Modern Election Arguments Against The Electoral College

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.”

The Electoral College has been instituted since 1787 and is a group of people that elect the United State President and Vice President. The United States citizens do not directly vote for the president, but their vote is considered by electors that have pledged to vote for the winning candidate. There are 538 electors which corresponds with the 100 senators and the 435 representatives plus 3 electors for the District of Columbia. An elector is nominated or appointed by their state’s party and are usually well connected. Congressmen and high ranking U.S. officials are prohibited from being electors. In most states they follow a “Winner takes all” format, where the elector votes for the candidate who wins the popular vote. The Electoral College systems is outdated and illogical for the present and should be abolished.

The political system many of us know today as the Electoral College is one that has been in place in our country for over 100 years. The Electoral College is a system that helps determine who is elected as President and Vice President during major elections. The Electoral College is the primary source of determining who is elected. This system although having withheld through the times and stayed in place is not effective to me, and can lead to unfair elections in the eyes of some American People.

The electoral college is a system that was put in place by the framers of the constitution for many reasons. The main reason the electoral college is that the framers did not fully trust democracy for they believed that people were not educated enough to vote. After reading an article from Business Insider called The Electoral College Is Brilliant, And We Would Be Insane To Abolish It by Walter Hickey, I agree that the electoral college is necessary for our presidential elections. According to the article the electoral college is good because it keeps errors local, is a testament to a candidate's desire to win, and most importantly, forces majority. In the article opposing the Electoral College I found many of the arguments to be invalid or full of what ifs or buts, and that is why I do not have any reason to believe the electoral college is good.

The Electoral College was created in 1787 to protect this country’s voting system. It is a group of 538 members that directly cast the votes to determine who the next president will be. (Green) However, the issues of the present day can’t help but wonder, is the Electoral College’s system outdated and corrupt? My dialogue’s purpose is to defend the Electoral College and show how it still protects us to this day by using evidence from the most recent 2016 election, and prove that it gave us the best candidate suited for the role of the President of the United States.

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.

In June of 1804 the states had ratified the Twelfth Amendment which enacted the Electoral College in time for the 1804 election. When election time comes, Americans vote for the President and Vice President who are chosen by Presidential electors, who as a whole are known as the Electoral College. As a decision was needed for a method of choosing candidates, the Constitutional Convention of 1787 contemplated many different ways of electing the President, but toward the end of the proposals and ideas the matter had to be taken to the Committee of Eleven on Postponed Matters which is the committee who conceived the original Electoral College. In recent years, much debate has been stirring regarding whether or not the Electoral College has a place within this country's elections. For many states this method of tallying and casting votes is great because every state receives a minimum of three electoral votes considering each state has two senators and at least one representative (Lewis). However, these minimum electoral votes make the distribution of electoral college votes uneven throughout the fifty states, making each American citizen's vote count less or much more which is cause for change. If the information on these weighted votes is analyzed it can be concluded that states with a population similar to Wyoming has one “elector” for every 177, 556 persons while Texas has one “elector” for every 715,499 persons. While the Electoral College has worked for generations, there are some negative factors that give cause to abolish this practice, such that are; faithless electors, the winner take all system, and finally, safe and swing states.

One of the greatest accomplishments in the history of the United States was the creation of the Constitution. It was created by the Framers who included many important and specific rules to make sure that the government would be able to sustain itself. The Idea of the Electoral College was first introduced in this constitution as a way to make sure that there was a buffer between the population and the selection of a President. They did not want a dictatorship to arise due to a manipulative candidate. In recent history, the Electoral College has been a very controversial topic. Many people do not agree with it and believe that it should be abolished due to varying factors such as the unequal distribution of votes per state. When the Framers first created the Electoral College, I believe that there hopes of what it would become have not been met and that they would not be pleased with it in today's government.

The Electoral College dates back to the very founding of America and American politics. The way to elect the President was a hotly contested issue at the Constitutional Convention. Many options were considered, including selection by Congress, selection by state governors, selection by state legislatures, and direct popular vote (Electoral College 6). The final decision of the Founding Fathers was written in Article II, Sections II and III of the US Constitution:

The Electoral College is a system that creates a compromise between the election of the president by a vote in congress and a popular vote from the citizens of the U.S. This results in a total of 538 electors from congress and to win the presidential election you must have over 270 Electoral votes. There is people who do not like the electoral college because the system is old fashioned and not democratic according to the two articles In Defense of the Electoral College by Richard A. Posner and Time to End the Electoral College by The New York Times. There is people who do agree with the Electoral College process. The Electoral College should not be abolished because the system gives an opportunity to political parties to express themselves in the American government, gives small states a chance in the elections, and the system is determined by the constitution. If presidential candidate does not get over 270 votes then the House of Representatives decides with votes from the top three other presidential candidates with the most electoral votes and same goes for vice presidential election except Senate decides with only top two.

“I’m sorry we ever invented the electoral college” Al Gore. Many think the electoral college is a great thing, others? Not so much. If you’re unaware of what the electoral college is, it’s a process, not a place. The founding fathers established it in the Constitution as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens. There’s pros and cons of the electoral college, and by the end of this essay you may decide if you’re for or against it.

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.

A change in the Electoral college should be the number of electoral votes for each state's. Now they are based on the population, for example the Electoral Vote chart shows the higher the population in each state the more electoral votes that state has. The less populated states have less Electoral votes than the bigger more populated states. (Doc. 2) This shows that the less populated a state is the less say the have with the voting. Each state needs to have the same number so that it is appointed accurately. This majority would help with which state and show that more of the population chose a certain candidate.

The Electoral College is the name given to a group of electors who are nominated by political activists and party members within the states. The electoral college really isn't necessary and should be abolished. There are numerous reasons why this is so. With the Electoral College in affect third parties don't have a chance to become the president, which isn't fair. Electors are expected to be honest but in the past our country has caught some untruthful ones. The electoral College was created so long ago that it is now outdated, so we shouldn't even have electors. People of the U.S. may think that they are participating in a direct election for the president, but with the Electoral College system

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.