Threats Of The Electoral College

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.”

Many people argue that the Electoral College is an outdated system. After all, many things have changed in the last two centuries. For one, technology is much more advanced now than it was two hundred years ago. With the internet and television, we can now learn everything about a candidate regardless of where the come from in the nation. It is feasible to have direct election of a president because of these improved methods of communication and the evolution of technology in general.

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.

Hamilton drafted the electoral college as a safeguard from elections by the mobocracy, where indifferent, morally upright individuals would chose the president that would best serve the country. He feared that uneducated Americans would elect an unqualified president and needed to be protected from themselves. The very fact that the electoral college exists to undermine people’s votes should be enough to render the institution obsolete. However, the travesty continues as these electors, whom hold the power to sway elections at their will, are commercially affiliated with political parties. The ability of parties to alter elections by paying electors extinguishes the institution’s intent to elect the morally right candidate and instead guarantees votes to the candidate with the most money. The abuse of money in politics is already so abundant that the word, “corrupt,”

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?

The Electoral College system has been in place for over 200 years and Americans are still not sure how it works or if it is the best system. Many Americans feel they go to the polls every year and vote for the president, and in the long run they are in control of the fate of our executive branch. With the 1992 election it was clear that many people had little understanding for how a president is chosen; the 1992 election came close to having no majority of electors due to Ross Perot and his third party. However, after this last debacle over the presidency, many people are crying "foul" even though they still understand little or nothing about the benefits of the Electoral College. We

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 has been prominent since the beginning of our country and is still continuing to this day deciding who will become president. However, in the presidential election of 2000 it would go against the results of the popular vote. It was this year in which the battle in the popular vote would be one of the closest in U.S history. It was this year when the president elect would lose the popular vote, and upset the majority of America. It was this year the Electoral College would be the deciding factor in selecting our next president between the two candidates, George Bush and Al Gore. Which begs the question why is the Electoral College so important. The Electoral College was created with the purpose of balancing the power of

Proponents say the voting method ensures that whoever is elected has the support of a majority of voters. They say this helps increase civility because candidates need to appeal to a spectrum broader than just their base in order to win over their opponents’ supporters on subsequent ballots. And theoretically it eliminates the possibility of a “spoiler” candidate winning.

While this has never changed the outcome of an election, the possibility is still there, and that alone should be cause enough for one to advocate reform (Fairvote.org). Twenty-four states, including Indiana, do not legally require electors to vote for a specific candidate (NARA). In these states, electors can essentially vote for whoever they want, and face no charges. Electors in the remaining twenty-six states and Washington, D.C. are bound by state law or pledges to vote for a specific candidate (NARA). However, the penalties in these states are usually trivial, and rarely enforced (Fairvote.org).

The Electoral College has always been a topic up for debate. From the very beginning, its method for electing a president was criticized. Even now, well over two-hundred years after the idea was first introduced, people are still questioning whether or not it is our best option. There have been a very large number of proposals suggested to change the ways of the Electoral College, but all of them have failed. Regardless of the views that it is outdated, or your vote doesn’t matter with the current system, the Electoral College has stood the test of time. “It is an institution that has survived as part of the democratic process, but its relevancy to current political realities has been questioned time and time again”(McCollester). People still wonder why the system is invincible. Why, in the face of so many attempts to reform or destroy it, is the Electoral College still in place?

In my opinion the Electoral College is very misunderstood. The Electoral College is a group of officials who elect the president every four years. It is the indirect method of elections. Many people think that they would be voting directly for a presidential candidate when voting, but it is not that simple.

Certain philosophies of the Electoral College infringe on the democracy that the United States of America stands for; however, the Electoral College was put in place by the Founding Fathers for a reason, and under the Constitution that reason should be respected. American Democracy suffers under the overbearing nature of this voting system, but it is a fact that a pure democracy would never work. Under this system, there would always be an inferior minority. Reforming the system is a solution to this problem of whether or not the Electoral College should continue or cease to exist. There should still be a system of electors, but instead of the warped winner-take-all system, the votes should be given proportionally to the popular vote. This

Imagine two candidates running for the presidency of a country. They are both outstanding candidates, and it is a close race. Going into the days of the voting, no one knows who is going win the election, and become the president. When the votes are tallied it shows that one candidate received more overall votes from the people of the country than the other. He, obviously being the favorite of the people, loses the election. Many of the people of the country are confused why he lost the election even though he won the popular vote. The winning candidate won because the country he won the presidency of, uses an outdated and flawed voting system. This candidate assumes the presidency knowing that he does not have the support of more than half of the nation that he is now