One of the greatest accomplishments in the history of the United States was the creation of the Constitution. It was created by the Framers who included many important and specific rules to make sure that the government would be able to sustain itself. The Idea of the Electoral College was first introduced in this constitution as a way to make sure that there was a buffer between the population and the selection of a President. They did not want a dictatorship to arise due to a manipulative candidate. In recent history, the Electoral College has been a very controversial topic. Many people do not agree with it and believe that it should be abolished due to varying factors such as the unequal distribution of votes per state. When the Framers first created the Electoral College, I believe that there hopes of what it would become have not been met and that they would not be pleased with it in today's government. When the Framers began working on the Constitution, they wanted to create a government which could survive centuries with minimal changes. One of the most important ideas the Framers included in the Constitution was the Electoral College. They believed it to be very important because it would prevent the direct election of a president. As Hamilton explained, “the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station”(Federalist 68). This means that the Framers did not trust the people of the U.S. to make smart decisions on their own and wanted a way to control the voting. This was because the Framers feared that a charismatic leader could persuade a population of his views and end up creating a dictatorship. By using the Electoral College, the Framers believed that it would insure that a qualified person would take office. Another reason that the Framers created the Electoral College was to give smaller states more power. The Framers made it so that each state would have the same number of electoral votes as members in congress. This satisfied the smaller states. It meant that each person's’ vote in smaller states counted for more than those who lived in larger states. Overall, the Electoral college was put into place as a safety net 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
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.
The Electoral College: a system that the U.S. has used over the years to choose representatives and is a compromise between election by a vote. The Electoral College should not be abolished for three reasons. These reasons are: The system helps candidates who struggle with winning the Popular Vote; with Electoral Votes, it gives the little states enough power and votes, and if we abolish The Electoral College, we weaken the Political Two-Party-System. And if not weakened, then destroyed. These reasons will show that the Electoral College should not be abolished, and should be kept.
The electoral college was established from the Constitution. When the Framers had gathered to make the Constitution, James Wilson from Pennsylvania had proposed direct elections. James Madison, however, opposed to direct elections in fear that it would put the south at a disadvantage by being outnumbered by the north’s population. This lead the Framers into creating
The electoral college is a system that was put in place by the framers of the constitution for many reasons. The main reason the electoral college is that the framers did not fully trust democracy for they believed that people were not educated enough to vote. After reading an article from Business Insider called The Electoral College Is Brilliant, And We Would Be Insane To Abolish It by Walter Hickey, I agree that the electoral college is necessary for our presidential elections. According to the article the electoral college is good because it keeps errors local, is a testament to a candidate's desire to win, and most importantly, forces majority. In the article opposing the Electoral College I found many of the arguments to be invalid or full of what ifs or buts, and that is why I do not have any reason to believe the electoral college is good.
When the Founding Father first wrote the Constitution the only way news got around were the newspaper and written works or word of mouth. In the 1700s most Americans were illiterate and only learned about candidates for president by word of mouth which isn’t the most reliable source of information. So they created the Electoral college to “protect” the American public from their own ignorance. This is an outdated notion for the modern American citizen and the Electoral College should be removed from the constitution in favor of the popular vote because the Electoral College is not the Democracy the framers worked so hard to create, it creates disparency in representation, and voter decisions ultimately don’t matter.
The Electoral College has been in place for hundreds of years and it has sparked the debate of if it should be abolished from presidential elections. I believe that the Electoral College should be abolished because it gives unfair treatment to low populated states, it gives Congress more power in the election, and causes unfair election results. Document A shows that California and Texas have the most electoral votes with fifty five and thirty eight respectively but lower populated states such as Delaware and Alaska have only three electoral votes. If you split the map of the United States into four sections using horizontal and vertical lines, one can draw the conclusion that candidates running for president do not have to go to certain sections of the United States due to their low electoral votes and
1787 saw the creation of the Electoral College due to he public lacking enough knowledge to make an enlightened decision on whom to vote for. However, now things are much different in the 21st Century than they were in the 1700’s. Due to new technological innovations, we are able to actually look into our candidate and truly decide if he/she is the one we want to vote for. It for this, and many other reasons that the Electoral College is outdated and unfair, and the Government should shift to the more direct popular vote.
