Representative Democracy In America

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 voting process in America appears straightforward, but it is a very complex, complicated system. The Electoral College is America’s current voting system. The Electoral College still serves its intended purpose, but with increasing political activity among Americans it has caused a need to reform this process. Research suggests that the Electoral College system should be amended because it poorly illustrates democracy, is outdated and the majority of Americans are in favor of abolishing the system.

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 is the system the United States have used to elect the President for the past two hundred years. In this essay, the reader will see that although it did the best way to represent the will of the American people, and in this essay a better alternative will be proposed to the reader. The Electoral college was created in September sixth, nineteen-eighty-seven, and was described as (founder definition) and was meant to allow a stronger South, who by using the three-fifths compromise of 1787 to allow themselves more votes and ensure they are given the most federal power (Amar). This paper will show the reader that the Electoral College is flawed in the way that minority candidates can be elected, less populated states are overrepresented, and swing states are given the most attention.

Creating the Electoral College system proved trying because “the Founders struggled to satisfy each state’s demand for greater representation while attempting to balance popular sovereignty against the risk posed to the minority from majoritarian rule” (Destroying the Electoral College: The Anti-Federalist National Popular Vote Scheme). They overcame these difficulties and tried to satisfy both small and large states. The disagreement that paved the way for the Electoral College was whether Congress should choose the president or if the masses should vote. In the end, the three reasons for which the Electoral College was created were: to “work without political parties, cover both the nominating and electing phases of presidential selection, and produce a nonpartisan president” (American Government: Roots and Reform, O’Connor, Yanus, and Sabato). These essential rationales prove that the Electoral College cannot be done away with by amending the

While he agreed that “the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the [president],” he made clear the importance of “afford[ing] as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder.” This would require the will of the people to be tempered by “an intermediate body of electors.” Not only would this be a compromise between the competing ideas in the Constitutional Convention, it would prevent any one group from having undue discretion when it came to electing the most powerful person in government. Of these competing ideas, two are prominently reflected in the Electoral College. The first is democracy, an idea largely advanced by Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America. Democracy, loosely defined as the direct representation of people in government, seems the most logical way to conduct an election. The second is federalism. Understanding how this could become problematic, the founders decided to include states in the election process. According to Federalist 68, this would allow “the people of each State [to] choose a number of persons as electors…who shall assemble…and vote for some fit person as President.” This balance of individual and state discretion would soon be codified in Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution.

They did not want the people to decide because they were not informed. They believed this because much of the U.S. was rural in 1789. Others considered Congress picking the president as an erosion of the separation of powers. The Convention compromised. The people would elect their party's electors, and then vote (Davis, 2011, p. 653). However, there have been a few unexpected results of this system. Four times in history, presidential candidates lost the popular vote, but won the Electoral College and the election.

The Electoral College, a hot topic these days, is subject to both criticism and defense. To understand why either side is valid we must look at its values and its weaknesses, its pros and cons. In defense of the Electoral College we can see that it in its roots the Electoral College was devised to dole out the power of selecting our executives geographically, and to give otherwise marginalized portions of the U.S. population a voice. Adversely the Electoral College can be seen as an obstruction to democracy and the will of the people. Whether or not the Electoral College serves the best interest of all the people in United States is up to debate. Whether or not the Electoral College serves the best interests of all the people in United States is up to debate, and this paper functions to expose what validities either argument may include.

The electoral college in the Constitution has the purpose of electing the President with the cooperation of both Congress and the people. The process consists of citizens first selecting electors based on the quantity of delegates in each state, which then become known as the electoral college, and then compromise to elect the President as well as the Vice President. Although there have been controversies on candidates not winning the election when they have received the popular vote, the electoral college provides equality among the small states as well as checks and sets boundaries towards the preferences of the majority. Not only is balance emplaced, but delegates are also elected with the incorporation of knowledge in the government rather than interest.

“The Electoral College in the US is a body of people representing the states of the US, who formally cast votes for the election of the president and the vice president.” The Electoral College has been the system of voting in the US since 1787, but with the growing and changing of our country, it has been a very controversial topic whether or not to keep the system in place. On five separate occasions in the history of our country, the Electoral College has voted against majority rules for the nation’s president. Many may say that this is an infringement on the rights of the people themselves to vote for their own president, because in these five instances, it truly was left to a small group of people

Hello, my name is Hannah and today I am going to talk about the Electoral College. The book I read was called “We Elect a President” by Tara and Emma Ross. I do not have it with me because it was an E-Book. It talks about how and why the Founders created our Electoral College.

The electoral college are elected representatives of states chosen during the November presidential election. The process consists of the selection of the electors where they vote for the President and Vice President of the United States. The electoral college consists of 538 electors; this is based on each state’s total number of senators and representatives. A candidate must win with a majority of at least 270 votes to be declared the winner. This paper will discuss the process, on how the winner of a presidential election is determined and does the Electoral College conform to the ideals of political equality.

The United States of America’s liberation from Britain was an incredible feet, yet afterwards there were many loose ends that needed to be tied up to truly start their independence as a free nation. At the top of that list was to choice and construct what type of government our country would build itself around and from which it would grow for many years to come. There have always been various structures and frameworks, socialism, communism, etc, in which you can construct a country’s government from, but the United States of America picking a representative democracy, or a republic, made this country as great as it is.

An accurate definition of a ‘pure’ democracy is a form of government where the people vote on policy matters directly - through town hall meetings or by ballot referendums. The Framers of the Constitution were fearful of a ‘pure’ democracy as the will of the people does not always align with what is in the best interest of the public. The United States Constitution, therefore, refers to a “republican form of government”, where decisions are made by elected leaders. This form of representative democracy allows the public to vote in men and women with similar values to their own, consequently, they can trust that the elected leader will make similar decisions to push the country in the direction the public favor.

The democratic government is a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of state , typically through elected Representative. Most democracy have a Bill of Rights or a constitution. However, everyone has some degree of input in decision-making, the process a system of government In which all eligible citizens that can vote in a representative to pass laws for them. Direct democracy: every single law, bill or issue of justice is voted on by all the people. Representative democracy: the general public votes for representatives, then who make laws on its behalf.