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.
Not all systems are perfect, nor is the Electoral College. As we seen in the 2016 presidential election, the popular vote may not necessarily get the majority in the Electoral College resulting in what is criticized not to be as democratic when the popular vote winner, Hillary Clinton in this case, was the loser of the election. The outcome of the election can be dictated by the electors and in some cases not reflect the will of the people. Also, the winner-take-all clause creates a possibility that the popular vote gets nothing even in a situation when is it very close to half the votes. All states except for
Many people have questioned why the founding fathers implemented the use of the electoral college process and a good assumption would be that the they were quite intentional in rejecting a direct election process mindset and we also have to take into account that as they were crafting our entire constitution. They established the Electoral College in the Constitution as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and the election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens. They were not trying to create a pure democracy, but had the difficult issue of having to incorporate
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.
In the United States, the Electoral College determines the victor of a national election. Each state has its own number of electoral votes, which is determined by state population. This system is a “winner takes all” system. Which means the candidate with 50 percent or more of the votes in an individual state gets all of that states electoral votes. The 2016 presidential election will have 538 electoral votes, this means that the election will be decided who is the first candidate to 270 votes. Some people have seen this system as outdated and unjust. Many are looking at a way to change the system and others would like to do away with the system
The Electoral College what can I say to be honest, I know nothing about the Electoral College, but I will do my best to explain it to people who might know and to help them know so when they 're seventeen they know like I should. So the Google definition of the Electoral College is a body of people representing the states of the US, who cast votes in the election of the President and Vice President. I would have not given that explanation, it would have told you it is a College. So helping you and myself, I will first explain how it works, then how Electors are selected, and the qualifications to be one and their restriction on who the Electors can vote for. Then the Election 1800 and the 12th Amendment. Then I will explain times where
Perhaps, the most common criticism of the Electoral College is the winner-take-all system, which picks the wrong winner, the candidate that did not win the popular election. How is that possible? The winner-take all system awards that entire states elector votes to the candidate that obtains the greatest of the popular vote, but in the case of a narrow edge (the candidate that comes in second) gets no electoral votes at all. This means if a candidate wins 3000 votes in a state, and the other wins 2998, the latter gets none of the Electoral College votes
The Electoral College has been very promising by continuously doing what it was made to do.. The Electoral College comes with its pros and cons. People want to keep the Electoral College and others want it gone. The Electoral College should be maintained for the future elections, because it has provided much help for many elections.
The forebearers came up with this in our constitution as a bargain between the Congress's vote and the qualified citizens vote. The Electoral College is a formal body which elects the president and vice president of the United States. What makes up the formal body? The formal body refers to the electors, in which each state has a certain number of electors, In the Electoral College, each state has as many electors as they have senators and representatives. The District of Columbia has three electors by itself. When voting, voters actually vote for the slate of electors. These electors vow to cast their ballots for the spot in the electoral college. In order to have a decent leader, Americans vote for a person that will do everything possible to promote their country position in the world’s politics in the first place.
A Congressional Proportional method is another alternative being proposed in opposition to the Electoral College. A Congressional proportional method would allocate votes based on the winner of each congressional district. It would also award the winner of the overall popular vote in each state two electoral votes(senators). Once again on the surface this system looks fair and reasonable, but if you investigate deeply it can be seen that there is one glaring flaw in this system. The act of Gerrymandering which is used throughout the United States in every state is when the authority in each state decided which way the districts will be drawn. In simpler terms an authority could draw district that would exclude certain type of voters to increase
The number of electoral votes decided for each state are based on the number of electors each state is entitled to represent a state in the Senate and House of Representatives known as Congress. The state of North Carolina has fifteen electoral votes and those electoral votes were won by presidential candidate Mitt Romney (winning 50.39%) in the 2012 election. It is understood that the Electoral College has some positive attributes to include maintaining divisions of power between the three branches of government, it promotes a two-party system and allows minority and interest groups to be represented. Unfortunately on the negative side this voting system does not reflect the popular vote of the people, it discourages third parties and then
The 2016 presidential election was an example of the discrepancy between the Electoral College votes and the national popular votes. If the last presidential election had been decided by a national popular vote, then Hillary Clinton would have won the presidency because she had the majority of votes. However, due to the design of the Electoral College, Donald Trump won the election for president in 2016; although, he lost the national popular vote. Just as some people questioned the effectiveness of the Electoral College during some of the previous elections, several people questioned the effectiveness of the Electoral College again in 2016. The debate about whether the Electoral College should be kept or
In order to understand the Electoral College, you must understand the history of it. The Founding Fathers were trying to determine how they could select a leader when the nation had its share of problems.
Every four years, on the Tuesday of the first Monday of November, millions of U.S. citizens go out and vote for the next president. These votes are counted and recorded, but whoever wins by popular vote, does not necessarily mean that whoever wins, will automatically win presidency. The electoral college not only takes part, but it ultimately decides who the next president will be. The electoral college system is a political institution that has been in place for more than 200 years. This system was created during the Constitutional Convention to help create a fair way to elect the president without giving too much power to the government or individuals. Today, through past elections we can analyze how it works, its advantages, and its disadvantages.
When the Founding Fathers were piecing together our government, they did not intend to make it a true democracy. Instead, they designed it to be a republic in which the citizens are represented by electors. If it was not this way, rural areas of the country would have almost no say in the presidential election. Most states follow the winner-takes-all rule. This states that the candidate that gets the majority of votes within a state automatically gets all of the electoral votes (Ross).
The potency of the states to choose how their Electoral College votes works has many different outcomes. Since the NPV has not come into full effect political leader, Bradley Jones, says that, “As an alternative to the national popular vote compact, we [could] do what Nebraska and Maine do and award two electoral votes to the popular vote winner, and our remaining electoral votes to the winner in each of the state's Congressional districts” (Jones 1). This alternative still embodies the conception of popular sovereignty and keeps the Electoral College in the check. The states have a great puissance in determining and altering elections and choosing electors. The states are able to choose electors “via popular vote, via the choice of state legislators,
Write: For this post, the class will be divided into three sections. Please be sure to write about the specific topic you are assigned based on the first letter of your last name.