The electoral college consist of members called electors who together decide who the next president should be. Many people believe that the electoral college should be abolished and voting should strictly be on the popular vote, which is the vote casted by the citizens. This contradicts Article II Section 1 of the constitution which states why the electoral college was originally formed. The electoral college should be kept and should not be abolished because it is positive for the the United States. There are two main reasons why the electoral college should be kept, people do not always have the correct information for their votes and the electoral college is also represented by the people.
Some choose to argue for keeping the electoral college. One reason they do this is because it was part of the Constitution’s framers’ plan, “Historically, federalism [the combination of a central government with some authority given to state and local governments] is central to our grand constitutional effort to constrain power” (Document C). One can assume that the framers put the electoral college system in place to prevent one form of government from becoming too powerful. After much consideration, the Constitution's framers’ believed that the electoral college would be the best way to prevent a tyrannical president from taking office. Another reason why people argue for keeping the electoral college is because it boosts the power of small states,
The electoral college has been a major part of the American political system since its founding. This was first brought into question while the founding fathers were discussing the Constitution and the manner in which a president is to be elected. Thus, the Electoral College of the US was introduced. The requirements for the proper setup and execution of the electoral college is that every state has at least three representatives between two Senators and one Representative based on population which translate into the number of electoral votes. While using the college, forty eight states have the winner take all system where the candidate who has the most votes will get all of the votes from said state. This is one of many reasons to why the US needs to protect the establishment of the Electoral College. The main focal areas to why the Electoral College is a beneficial aspect of the political system is the ability to change with the people of the nation, the rapid pace to which the results are given to the public, as well as incorporating and
It is crucial to understand that when the electoral college was first developed it was different time, lacking certain thing that we currently possess today. In the specific era of time, it may have been the best option, but times change and technology advances, leaving no area of need for the electoral college current day. The electoral college was first devised during the Constitutional Congress of 1787, almost 230 years ago (Jefferson- Jenkins). In a new country, weary of any national government power and states possessive over their own rights and powers, it seemed to be the most suited option for the new country. It’s goal was to reunite feuding states and ease the mind of less populous states with the addition of senatorial electors. Overtime and even more so today, the power of the of national government has greatly expanded,consequently removing the need to accommodate the suspicions of the people.
The Electoral College was founded as a sort of protection for the government from the citizens. At the time the Constitution was being written, there was not a democracy in the world and the Founding Fathers weren’t certain on what to expect. James Madison in particular feared political groups of citizens would rise in such a majority that the U.S. would become a one-party state and endanger both the rights of the citizens and the wellbeing of the government3. James Madison stated in the Federalist Paper number ten that when someone is in a majority and will not be hurt by major decisions, they tend to believe that no one would be hurt by the decisions, so protecting the nation against the majority was initially an important purpose of the Electoral College. However, even Madison was
At least a decade after the United States was founded, many men gathered at a constitutional convention to talk about how America should choose a president. The Electoral College was put in place because the government did not trust the people to make a direct decision for our country. Today, some people are wondering if the electoral college should be abolished, letting the popular vote make the decision. There are three main ideas that help support why the electoral college should not be abolished. First, It helps keep the right people running for president. Next, it preserves the federal structure, and finally, it keeps a level playing field of how many votes each state gets in an election.
The Electoral College is a system used to elect the next President of the United States, the votes are casted by each state. This process is used to resolve and election to when no candidate would reach a majority of electoral votes. The founding fathers wanted to protect the interest in the smaller states and rural areas. Framers from the Constitution feared direct democracy, Hamilton and others didn’t trust population to make the right choice. A group of electors that are selected in each state legislature would elect the President and the Vice President of the United States. The Electoral College is something that will help decide who should be the president and so there wasn’t any conflict or problems with the people.