Over the course of American history, the electoral college has frequently been a controversial portion of the American political system, especially in with the recent election of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. Clinton lost the election, despite winning the popular vote by roughly three million votes. This election’s outcome although unique in its politics, isn’t at all rare within U.S. Political History, winning the election without the popular vote previously occurred four times. Recently, this has sparked notable discussion of the abolition of the electoral college, a move that would greatly benefit American politics. While some would argue the foundation of the college are sound, the actual origins are actually erroneous, and …show more content…
When the direct election of a national leader was first posed at a national convention in Philadelphia, the father of the Constitution, James Madison denied the request. He said in his justification, “The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes.” In plain language if a direct democracy was put in place, the North would outnumber the South, because slaves, who were roughly half of the South couldn’t vote. Though the electoral college, allowed for southern states to count its forty percent of their slaves, in the calculation of its population, hence its electors. Essentially, the electoral college is a dated, non-functional system designed for a time in the United
States where owning another human was acceptable. On this merit alone the college must go. In addition to the argument of the electoral college being justified in existence on dated principle, it is
Many people have questioned why the founding fathers implemented the use of the electoral college process and a good assumption would be that the they were quite intentional in rejecting a direct election process mindset and we also have to take into account that as they were crafting our entire constitution. They established the Electoral College in the Constitution as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and the election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens. They were not trying to create a pure democracy, but had the difficult issue of having to incorporate
The Electoral College is an excuse of the electoral process, proving itself to be undemocratic, false in representation, and harmful to third-parties. Therefore, the Electoral College should be abolished, and the process should rely on the popular vote to have the leading judgement in the election procedure for a new president. The Electoral College has proven that a candidate may not need to win the popular vote of the people of the nation in order to win the presidential election. But first, beforehand, let me introduce the system in which the Electoral Process is based upon. The Electoral Process is the government’s created system of indirect voting in order to elect the nation’s president.
Most states are always republican or democratic in the way they vote. So the amount of votes is already in favor of one candidate or another before voting actually arrives.(Document 7). Since the candidates are always insured a certain number of votes, the candidates only have to worry about “swing states” or states that change their decisions every election. Since the non-swing states never decide in favor of one candidate or the other by themselves the power to elect a new president resides with whom the citizens of swing states vote for. Without an electoral college, each citizen's vote would be worth more and everyone could help determine a new president instead of the select few who are living in “swing states.” All of these reasons help to make it clear that the electoral college is a corrupt
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.
Research suggests that the Electoral College system should be amended because it poorly illustrates democracy, is outdated and
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.
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.
Established in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, the Electoral College is a system utilized in The United States of America to select the President and Vice President. This process was established by the Founding Fathers in 1787, when the Constitution was written. The original purpose of the electoral system was to ensure that those who select the leaders of this nation were the most knowledgeable and informed people that America had to offer. The electors - the elected officials that make up the Electoral College - are elected to office through a general election wherein the entire national population has the right to vote. The President of the United States, however, is actually elected to office by the Electoral College only, regardless of the popular vote of the citizens in general. Thus, the Presidential election is the only federal election in our nation where the vote of the citizenry does not directly determine the victor. Despite the fact that this electoral system has been in place and operational for over two hundred years, the Electoral College is looked upon by some as an honorable system, whereas others view it as faulty. The Electoral College is not fair and equitable because it is based on population, it is not trusted by the people, and it is unjust to the wishes of the citizens.
The Electoral College is the system established by the Founding Fathers to select the President of the United States. It is important that Americans have a fundamental knowledge of this system, and the obstacles overcame in its development. There were many obstacles faced by the Founding Fathers while constructing the government. America was comprised of 13 states that wanted to protect their individual rights and leery of a strong centralized government. The nation’s population lay across a vast area with limited communication capabilities. In addition, the Founders believed that a true gentleman should not campaign for office. “The office should seek the man, the man should not seek the office” was the saying. They challenged themselves
To begin, Pro number one is that the founding fathers “enshrined” the electoral college in the constitution because they believed it’d be the best method in choosing a president. The electoral college was used as
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
In the “Point: Abolishing the Electoral College,” Benjamin Bolinger, a licensed lawyer who can practice law in Colorado and Pennsylvania, argues that the Electoral College needs to be abolished for the American democracy. Bolinger examines that some states with a little population have large number of electoral college compare to those states with larger populations. He believes that the Electoral College damages the value of democratic government by leaving
The original framers of the constitution obviously preferred the electoral system to a direct popular election. The argument that historians give for this is that they preferred this system
Two hundred and twenty-nine years ago, our founding fathers had debated on which route to take when electing our President. In 1787, the “Committee of Eleven” had come to a compromise, and created the Electoral College, which is a group of individuals elected by the people to cast votes for the presidency. The Electoral College is described as “a compromise between election of the president by Congress and election by popular vote” (Price). The reason behind the Electoral College was to preserve “the sense of the people,” while ensuring that our president is chosen “by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under