The Importance Of The Electoral College

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.

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.

A debate has been brewing in recent years about the way we elect our president. The first system is the Electoral College which is very complicated. Americans are not knowledgeable about it and worry that one candidate can win the popular vote and not the Electoral College. The opponents of the Electoral College propose a new plan called the National Popular Vote (NPV). The pro-Electoral College party think the bill’s risks and costs are not worth the possibility of some gains for certain states.

Every year on the fourth of November an election is taken place to select the next president of the United States. Just recently, in the 2016 election, Hilary Clinton won the popular vote and Donald Trump won the electoral vote, in which he was elected president. This made many Americans question if the electoral college system is outdated and unfair and if the direct popular vote is a more effective way of electing the president. This has happened twice where the candidate who has the popular vote did not win the presidency. The problem that has arisen is that the rules of the presidential election need to be replaced so that it will reflect the true opinion of the U.S. citizens. According to Edwards III, under the constitution, the

The Electoral College has been the basis for nearly all of our presidential elections, but it is time to update to a more logical system.

Every time there is an election in the United States, the debate of Electoral College always heats up, and suddenly everybody seems to know about or at least they are interested in learning about it. The Electoral College is firmly established under the United States Constitution to elect the president and the vice president of the United States indirectly. A slate of “electors” are chosen from each state, and they are the ones responsible for voting for president in the general elections depending on which party the candidate is vying with. From this statement, what it means is that one does not choose his or her preferred leader directly and this has made many suggestions that the Electoral College is not a true representation of democracy. This paper will look at the strongest arguments for and against the Electoral College, analyze whether the current Electoral College should be re-engineered or scrapped in favor of direct vote and finally determine if the Electoral College is consistent or contrary to democratic principle.

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?

One piece of evidence for this would be that a couple of states can't elect a president when you go by the Electoral College votes. If we went by the popular vote, the candidates would go only to places with the largest amount of population like Texas, California, New York, and Florida. A second piece of evidence would be that the candidates would not have any regional favorites because using electoral college, no region has enough electoral votes to win an

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.

The Electoral College is the system used in America to nominate the president and vice president. The Electoral College entails Voters to go to the polls and they will be choosing which candidate receives their state 's electors. The candidate who receives a majority of electoral votes which is 270 wins the Presidency. The number 538 is the sum of the nation 's 435 Representatives, 100 Senators, and 3 electors given to the District of Columbia. There are many reasons as to why the system has not been reformed and in this essay I will elaborate on this further.

As Richard Posner wrote for the Slate.com, “There is pressure for run-off elections when no candidate wins a majority of the votes cast; that pressure, which would greatly complicate the presidential election process, is reduced by the Electoral College, which invariably produces a clear winner.” What great news this is for our country. If we were to encounter an election in which no candidate were to win a majority of the votes, then either candidate would be allowed to have the votes of any state, Washington D.C. included, counted time and time again. The end result of such lunacy, would be “debilitating uncertainty, delay, and conflict” (Posner, slate.com). We need our electoral college to be sure that such issues do not take

Larger states, like California and Texas, are a main focus for candidates because of the number of electoral votes that they would earn. Also, a president can be elected, even if he or she does not represent the ideas or opinions of the people. In rare cases, a president can win the popular vote and lose the electoral college vote. “If this is the case, the very large margins secured by the losing candidate in the other states would add up to over 50% of the ballots cast nationally. Therefore, the losing candidate may have gained more than 50% of the ballots cast by voters,” says “Does Your Vote Count? The Electoral College Explained”. If the people vote for a particular candidate, that candidate should be president. Finally, people who disagree with their states are not represented due to the “‘winner take all’” system. A person may vote for the democratic candidate but the republican

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

The American Electoral College is the most confusing part of the American government. In addition, Kenneth Davis, author of Don’t Know Much About History, noted, “Grown men turn weak and stammer when asked who makes up the Electoral College.” However, there will be an effort to clear this enigma up for those who “turn weak and stammer” (2011, p. 653). America’s election system is important because their citizens need to know what they are doing on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. The Electoral College has an interesting structure, procedure, and history, while also serving America well.

Although this is true, the wide selection of canidates would also allow the American people to have a better selection of canidates. Instead of selecting two canidates which the electoral college promotes, they can choose from a lot more, selecting a canidate which they can identify with, and supports the issues they also support. The popular vote system presents a flawless way of electing a president, with absolutely not threat of electing a minority president. It is the best voting system for the United States and should be instated in place of the outdated electoral college.