America needs more than ever to reexamine the meaning of democracy. After the results of the past presidential election, the nation has experienced vividly the ideology gap between its citizens. The majority of voters chose the candidate that did not win the election, and there has been multiple demonstrations of discontent among them. If democracy is the government by the people and the majority, every voice should be heard and it should count. Therefore, the popular vote should be the process in which the United States of America elects its President rather than the Electoral College. The U.S. Congress must make a Constitutional Amendment to change the electoral process. When each citizen’s vote count and the majority has spoken, the result
What would you do if you didn't have a say in who runs America and how it is ran. What if you were promised freedom, and told that you had a government ran by the people but you didn’t get any input in the decisions? The direct popular vote doesn’t give the smaller parties a chance, but the electoral college does. Some people believe that the electoral college should be abolished; however, it gives people in rural communities a stronger voice, it allows the President a mandate to meet people’s needs in every state, and it reflects the political opinions of more Americans. Therefore, America should keep the electoral college.
The Electoral College is an excuse of the electoral process, proving itself to be undemocratic, false in representation, and harmful to third-parties. Therefore, the Electoral College should be abolished, and the process should rely on the popular vote to have the leading judgement in the election procedure for a new president. The Electoral College has proven that a candidate may not need to win the popular vote of the people of the nation in order to win the presidential election. But first, beforehand, let me introduce the system in which the Electoral Process is based upon. The Electoral Process is the government’s created system of indirect voting in order to elect the nation’s president.
In the “Point: Abolishing the Electoral College,” Benjamin Bolinger, a licensed lawyer who can practice law in Colorado and Pennsylvania, argues that the Electoral College needs to be abolished for the American democracy. Bolinger examines that some states with a little population have large number of electoral college compare to those states with larger populations. He believes that the Electoral College damages the value of democratic government by leaving
America has been acknowledged as being one of the world’s leading democracies, but to continue implementing the use of the Electoral College creates some distortion to that title. The out of date system does not accurately portray democracy. Theoretically, a democracy is government system that is ruled by the people. In reality, an individual’s vote may not matter depending on the state they reside in. Robert Dahl, a Democratic Theorist stated, “every member must have an equal and effective opportunity to vote, and all votes must be counted as equal.” Political equality is important to the distribution of power. Even if a person is wealthy and of power their vote should be counted the same as someone in poverty.
As citizens of the United State of America, one of our most important rights is that of which to vote. By voting, the general population has a say in who its leaders are. Votes for local, state, and even federal representatives directly reflect who the constituents want in office. However, America’s highest office is not elected by a vote of the people. Instead we use a confusing and outdated system called the Electoral College. Our president is not elected by the people, but by 538 electors who can legally vote for whomever they choose. Several times in our nations history an elector has voted against the people’s will. Three presidents have been elected into office by the electoral college and
Most Americans think the Electoral College is a nuanced and complex system designed to safeguard democracy. It seems that dividing electoral votes among states and awarding each state's electors to one of the primary candidates would be an effective system and one that would preserve our nation’s freedom. And so society blissfully forges on believing our current system of election is both impartial and up to date. But little do most American citizens know that they are lacking the knowledge and context to understand how malignant the Electoral College is. The Electoral College needs to be abolished because it ignores the popular vote and what most citizens want, it causes candidates to focus too much on swing states, and the old reasons for using are now irrelevant.
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.
Donald Trump supporters may believe that non supporters need to get over the fact that he won because we can’t change the results. But while we can’t change the results and maybe the protesting has gone too far, I don’t think anyone who believes in democracy should in their right mind let the results go. I only mentioned a few of the issues with America’s current voting system here. We need to make a change to the system to elect our commander in chief so that the people whether they be rich or poor all get represented by their voices; not the voices of a select
The Electoral College is a group with too much power, so much power that they cause the average citizen’s vote for president to fail to be significantly substantial, and that needs quite a few changes. The Electoral College believes that they can accurately reflect not only the nation’s desideratum, the group also believes they can reflect the nation’s absolute need. This is a democratic government and an American citizen deserves to have an irrefutable say in who he or she wants as a leader; the country might be a better place to live in if that were to happen; perhaps this generation might not experience it.
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 United States, well known for its democracy, holds elections every four years to elect its President. Every American citizen over the age of 18 has a right to cast a vote in the presidential election. The voting process, although it seems easy and straightforward, can be very complicated. In the 2000 election, Al Gore captured the majority of votes, but George Bush won. The reason for this strange outcome and why Al Gore lost was because of the Electoral College. The Electoral College is voting system where different states are given a certain amount of votes in the election, and which ever candidate wins a state, is given that state’s votes. The Electoral College is out of date, and should be replaced by the Popular Vote system,
When it comes to voting for a president in an election, there are two factors that need to be considered: the popular vote and the Electoral College. Many people believe that the Electoral College provides absolute certainty of the outcome, but do the state electors actually provide a voice for the people? There is no doubt the people are the ones who vote for the electors so the desired vote could be made by them; however, the voters have no power over whom the electors decide to vote for. In reality, the electors are the ones who choose who will be president, not the people. Therefore, there should be a change to election by popular vote for the President of the United States so that everyone’s vote begins to count.
American politics has proved to be flawed in structure over, and over again. Although our founding fathers had the best intentions when they implemented democracy, they like most modern day politicians, failed to actually make things better. Yes we gained our Independence, but with the ability to make our own choices we tend to make childish and impulsive decisions. The election of Donald Trump stands to be the most recent of those mistakes, and the politicians who work for him are either blinded or full of regret. Poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Robert Lowell paint vivid pictures of these very mistakes that seem to recur with the thought of democracy.
The experience I have pertaining to the subject of the election is that I am dissatisfied with the result of the two nominees and most of my peers agree with me that this election is atrocious. I know that there are more people that do not want either candidates and is searching for another option, which is why there was a small but noticeable boost of support for both Jill Stein and Gary Johnson. There are many people that want the two other parties to be a part of the primary debates. I have not written about this subject at all and I didn’t really care about politics until now. I expect to learn about more the process of the election like how delegates and electoral college works. The areas that stand out to me as important would be how
Two hundred and twenty-nine years ago, our founding fathers had debated on which route to take when electing our President. In 1787, the “Committee of Eleven” had come to a compromise, and created the Electoral College, which is a group of individuals elected by the people to cast votes for the presidency. The Electoral College is described as “a compromise between election of the president by Congress and election by popular vote” (Price). The reason behind the Electoral College was to preserve “the sense of the people,” while ensuring that our president is chosen “by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under