French Politics: Should The Presidencial Term Be Reduced?

The system is obsolete owing to the new methods of research and becoming aware of issues as well as faster sharing of information for the Americans to know any presidential candidate. Besides, United States of America has witnessed growth almost in every aspect of life and has shown the ability to handle new developments articulating the strength of the country to establish and manage a new electoral system. The reality that most of the states do not have laws requiring electors to vote according to the will of their state, the electors are unbound thus the system create the possibility of rogue electors. Also, the system presents a situation where the presidential election winner is determined by the House of Representatives causing disenfranchising a significant number of voters.

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.

Many people argue that the Electoral College is an outdated system. After all, many things have changed in the last two centuries. For one, technology is much more advanced now than it was two hundred years ago. With the internet and television, we can now learn everything about a candidate regardless of where the come from in the nation. It is feasible to have direct election of a president because of these improved methods of communication and the evolution of technology in general.

In 1787, the framers of the constitution assembled and decided how the new nation would elect its president. It took the framers little less than a month to accomplish this task. During that month they considered various methods ranging from direct election of the president, to selection by legislators, to selection by electors. Finally, they settled on selection by electors, most commonly known as Electoral College. There were various reasons why Electoral College ultimately won out. We will explore some of the reason later in this essay. I believe that the reasons which were legitimate at the time are no longer valid and the time has come for us to replace the Electoral College with a system

The validity and necessity of the Electoral College has been questioned approximately since it was formed in the Constitution. Many different events in history, such as the president having a vice president from the opposite party, and the electoral college electing a president that didn’t win the popular vote has caused this to be an area of controversy. After looking into the origin of this system, how it works, and societal and technological changes that have occurred in the past 200 years, one can see why the Electoral College isn’t needed in this day and age.

After reading about Britain’s parliamentary system, as well having a familiarity with the United States presidential system, the French semi-presidential system is more effective than the United State’s system, and I would prefer this system. The semi-presidential system is a bit more complicated than every other system I have learned about. The French system uses a mixture of the premier as well as the president. Under the president is the cabinet and ministries. The president serves as a guide for the nations versus a supreme leader (Roskin 87-8). I would prefer this system to the United States system. This is because of the advantages of the semi-presidential system. Some of the advantages include the fact that the president and the parliament do not serve the same amount of time on their terms. If there are people serving on each side who are not serving to the best of their ability, they can be taken out of power. It would not be at the same time, which is an advantage because the ideas of the new person serving could work with the ideas of the person serving along with them. This way, a whole fresh set of new ideas does not come in at one time. The president currently can serve two consecutive five-year terms, while the prime minister has no outlined term limits. For the prime minister to stay in power they must maintain the support of the National Assembly. (Roskin 80-82). There are new ideas flowing in either every five years or every ten. This is just one advantage to this system. Another advantage to the semi-presidential system is the multitude of ideas that are able to come through. There are so many people who are able to contribute to the semi-presidential system, that every voter’s idea should be represented. On the other hand, a disadvantage to the semi-presidential system is the fact that there are multiple representatives. The multitude of representatives can have too many ideas, and it can be hard to get things accomplished when all of their ideas are pinned against each other. Overall, I would prefer this method of governance because despite the multitude of ideas, more is able to get accomplished.

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 election of 1800 changed the system because each political party nominated candidates for president and vice president.

Additionally another reason why the Electoral college has not been reformed is because it provides a clear winner with no coalition being formed, the last time the system failed to provide a clear winner was 1800 and 1824 unlike the UK where a coalition was formed between the Conservative and Liberal Democrats because there was no single part that had gained a majority. However the system has proved controversial it terms of the legitimacy the president. For example the 2000 presidential elections was won by Al Gore, that is Al Gore got more votes than

Creating the Electoral College system proved trying because “the Founders struggled to satisfy each state’s demand for greater representation while attempting to balance popular sovereignty against the risk posed to the minority from majoritarian rule” (Destroying the Electoral College: The Anti-Federalist National Popular Vote Scheme). They overcame these difficulties and tried to satisfy both small and large states. The disagreement that paved the way for the Electoral College was whether Congress should choose the president or if the masses should vote. In the end, the three reasons for which the Electoral College was created were: to “work without political parties, cover both the nominating and electing phases of presidential selection, and produce a nonpartisan president” (American Government: Roots and Reform, O’Connor, Yanus, and Sabato). These essential rationales prove that the Electoral College cannot be done away with by amending the

Every country has its own agenda for its people and purpose for it’s military. Looking at the world nations, France is one of the most advanced nations that are currently an ally to the United States (US). Looking at the political, economic, and military situation of France can best describe the type of ideals and direction of focus the society has and will continue to have over the next few years or more.

“The Constitution’s framers chose a unique and complex method of selecting the president, one that clearly violates fundamental tenets of political equality and majority rule” (Edwards, 78). There were concerns that information could not travel across state lines. There was a concern that States would put forward their candidates above a national candidate and put regional interests ahead of national ones. There was also a concern that smaller states would be overshadowed and overwhelmed by states with larger populations. Although the country only had a population of 4 million when the framers first decided to outline the electoral system it would be a daunting task to implement a system of popular vote. “Aside from modest statutory changes, the Electoral College has not been structurally changed by Constitutional amendment since 1804” (Miller, 61). The times have changed and now democracy is possible. It makes no sense to have a country which is constantly growing and evolving be stuck so thoroughly in the past. There is a national education system that creates informed voters. With all the various forms of media information can be easily disseminated quickly across the entire nation. The nation can and will come together if given an opportunity.

Over 2 centuries ago the united states constitution was created, inside the constitution a system called the electoral college was defined. Throughout the years of the electoral college's existence many have disputed the system and said it flawed. 700 amendments to neither abolish or change the electoral college have been made, a better alternative has not yet been found. Further proving the Electoral college is the best structure to electing the U.S president.

After the Revolution in France, the old absolutist monarchy was replaced by the Constitution of 1791, and King Louis XVI was forced to share power with an elected legislative body in the new constitutional monarchy. In a rather

The modern French government is a unique political entity like no other in history. In my research paper I aim to show that while France's system of government appears democratic it is in actuality not. I plan to demonstrate it is more of an oligarchy than a polyarchy, polyarchy being fundamentally necessary for democracy. Drawing on research from conflict theorists I plan to show that France is not truly democratic. I plan to first draw a parallel between research on France as a pluralist state and Robert Dahl's New Haven study by showing that France like New Haven appears to be a pluralist democracy. I then plan to show just as G. William Domhoff did with Dahl's original study, that the same inequality in power exists in France as in New