The Electoral College has been prominent since the beginning of our country and is still continuing to this day deciding who will become president. However, in the presidential election of 2000 it would go against the results of the popular vote. It was this year in which the battle in the popular vote would be one of the closest in U.S history. It was this year when the president elect would lose the popular vote, and upset the majority of America. It was this year the Electoral College would be the deciding factor in selecting our next president between the two candidates, George Bush and Al Gore. Which begs the question why is the Electoral College so important. The Electoral College was created with the purpose of balancing the power of …show more content…
Created then consolidated by our founding fathers, its purpose served to balance the power between the populous states and less populated states. However, there is another reason and that reason is the founding fathers did not want a direct democracy. While the Founding Fathers wanted the people to have a say, there was one concern with this. This concern was that a charismatic tyrant could rise in power and gain the popularity of the public through manipulation. It would be Alexander Hamilton, who would address this concern and many more in “The Federalist Papers”(Williams C. Kimberling). The idea behind the Electoral College was that the group of electors could be trusted in choosing a qualified person who would then become president. This could all be seen within the constitution. The constitution itself is an ingenious set of rules created by the founding fathers, which has led our country to this day, more specifically a different era. The founding fathers wanted the constitution to be America’s fundamental laws and inside these laws, existed a fair way in selecting the president of America, known to this day as the Electoral College. Originally, the way the Electoral College was set up had made it so the runner-up would usually become the vice-president. This was a huge problem as opposing candidates usually have differing viewpoints on running the country and would not work together …show more content…
The answer is simple while the founding fathers were able to make the rules in advance for the future there has already been several amendments to our constitution in fact and one involving the Electoral College itself as mentioned in the third paragraph above, the 12th amendment. So what exactly changed well, originally the way the first Electoral College was set up made it so the runner-up would always become vice president, but a problem could easily be seen in this system. The two candidates would almost never have the same agenda, this in turn would have disagreements occur between the them and not allow the country to be ran properly so an amendment was made in 1804. This amendment allowed there to be two separate ballots for both president and vice president. The way this process would be carried out was the electors would meet in their states and decide who the president and vice president will be. The electors could not be a senator, republican, person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States. They’re supposed to be neutral but sometimes, there would be a few electors who will already be leaning toward one presidential
It does provide a separation of government in the voting process to ensure the prevention of corruption. It also helps to make a more level playing field ensuring that a president doesn’t win do to the high population and domination of votes due to a certain U.S. region. Electoral College also helps to determine a clearer winner with a “winner takes all” approach for each state and gives minority groups a bigger influence in votes. This helps give the smaller states as much of a voice as the bigger states. Lastly, it facilitates a two-party system of Democrats vs. Republican creating a generalized platform and creates more stability in choosing a
Though our founding fathers created the Electoral College over 200 years ago, it has been changed with time to accommodate modern needs and is still an important and necessary part of our electoral system. The Electoral College ensures political stability in our nation by encouraging the two-party system and also protects the interests of minorities. Furthermore, the Electoral College helps maintain a united country by requiring widespread popular support of a candidate in order for him or her to become 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
It was created to allow all citizens to participate in elections directly while also giving smaller states some leverage and weight in the presidential elections. The electoral college also allowed constituents a chance to participate directly in the election for chief executive by voting for the electors, or people selected by citizens to cast electoral votes in the presidential elections. It also allowed for the smaller, less populated states to have more pull in the presidential election than they would if the president was simply elected by popular vote.
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.
Our Founding Fathers had great concern over the topic of the government obtaining too much power over the people and with that in mind they constructed a system of indirect election where citizens would choose an elector. That system would distant the citizens from directly electing the president, avoiding any possibility to create tyranny. Their fears were about whether citizens could exercise the best judgement and their capability to fully understand and make good choices in voting. They did not want a group to go off in the wrong direction and take control over others. They thought that a chosen group of more educated and elite individuals elected by the people would be able to better interpret the situation and exercise better judgement. In a way, they were trying to safeguard democracy by instituting the Electoral College as the method to elect our presidents.
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, per Wikipedia, is a mechanism set up to select the president and vice president of the United States. (The Electoral college, 2016) It was during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that the founders established Article 2. Article 2 Section 1 details the innerworkings of the executive branch of government. The constitution states, “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress”. (The Constitution of the United States, n.d.) The framers of the Constitution had many different ideas about how the selection of our president should go but ultimately
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 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.
When the system of government was finally decided on, our founding fathers understood the importance of the balance of power within the three branches of the government. They called this system checks and balances. This system was set up to ensure that the government would remain loyal to the people and loyal to their states (Hamilton). In The Federalist Papers, No. 68, Alexander Hamilton discusses the importance of having the president elected by the Electoral College. He said that in order to ensure that we do not end up with the same problems that America had with the monarch of England, it was important that the balance of power was spread throughout the government and that no one portion have too much power.
The Electoral College provides people with a way to select the president of the nation. The Electoral College is used in the presidential election as a counting method for votes per state. In this way everyone who is a registered voter is allowed to vote for who they believe is the best candidate. Since our democracy is a representative democracy and not a direct democracy, the people have to decide who will best represent their ideas, morals, and overall interests in the direction of the county as a whole. The Electoral College gives power to the people in selecting the ruler of the nation thus establishing them as a sovereign entity.
When the Founding Father first wrote the Constitution the only way news got around were the newspaper and written works or word of mouth. In the 1700s most Americans were illiterate and only learned about candidates for president by word of mouth which isn’t the most reliable source of information. So they created the Electoral college to “protect” the American public from their own ignorance. This is an outdated notion for the modern American citizen and the Electoral College should be removed from the constitution in favor of the popular vote because the Electoral College is not the Democracy the framers worked so hard to create, it creates disparency in representation, and voter decisions ultimately don’t matter.
After the 2016 presidential election, the electoral college began to be a widely- debated topic. The electoral college has many reasons to be kept as the way the United States elects its presidents. The electoral college allows for representation throughout the country as opposed to focusing on large areas of the population, it also boosts minority interests, keeps the United States from becoming tyrannical, and presidential candidates pay attention to the fly over states.
In the past, one of the reasons it was created was to let a group of educated electors choose the president since diffusing information about the candidates to the general population was difficult (Amar 3). However, with technology, that is not the case today. News from the internet, television, and radio makes it possible for most Americans to learn about each candidate. Although it is not widely known, slavery was also a factor in creating the Electoral College. Without the Electoral College counting slaves as three-fifths of a person, the Southern United States would not have enough representation (Finkelman 9). But today, nobody is counted three-fifths of a person, and the South, along with other states, has the population to elect its candidate of choice. The Electoral College is keeping its outdated purpose of already resolved problems, such as letting more educated voters choose the president and accounting for