Voting Identification And Consistent Voting Laws Essay

The history of the Electoral college goes back to 1804 to the framers of the constitution. Many of the nations founding fathers actually did not trust direct democracy and wanted to create a system that had balance between power of the people and power of the government. As James Madison described , he was worried about “ factions” in democracy. “These groups of citizens with a common interest in a proposal that would violate the right of citizens or the nation as a whole” (Joe Miller), Madison's fear which Alexis de Tocqueville later named as the “tyranny of majority”, was that these factions could become the fifty percent and win the majority. Subsequently delegates proposed a variety of different methods to elect the president in order for this to not occur. According to Joe Miller’s article the delegates voted more than 60 times before they finally chose a

In this country, we hold elections every four years to select the president. The founding fathers of our country established the electoral college to give the original thirteen states a fair voice in the election process. This country electoral called the electoral college into question on more the one occasion. In the most recent election, President-elect Donald Trump won the electoral vote over Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. This election has sent the country into an uproar and citizens of the United States are now challenging the legitimacy of the electoral college process. This paper will examine whether this process is reliable and valid when choosing the leadership of this country.

Established in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, the Electoral College is a system utilized in The United States of America to select the President and Vice President. This process was established by the Founding Fathers in 1787, when the Constitution was written. The original purpose of the electoral system was to ensure that those who select the leaders of this nation were the most knowledgeable and informed people that America had to offer. The electors - the elected officials that make up the Electoral College - are elected to office through a general election wherein the entire national population has the right to vote. The President of the United States, however, is actually elected to office by the Electoral College only, regardless of the popular vote of the citizens in general. Thus, the Presidential election is the only federal election in our nation where the vote of the citizenry does not directly determine the victor. Despite the fact that this electoral system has been in place and operational for over two hundred years, the Electoral College is looked upon by some as an honorable system, whereas others view it as faulty. The Electoral College is not fair and equitable because it is based on population, it is not trusted by the people, and it is unjust to the wishes of the citizens.

The Electoral College dates back to the very founding of America and American politics. The way to elect the President was a hotly contested issue at the Constitutional Convention. Many options were considered, including selection by Congress, selection by state governors, selection by state legislatures, and direct popular vote (Electoral College 6). The final decision of the Founding Fathers was written in Article II, Sections II and III of the US Constitution:

At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the Founding Fathers could not decide if the president should be elected by Congress or elected by a popular vote, so they decided to create the Electoral College (“US Electoral College”). The Founding Fathers did not trust the people to vote on the right presidential candidate, so they decided that an indirect election was the best method (Becker). The Electoral College is a group of individuals who elect the president and vice president in the United States of America (TED-Ed). The number of electors that are given to each state is stated in Article II,

In presidential elections, citizens do not actually vote for the candidate of their choosing, instead citizens are voting for electors known as the Electoral College. The Electoral College chooses a President, and Vice President. The Constitution gives each state a number of electors that equals the number of House of Representatives and Senate, which totals five hundred and thirty eight and also includes three electors for the District of Columbia. Each state receives a certain number of electors based on population size. The results in a state determine which electors are chosen. All electoral votes in a state go to the candidate that gets the most votes, and after state elections appointed officials certify the popular vote of each state. Two hundred and seventy votes are needed to elect a President; the candidate with the majority of the votes becomes the president.

However, there have been several elections where the president did not win the popular vote, but still became president because the candidate received over the bare minimum of two hundred seventy electoral votes. Just recently the election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump took place in November of 2016. As stated in the article, Time to End the Electoral College, “Hillary Clinton beat Mr. Trump by more than 2.8 million votes, or 2.1 percent of the Electorate” (Doc L). Hillary Clinton won the popular vote of the people but she never became president because she did not receive more than the required two hundred seventy electoral votes. The system that we are using today goes against our democracy and does not reflect the people's ideas on what kind of leader they want to rule the United States of America. In fact, the Electoral College favors minority voters and the majority is at a disadvantage in winning elections. Since the popular vote can’t win someone an election, many candidates choose to spend a large deal of time in states that have high numbers of electoral votes and are undecided on which party to vote for. It is up to the candidates to sway voters in these states to win all of the electoral votes with this winner take all system. These states are known as battleground states and are almost always the deciding factor in an election's outcome. In the

There are a larger number of votes because of all the people that live in the United States today. Many of them are from other countries and are separated into where they are from. The popular vote is what is decided for the state. It helps the representatives of the state to says which candidate to vote for. The Electoral College came into the United States in 1877, however that is the way that the U.S. has been voting for presidents ever since the Electoral College was invented.

