How Much Power and Liberty Did the Constitution Give to "The People?"

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.”

Each state can have no less than 3 electors. This is because they get an elector for every chair they fill in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Because all states have two Senate members and at least one House member, we see why. All together, including all of our nation's states we have an Electoral College consisting of 538 members. In order for a candidate to actually become the President he must obtain at least 270 electoral votes, giving him the majority plus one (Glennon 19). Because we use the Electoral College, it has come to occur on numerous occasions that a candidate with a higher percentage of the popular vote is defeated by his political opponent by the electoral tally (Glennon 19), thus defeating the purpose of a Democracy. A Democracy exists if we the people have "the right to self- governance." "American 'democracy' has existed for over 200 years, and citizens are ready, as they have been for decades, if not centuries, to finally control their own country" ("Electoral College Problems"). Therefore the use of the Electoral College is completely useless and should be abandoned to the idea of the popular vote. If not completely thrown out, then altered by an amendment.

A constitution is a written document that sets forth the fundamental rules by which a society is governed. Throughout the course of history the United States has lived under two Constitutions since the British-American colonies declared their independence from Great Britain in 1776. First in line was the Articles of Confederation (1789-1789) followed by the Constitution of United States of America (1789-present). The Articles of Confederation was the first formal written Constitution of America that specified how the national government was to operate. Unfortunately, the Articles did not last long. Under the words of the Article’s power was limited; Congress could make decisions, but had no power to enforce them. Also the articles stated

A constitution is the system of fundamental principles according to which a nation is governed. Our founding fathers created the US Constitution to

The Electoral College makes it possible for citizens’ votes in certain states to essentially not matter at all. Since all of the electoral votes go toward the candidate that wins the popular vote in a state, if a state has a majority of people who vote for a certain party and a voter votes for the other party, his vote does not have any effect on the election outcome. The Electoral College system is leaving hundreds of thousands of vote’s discounted and irrelevant. The Electoral College twists each vote’s worth per state, causing the nation’s desires to be misrepresented. The Electoral College does not always show a distribution of support. A candidate could win the electoral votes

Before we talk about replacing the Electoral College, we must understand how it works. The Electoral College consists of total 538 electoral votes. Of the 538, 425 votes go to the House of Representatives, 100 votes to the Senate, and 3 go to District of Columbia, granted to them by the Twenty-third Amendment to the constitution. In the Electoral College system, each state is given a set number of electoral votes. The number of electoral votes a state receives is determined by the state population from the latest census records. On Election Day we are voting directly for the electors, not the presidential candidates. So who are these elector that choose our president and how are they selected? An elector can be any person except for a “Senator or Representative or any person holding federal office” (Edwards III 3). Each state has its own method of selecting an elector.

The U.S. Constitution is the document of the principles and system of the United States government. It covers the goals of the new government, the system and purpose of each branch, how the states will work, how to amend the constitution, the supremacy of the national government, and the process of ratification. The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of America, that must be followed by everyone. The Constitution of the United States was established at the 1787 Constitutional Convention and signed in 1787. The Constitution is the structure of America, it tells us how everything will work in this nation of ours. Without the Constitution, there would not be any specified rules of how this country is set up and how it works. The Constitution makes us who we are today, it establishes our system of government, our rules of what we can and can’t do, what the government can do for the people, and how everything in America is set up.

The Electoral College system was created in the constitution by the Founding Fathers. This system forms the beginning of the United States' national elections and is therefore, considered to be important to this country's history. It is made up of 538 members and a candidate must receive a majority of 270 electoral votes to win the election. Electors usually get selected to one of the presidential candidates running. When people go to the ballot on voting day and pick their favorite candidate, they are really choosing the electors for their state and then the electors are the ones that vote for the president. The Electoral College should be revised or abolished because it is both undemocratic, is not beneficial to the nation, and may weaken the validity of elections and the elected President.

The Electoral College does not create the democracy that the framers were so adamant about creating. With the Electoral College the Electors look at the results of the popular vote in their state but even then they decide whether or not to follow it. Even though the electoral college hasn’t matched the popular vote only 5 times in history, having the college does not give the authentic

The Electoral College was created 200 years ago and times have definitely changed. People are well educated these days, and have a better understanding of the whole election process. Two centuries ago people didn't have TV, radio, news broadcasting, or the internet. These are all good sources that to supply us with more than enough coverage of the elections at hand. The whole system makes no sense, because depending on how big a state is, depends on how many electors that state has. The smaller the state, the more electors it has. It should be the other way around. Also population density has changed over time.

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 a group with too much power, so much power that they cause the average citizen’s vote for president to fail to be significantly substantial, and that needs quite a few changes. The Electoral College believes that they can accurately reflect not only the nation’s desideratum, the group also believes they can reflect the nation’s absolute need. This is a democratic government and an American citizen deserves to have an irrefutable say in who he or she wants as a leader; the country might be a better place to live in if that were to happen; perhaps this generation might not experience it.

The Electoral College is the United States' archaic process of electing presidents. It was established in the Constitution as a compromise between election by Congress and election by popular vote. Each state is given a specific number of electors based on the number of its U.S. Representatives and Senators (NARA). This allows for over-representation of small states and under-representation of large states, while the winner-takes-all format followed by most states could result in a candidate winning the popular vote but losing the election (NARA). This has actually happened on four separate occasions, leaving four black marks on the nation's history (NARA). Despite these mishaps and constant calls for reform, the faulty system remains in

The Constitution of the United States of America was the solution to fix the weaknesses that Articles of Confederation had caused the United States. The Constitution not only helped the United States gain more power but it also unified the states and creates a sense of nationalism. The Constitution eradicated any justification that the United States was weak and inferior. However, there are some constituents of the constitution that suggests that the constitution is not as honorable as it may seem. To what extent is the Constitution of the United States a “repressive” document? Certain aspects of the constitution exhibit how the authors of the constitution

The Constitution of the United States of America created a system called the Electoral College where it outlines the rules in which we elect the President of the United States of America. As stated in Article 2, Section 1 of the U. S. Constitution created the Electoral College. Each state receives as many electoral votes as it has senators and representatives. Therefore, each state, including the District of Columbia, will have at least three electors. This is the vision of the Constitution. Now the problem arises when all the Electoral votes from one state are given to the popular winner for that state. This causes a with people’s right to chose their leader as votes of the people that voted for the losing candidate are tossed in the trash. All this while giving the state the ultimate power to elect the president.