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 gained its origins when our countries fore fathers gathered at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and began brainstorming on different methods to elect a President. The Electoral College at the time was created to be a …show more content…
The second idea was for the state legislatures to select the president, this option was denied because it raised concerns that the President may drawback to heavily on federal authority because it would be at the hand of the states, which were not huge supporters at the time of centralized government. Finally they proposed that a direct popular vote be held, but this was denied for multiple reasons. One reason being that the states would not have the communication tools to be sufficiently informed on the candidates overall and would just choose the favorite from their own state or region, without a factual base for doing so, another being that the large states would have a significant advantage over small states. Finally, those who became to be known as the “Committee of Eleven” proposed that we hold an indirect election through what would be called a College of Electors (National Constitution Center). The Electoral College was born. According to Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, this was the original structure of the Electoral College. Each state was given a certain number of electors based on the number of state senators, which was always 2, as well as the number of U.S. representatives, which varied by decades based on the states population.
The Electoral College was designed in 1787 at the Constitutional Convention. A variety of ideas were originally brought to attention. Two significant and highly regarded options were a) Congress selects the
The founding fathers created the Electoral College as a compromise for the Constitutional Convention. Since the delegates could not agree on a solution for the problem of creating a system to elect the President,
538 is the sum of the nation’s 435 Representatives, 100 Senators, and 3 electors given to the District of Columbia.
The original Electoral College plan was very popular in its inception, among most delegates at the constitutional convention of 1787. The goals of the original Electoral College were as follows; to accommodate differing state and federal views, incorporate a popular vote feature to the election, protect the smaller states with less population, separate the executive and legislative branch, and make it hard to politically manipulate the election. The Constitution designated that the original Electoral College consists of an equal number of electors to the number of legislators in the House of Representative in each state. Two electors would be added to each state; to equal the number of senators in each respective state. All of the electors
Two hundred years ago, the Framers of the Constitution outlined the Electoral College when they disagreed on who should elect the president, and disagreed on the role of the people, the congress, and the states in the political process. Some favored the direct vote while others lacked confidence in the people to vote. The compromise became what is now the Electoral College. In the two hundred year history of the Electoral
It is crucial to understand that when the electoral college was first developed it was different time, lacking certain thing that we currently possess today. In the specific era of time, it may have been the best option, but times change and technology advances, leaving no area of need for the electoral college current day. The electoral college was first devised during the Constitutional Congress of 1787, almost 230 years ago (Jefferson- Jenkins). In a new country, weary of any national government power and states possessive over their own rights and powers, it seemed to be the most suited option for the new country. It’s goal was to reunite feuding states and ease the mind of less populous states with the addition of senatorial electors. Overtime and even more so today, the power of the of national government has greatly expanded,consequently removing the need to accommodate the suspicions of the people.
The Electoral College was brought into play in the twelfth amendment and in Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution. A state is given a certain
The idea of this “Electoral College” arose in the summer of 1787. There were multiple proposals
The electoral college, is A state by state system used to selectively acquire a new representative of the country, Never the less when one casts a vote, the vote counts towards the presidential electors. In which those are the people who form the electoral college and select the cabinet members. The electoral college was created for two reasons. The first purpose was to create a buffer between population and the selection of the President. The second as a part of the structure of the government that gave extra power to the smaller states. (Schulman 2015,). The founders believed that the electors would be able to insure that only a qualified person becomes President. They believed that with the Electoral College no one would be able to manipulate
Elbridge Gerry, a Father of the Constitution, put it this way, “A popular election in this case is radically vicious. The ignorance of the people would put it in the power of some one set of men dispersed through the Union, and acting in concert, to delude them into any appointment.” This means that the People would elect a man who promised great things, but in reality was playing on their wants just to win the election. They would increasingly become more tyrannical over time and each election till one day the United States might have another King George III to deal with. So, to keep from letting this happen the Founding Fathers found a better way to elect the President, the Electoral College. They saw the electoral college as a way of preserving the freedom of the United States and keep the people content and well represented (Longley). The young, naïve new voters do not look below the surface to see what the candidate is selling. They see a big picture and vote based on that, but what they do not realize is that the candidates want that and use that. Bernie Sanders was saying how if he won the election he would work towards getting free college. The only problem with free college is that nothing is actually free. Someone has to pay for the bills, books,
According to the National Archives and Records Administration, the Electoral College is a process of the United States Constitution. It was established by the founding fathers as a compromise between election of the president by Congress and election by popular vote. It also states that each state is allocated a number of electors equal to the number of its United States Senators, which is always two,
In 1802, the Electoral College was established.The Electoral College is the U.S. way of voting for a President, but there is controversy over whether or not we should change our way of voting. Currently, the United States of America have a election system that includes, 538 electors, and the candidates have to have 270 electoral representatives to win. Each state has a different amount of electoral votes, the amount of voters are counted by the 2 senators for each state and a included vote for each member of the districts the state has. When every citizen within the state votes, the votes will be tallied and whichever Candidate gets more votes, takes the electoral votes within that state. It's based around a “Winner takes all system”. After all votes for each state have been counted, and the electoral votes have been distributed to each candidate, the candidate with the most total electoral votes, is the next president of the United States of America. If there is a tie within the electoral votes, the House of Representatives choose the next president. In the 23rd amendment, this allowed Washington D.C. to have 3 electoral votes included in the election. Young U.S. citizens believe it's as simple as casti/ng a vote, buts it's far more complicated.
Some delegates wanted members of Congress to elect the president, others wanted state legislatures to elect the candidate, and some just wanted a direct popular election. They knew it was a very important job and that the President would be the face of the nation. Members of the Constitutional Convention did not trust the common people at the time to make a well informed decision for a candidate for the office of president. They were worried the people may elect someone who was not qualified or fit to lead the country. The members also had to find a way to make sure all the states and people would have a say in who would be elected. The Electoral College idea was presented and most delegates approved of the idea so the Electoral College was put into place. (History) At first the Electoral ballot was different from where it is now. In the early stages of the Electoral College the President was chosen by whoever had the majority of votes but the Vice President was whoever had the next closest amount of electoral votes. This proved to be a major problem when in 1800 the presidential nominee for the Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson, tied with his running mate Aaron Burr. This caused a stalemate in the
The second option is the election of the President by the legislatures of the states. It was rejected because of the possible weakening of central bodies of the USA executive power.
When the founders were proposing ideas for the Constitution they needed to determine how to choose the President. Some of these ideas involved some of the founders wanting the President to be chosen by Congress, chosen by the states through the state legislatures or state governors, chosen by the citizens, and chosen by the electors which also raised the question of who would choose the electors. All of these ideas developed into the Committee of Eleven on Postponed Matters who created the Electoral College as a compromise.