we should abolish the electoral college, my concern, as well as so many others, is not on the small/big states or Democrat/Republican states, it is about what the people want. More importantly, it is about equality in every vote cast in a presidential election. With the current system in place, it is impossible for this to be achieved. The electoral college should be abolished because of the unfair distribution of electors per state and coverage of states in the presidential run, refusal to give the people what they want, and because it is no longer relevant or needed.

The Founders built certain protections for individual rights into this country's founding documents. The United States Constitution was one such document. In particular, such protections guard Americans who hold minority viewpoints from those who side with the majority. For example, the First Amendment protects the right of free speech to ensure that people who hold unpopular views have just as much freedom to express those views as do people who tend to agree with the majority. The United States Constitution, therefore, was intended to protect the individual rights of Americans from a tyrannical government and majority. However, today, the Electoral College does not represent the vibrant democracy into which the United States has grown.

Every 4 years, our country makes an incredibly important decision. We vote for the person who will represent the US in all domestic and international affairs; The President. Currently, we have many troops in Iraq fighting to help them establish a democracy. We are giving the citizens a right to vote, a privilege that many people claim we are lucky to have. In actuality, how democratic is our system overall? What many people don't realize or care to face, is we don't directly vote for our president. In 2000, the majority of us voted for a President who in the end was not determined the winner. There are many other corruptions in our current electoral system, including the underlying racist and sexist roots, voter inequality and other flaws

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

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 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.

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.

It has now become a system that is being grossly used by major political parties. I believe for the U.S. to continue its prosperity the electoral college perhaps need to be changed or possible abolished. One solutions which may seem a bit excessive is to abolish the electoral college. This as I said can be seen being a bit brash, however this would solve the desperation that many feel when they vote. Abolishing the electoral vote would give the people of the U.S more power in who will lead this country. Because people would feel that their vote matter, it can help bust voter turnout, which has been a problem for years. While abolishing the elector college would give the people a purer democracy, it may cause some issues that Guelzo and Hulme point out, which is that taking the electoral college off might then cause bigger issues as having the senate and house of representatives become useless, thus causing an unbalance of power in the government. However, this can be remedied by changing how many senators and house representatives each state get. Each state should get an equal number of senators and representatives no longer giving each state than other states. Doing this would keep from one political party of having full power in the government then the other. This solution I believe would benefit the U.S. the most, but there is a different solution that might be easier to

To begin with, the electoral college is an undemocratic system in which the popular vote isn’t taken into account because it all depends on the electoral vote. A fair democratic system would be if the candidate that wins the popular vote also wins the electoral vote because the people should have the power to choose and have a voice. For instance in the election of 1888 Jackson won the popular vote with 5,534,488 but lost the electoral vote to Harrison who won 233 electoral votes; therefore showing that the vote of the people does not matter (Doc G).This example reflects that the power to elect president relies on the electoral vote meaning the senators and representatives. Overall the electoral college must be abolished because the presidency must be won by the people’s votes because they are

The abolishment of the electoral college has been a highly debated political topic since it was first established by our founding fathers. The Electoral College is a voting system that was put in place by the founding fathers back in 1787. When voters casts their ballots, they are actually voting for the presidential electors. Each state is guaranteed at least 3 electoral votes. The number of electors a state has is equivalent to the number of representatives they have plus the 2 seats in Senate.In total there are 538 electoral votes; including the 3 from D.C. electors. However the Presidential candidates need at least 270 votes to win the election. However, this electoral system has created quite an uproar among people since the last election. The electoral college has limited democracy to people in three major ways: by having the ability to alter results of the election over the popular vote, discriminating candidates to campaign in certain states, and subsidize the decline in voter turnout.