Governing Vs. Voting System In The United States

In government, we have two types of Democracies, we have the elite democracy and the popular democracy. The elite democracy believes that the power should rest on the few elite members of society that are chosen by the people. The popular democracy on the other hand, believes that the people should be able to rule themselves and have a say on issues that take place. There are different ways that the Elite democracy and Popular Democracy, might take place within the constitution, Federal system, and the system of powers which are the three branches of government.

    The supremacy clause states that the United States Constitution, treaties, federal laws, and federal regulations are the supreme law of the land, if this didn’t exist then states would have more power over the federal government.

Since the electoral vote is partially based on the state’s representatives in the House, the most populated states have more votes. This can be evidenced above with the four most populated states in the nation, California, Texas, Florida and New York, having the four highest electoral votes in the nation. The question of to whom the state’s electoral votes go to is decided by an elector. An elector is someone who decides to which candidate the state’s electoral votes goes to, electors are instructed to award the votes to whomever wins the state popular vote. However, electors can go against these instructions. Most electors pledge to keep to those instructions but sometimes an elector will cast the state’s electoral against the instructions, these electors are known as “faithless” electors. Due to “faithless” electors, nine electoral votes have been cast against instruction since 1820. Thankfully, none of these votes changed the outcome of any election.

The electoral vote allotment is based on the population of each state, collected from the census. This method of division leads to severe imbalances between the decisions of small states and the decisions of the larger states. In 2010, Alaska, Delaware, DC, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Montana, North Dakota, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming had a total amount of 44 electoral votes. Illinois, a single state, had 20. This means that one sole state had as many electoral votes as six states put together. While the electoral system is usually unfair to smaller states, in the case of ties, the larger states suffer the most. When the electoral vote is tied, each state can only cast one vote for the final decision, meaning that a “representative from Wyoming, representing 500,000 voters, would have as much say as the 55 representatives from California, who represent 35 million voters,” according to Bradford Plumer, author of the article “The Indefensible Electoral College.” No matter what happens during the election, one group is always being cheated out of their rightful votes. The choice of our country’s leader should not be based on a system that is unfair to a specific group of voters simply due to their state

Since California has a high population, this gives an advantage over other states which makes an election very unequal. The Electoral College favor citizens over others. According to Document D, George Howard states that the Electoral College “... Is not a neutral counting device.. (I)t favors some citizens over others.”

This occurs because of the extreme difference of population between the two states, with Wyoming only having one-hundred and ninety-five citizens while California has roughly thirty-nine million. Through the electoral college a vote is worth more purely based off location, and due to the existence of swing states this distortion is even greater. A microcosm of this event can be seen in a majority of cities, with are primarily made of non-whites. And because the nation's population is growing, with city growth being much more rapid than suburban and rural growth, the urban vote will carry less weight in the Electoral college system than the smaller less populated

California receives 55 electoral votes, and each singular vote accounts for 712,000 people. However, Wyoming receives 3 electoral votes, and one of those singular votes accounts for 195,000 people. Based on the way the Electoral College is supposed to work, Wyoming is slightly over represented and California is extremely underrepresented. No states get an accurate amount of votes (H). This completely defeats the purpose of “equality among states”. “While the electoral college is based on population, only a fraction of that population is eligible to vote — and even a smaller portion actually votes” (M). The way this system works, leaves out almost half the population, making the Elected President most likely false. Due to the fact that many people have strong opinions on both sides of the argument, there are those that will say the Electoral College encourages coalition building (G). But, what is coalition building anyway? The word ‘coalition’ defines as an alliance in order to achieve a common purpose. Throughout the entirety of the 2016 Election, there has been continuous riots, marches, and protests online or in person that prove that statement to be false. If there was a time that the Electoral College should have worked, it would be