The winner is awarded one electoral vote from each district and the remaining two electoral votes from the state-wide votes (USA.gov). The issue with the current method is that it is to similar to the Virginia Plan which limits the necessity for the votes almost entirely and merely relies upon the beliefs of the electors not the people. This means that no matter who wins the popular vote, the winner of the electoral vote will always wins the presidency just as the House of Representatives’ votes will always win for the election of the senate as in the original system proposed by Madison instead of the people's. This has to do with how the Electoral College was created, it began with the Virginia Plan which had flaws that had to be corrected and accounted for which led to the Electoral College (FairVote). Which is based on popular vote or the majority of the votes cast for one given candidate out of the amount of voters overall. Which should matter more the electoral vote because it shows who the people really want in office or that of the few electors? If a candidate does not even need to win the popular vote to gain the honor of the presidency, then why are the people still electing? Why do they not convert to popular vote overall? If we do eliminate the popular vote for this reason does it then not defy the equality that our country stands for? The equality of our voting rights? In the Reform Act it extended the right to vote to the working class therefore giving everyone an equal possibility to enforce that right in the correct way (Parliament.UK). If this is all true then this is valid proof of the failure of this system in maintaining the equality that our country has promised its

Let's start with some exposition, the framers of the constitution decided that a select few people representing the population of the US was needed to vote in the presidential election because the average citizen was not informed enough to make a decision. As it stands, this means that the president only needs the majority of the 538 votes that

Another major fault of the Electoral College is the fact that it allows for a tie during the official Presidential race while on the other hand a popular vote would almost never result in a tie. In order to win the Presidency a candidate must receive a minimum of 269 electoral votes during the official election. There are exactly 538 electoral votes available for each candidate to win, one for each member of the Senate and the House of Representatives combined. The math shows that 538 divided by two is exactly 269 votes, one vote shy of the needed majority to become President. If each candidate was voted for 269 times during the official elections, no candidate would become President right away. Founding Fathers also did the math when the Electoral

Whether protecting and expanding voting rights through permitting more valid vote identifications is a controversial topic during the presidential election of 2016. Many people believe that the current voter ID law makes young, women, minority groups, and seniors hard to access to the ballot box, and thus, should be revised to broaden lists of acceptable forms of voter ID. On the other hand, the supporters of the Voter ID law argue that the law is effective to eliminate undocumented immigrants and noncitizens to make a fraud when voting. Janell Ross, in her article “Hillary Clinton declares war on Voter ID,” uses examples and professional language to demonstrate the negative sides of the Voter ID law in a polished manner. In the article, “Here’s what Donald Trump thinks about Voting,” Zachary Roth uses strong reasons to make a clear argument on the necessity of implementation of the Voter ID law. A valid and persuasive argument should be able to appear to reason, writer’s character, and emotion. Therefore, although Ross and Roth both clearly present their opinions in a professional manner for the audience, they lack validity in providing credible sources to back up some of their ideas.

In the electoral college system, a candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win the election. Based on this number a candidate could win an election by only winning the electoral votes in eleven states. This has happened several times in the past, the first being in 1824 when John Quincy Adams was elected president despite not winning the popular or the electoral vote. Andrew Jackson received 38,000 more popular votes and also beat 99-84 in electoral votes. Neither candidate received the 131 electoral votes needed, the decision went to the House of Representatives which chose Adams as president.

Each state has a number equal to the amount of senate seats plus the amount of seats in the House of Representatives. It is a compromise between who got the most popular vote, and who got fewer. At the time, the government thought that the president being selected by the amount of votes he/she received was not good enough. They thought that letting the government determine who the winner will be, had a better outcome. Some electors, determine their vote considering the amount of votes/ he or she gets. While others is simply to what party

Each state appoints a number of electors that equals the number of senators and representatives of their state. The popular vote determines how the electoral college of each state will vote. The candidate with highest amount of votes from the electoral colleges wins the election. This process of electing a president based on the majority of electoral votes began when the Constitution was written in 1776. Our forefathers designed this system because they felt it was the fairest way to govern.