During five presidential elections, the winning candidate won the electoral vote but lost the popular vote. Many call for reform of how elections should be done, a system in which the popular vote determines the winner. I call for abolishing the Electoral College for many reasons. A system that goes by majority rule is how a democracy should function. Asking people to cast votes and then having the elite override it with electoral votes is not how a true democracy should be. The Founding Fathers intended for America to be a democracy in some way, but unfortunately, cannot be considered a true democracy. The Electoral College is made up of 538 electors, which is the combined number of members in the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the electors representing Washington DC. Those 538 electors are the ones who decide which candidate gets elected president. Each state has its electoral votes determined by the number of representatives it has in the House plus its two senators. This means that, in California, there are 53 representatives in the House and two senators giving California 55 electoral votes. On the other hand, some states and Washington, DC have as few as three electoral votes. States do not have equal representation in presidential elections since the number of electoral votes vary and smaller states have an advantage which is not consistent with the idea of a democratic government. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, there were four proposals to
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.
When the Constitutional Convention gathered in 1784 they had the difficult task of determining how our government should be assembled and what systems we should use to elect them. They quickly decided congress should have the powers to pass laws and the people should elect these people to ensure they are following the will of the people. But who should elect the president?
Electoral votes are distributed fairly among the states and should continue to be determined by population. When no candidate wins the majority of electoral votes, the winner should be the nominee with the most votes, not by the House of Representatives. The winner take all system should also be abolished in favor of a district vote system. If the Electoral College were abolished, elections would become chaotic, with people committing voter fraud and political machines controlling the outcome. The Electoral College protects the idea of popular sovereignty that the United States was founded
“The Electoral College is made up of 538 electors who cast votes to decide the President and Vice-President of the United States” (What is the Electoral College, 2012). In order for a candidate to win they must get the majority of the electoral votes which is 270. How does the Electoral College work? Every four years when people go to the polls to vote for the new president and the vice president of the United States, in all but two states (Nebraska, and
Although it seems otherwise, it is important to remember that the population of this nation is foremost and the political agendas should not be employed unless supported by the nation’s people. Donald Trump is the 45th president of the United States and the fifth president to enter office, even though he lost the national popular vote. The only way the people’s choice will prevail in the presidential elections is to employ a popular vote. Essentially, abolishing the Electoral College system is the most effective and efficient way to enact change. According to sources, “By overwhelming majorities, Americans would prefer to elect the president by direct popular vote, not filtered through the antiquated mechanism of the Electoral College” (Vespa, 2016). The Electoral College system is obviously faulty, “Because almost all states use a winner-take-all system, the election ends up being fought in just a dozen or so “battleground” states, leaving tens of millions of Americans on the sidelines” (Vesper, 2016). According to Stanford professors, the national popular vote is much more beneficial for choosing presidents compared to the Electoral College system thus, needs to be abolished. Stanford professors claim that, “Four out of five Americans exercised no real electoral voice in the 2012 presidential election due to the winner-take-all
The United States has used the Electoral College as a way to elect the president for over two hundred years and it is a main reason the smaller states have a chance to voice their opinion. The Electoral College has caused great debate within the US as to whether or not it is a political anachronism. The Electoral College consists of 538 total votes which are then divided up based on the population of each state and at least 270 electoral votes are required for a president to win the election. A consensus is taken every ten years to see if the population of each state has increased or decreased therefore changing the number of electoral votes it will receive. Some people argue that if the majority of the population wants a candidate to be president then that is the best way to elect someone but that is not necessarily true.
The Electoral College is a process, not a place of schooling. The Electoral College is responsible for electing who will be our next president of the United States by compromising between electing the president by vote and electing the president by popular vote of qualified citizens. The electoral College should be abolished because it is an unfair and unnecessary way to choose the president. Each candidate earns points by winning individual states. Each state is worth a different amount of points based on population, added with the number of senators. There are 538 electors within the college. People are finding it a challenge to decide if the Electoral College should be changed or abolished. If it were up to me, it would be abolished, because if the president wins the popular vote, they get the majority of the citizens votes. This system is unfair because each state has a different number population, so each has a different amount of points. When I am eligible to vote, I want to be able to vote for who I want, the majority of my state’s population should not be able to decide. The Electoral College may be
As citizens we owe it to the people and voters who have given and sacrificed for the right to vote to make sure that every single vote is counted and equal. We need to ensure that a vote cast in one state is equal to the vote of citizens in any other state. We need to become a true democracy. “The presidency is the only office in America where the candidate who wins the most votes can still lose the election. There isn’t any elected office in the Nation, be it county,
Election Day is here! America is ecstatic to have the right to vote for what they believe in. Yet there is a 20 percent voter turnout? .300 trillion people residing in the country and only a fraction a million show up? America has fought so hard to protect the rights of the people only to have not participated. The Electoral College is an important role in the election of president. The president has so many role to take on and it is 300 billion people responsible to put the right man in office. That is extremely impertinent on grounds that American will not even show up. The Electoral College is a fair and equitable way to elect the president because it will protect America from no shows, allows small state to have a voice, and because society
The Electoral College has been a system that the United States of America keeps in use since the constitution has first been in place in 1787. Now that times have changed how presidents can display them self publically with media, internet and travel from place to place in a few hours, it has led the question if the Electoral College is still the most unique way to elect a new president. The drawbacks of having the Electoral College are as notable as other methods, due to the voting system not being unified creates another issue that raises questions of what could be the best way to vote for a candidate equally for each state. The result of this explanation of each method will result to appointing the instant runoff voting method to be
As countless people may know, Hillary Clinton, a presidential candidate in the recent election, achieved victory in the popular vote region of the election, by over two million votes, however, President-Elect, Donald J. Trump, was officially announced President of the United States on January 20th of 2017. How, though? The answer is electoral votes. Surprising, right? How can Americans let 538 people choose, possibly, the most important person in their lives? The person who is going to preside over them for the next four years, the same person that may create rules and develop ideas that can and will change people's lives forever. Most people see this as an irrational concept, many people may wonder why 538 random people are chosen to be electors,
The Electoral College is made up of your states House of Representatives and its Senate. Each state is allowed a minimum of 2 votes, which is equal to the number of senators they have, and the rest of the votes come from the number of its US Representatives. The number of Representatives a state has is based on population. On average each representative represents 733,103 people. Thus meaning that Ohio, with roughly 11.9 million people living there, gets 16 representatives while other
The Electoral College in the United States picks electors lawfully inside every state to choose the president after a presidential decision by the general population. Each state has numerous presidential voters, and the same number of as the delegates in both houses and congress. In total, there are 538 members of the Electoral College. The different states have various numbers of representatives. California has the largest number of electors, 54. This is because there are 54 members in the congress who represent the people in the state. New York has 33 electors, Texas has 32, and Florida has 25, Pennsylvania with 23, and Ohio with 21. There are advantages as well as disadvantages to the Electoral College, depending on how you look at the situation;
The United States should use the electoral college for the election of presidency. The electoral college has served America since 1876, and to this day, still does. “Most people don't understand the Electoral College; they don't know why it exists”. Many don’t understand the origins of the system, let alone how it works. Therefore, knowing how the electoral college is significant would portray why the United States should still use it for presidential elections.
When the Electoral College was put in place as part of the voting process it seemed a good idea. “Our framers distrusted democracy and saw the Electoral College as a deliberative body able to correct bad choices made by the people.” (Anderson 519). Times have changed and today’s society is a lot different that it was when George Washington was President. It’s about time that the U.S eliminates the Electoral College and makes America more of a democracy by making the popular vote the deciding factor in electing the president.