Larger states, like California and Texas, are a main focus for candidates because of the number of electoral votes that they would earn. Also, a president can be elected, even if he or she does not represent the ideas or opinions of the people. In rare cases, a president can win the popular vote and lose the electoral college vote. “If this is the case, the very large margins secured by the losing candidate in the other states would add up to over 50% of the ballots cast nationally. Therefore, the losing candidate may have gained more than 50% of the ballots cast by voters,” says “Does Your Vote Count? The Electoral College Explained”. If the people vote for a particular candidate, that candidate should be president. Finally, people who disagree with their states are not represented due to the “‘winner take all’” system. A person may vote for the democratic candidate but the republican

It basically means that the will of the people of California (55 electors) is worth 18 times more than that of the people of Alaska (3 electors), and 11 times more than that of New Mexico (5 electors). [5] The Electoral College is arguably based on the premise that the Americans of some states are more fit to make the right choice than others, which could be seen as a generalization, especially taking into account their disproportional

The Constitution Convention of 1787 gave birth to the system of Electoral College. According to the Constitution, electors per state are equal to the number of seats each state holds in the Congress, which include the Senate and the House of Representative delegations. California holds the most Electoral which is 54 electors. However, with every census the numbers of each states electoral change due to the process called reapportionment. Reapportionment can be defined as the “the process by which congressional districts are redrawn and seats are redistributed among states in the house ; reapportionment occurs every ten years.” The Electoral College should not be preserved because it is unfair due to the fact that candidates who do not win plurality of the votes can still get electoral votes. It is unfair to depend on the 538 Electors to become the voice of three hundred and nineteen million people.

Every state gets one electoral vote based on the number of members in the House of Representatives and two extra points for its two senators. This system allows a candidate to not get enough popular votes but get enough electoral votes and still win the election as shown by the Presidential Election of 2000. If a popular vote was enacted, the process would be more democratic. The Electoral College also manipulates presidential campaigns. For example let’s take a Republican named X. Assume that Minnesota, Maine, and Nebraska tend to vote for Republicans. Mr. X will not spend much time campaigning in those states but will focus his efforts on swing states. Mr. X will visit those states more and spend more money campaigning there. To gather votes, Mr. X will disproportionately focus on important issues in that state. To carry Florida, Mr. X will have to earn the support of senior citizens, Latinos, farmers that grow citrus crops, and other influential bodies of

Many common fallacies exist in alternative arguments to the electoral college such as the idea that the popular vote would give more influence to the voters. This is false in the case of California. If you divide California 55 electoral votes by 270 which is the number of votes you need to win you get 20.4 percent.California's electoral votes influence is represented by this percentage. Hypothetically if we used a popular vote system we could use her 8.7 million votes she received and divided it by the number of votes it would of took to beat Trump in a popular vote which would be about 63 million. This percentage out to 13.8 percent and would represent how much influence california would have in a popular vote race. As you can see numbers

As stated earlier, the electoral votes each state has is equal to the amount of seats in the Senate, plus the number of the seats they have in the House of Representatives. While each state has two Senate seats, House seats are distributed by the population size of the state. Due to this, the average vote of a person in California is worth much more than the average vote of a person in Wisconsin. This dilemma causes people in smaller states to feel as if they do not have a strong hand in the election. Furthermore, the fact that presidential candidates are able to visualize this inequality causes them to neglect smaller states during election season.

The Electoral College in the United States picks electors lawfully inside every state to choose the president after a presidential decision by the general population. Each state has numerous presidential voters, and the same number of as the delegates in both houses and congress. In total, there are 538 members of the Electoral College. The different states have various numbers of representatives. California has the largest number of electors, 54. This is because there are 54 members in the congress who represent the people in the state. New York has 33 electors, Texas has 32, and Florida has 25, Pennsylvania with 23, and Ohio with 21. There are advantages as well as disadvantages to the Electoral College, depending on how you look at the situation;

The permanent campaign is the idea that “election season” is never ending, and that campaigns for re-election begin soon after a candidate takes office. In order to stay in office, politicians began starting their campaign for re-election from the beginning of their term. Rather than solely focusing on their role as an elected official, politicians also pay attention to their image and other strategies focused on building up their resume to get themselves re-elected.