Many people call themselves “true Americans” but most of them probably don’t even know the basics of government. One of the simplest things that American citizens do every 4 years is vote for their President and some people don’t understand the process in which this works. Some will say that they just count the votes and the candidate with the most votes wins, however that is not the case. Our founding fathers created the basis of our country and one thing that they created for the voting system is an Electoral College. An Electoral College is a process in which there are electors who cast your vote in your place for the vice president and the president. Our founding fathers created this system because they believed it was the best possible …show more content…
When the founding fathers were creating the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, there was a constant struggle between the states because they wanted to have power. With the Electoral College, these smaller states had more power because of the number of electoral votes. For example, in the article it states, “Compare that to ten of the small states by population in America; with only 6,000,00 voters combined, they get 32 electoral votes for president.” Even though the bigger states have a larger population, if the smaller states combine, they can have more electoral votes than the larger states but with a less population. One advantage of the Electoral College would be that the smaller states have a greater say in the …show more content…
The Founding Fathers were having to deal with conflict between the states, since the states wanted to have the power. Giving the states power was a very important issue for them and by using choosing the Electoral College, the federal structure remains the same where the political powers are given to the states. “The Senate was designed to represent each State equally regardless of its population. And the Electoral College was designed to represent each state’s choice for the presidency.” The Founding Fathers may have concluded that individual state populations opinion were more important that the opinion of the national population so they made the Electoral College in order to makes the state’s opinion matter
The Framers of the Constitution created the Electoral College as a compromise between electing the President directly by popular vote and having Congress choose the President. At the time, there were concerns about electing the President directly, such as the lack of communication and travel infrastructure to facilitate a national election and the possibility of uneducated voters being easily swayed by popular demagogues. Additionally, the Framers were concerned that smaller states would be overshadowed by larger ones in a direct popular vote. The Electoral College has several pros and cons.
In its favor, one may argue that it supports smaller states, creates more stability within the election due to the two-party system, and prevents the chances of recounting votes. However, the Electoral College is also believed to be “complicated” by cause of its unique representative system, persuade candidates into giving more attention to the smaller states, and be a magnet for faithless Electors, or Electors who decide to not vote for their party’s candidate (Veracity
The Electoral College is pretty much a process that was established in the Constitution by the founding fathers which was suppose to be a compromise between election of the President by a vote in congress and by the popular vote of citizens. This process consists of the selection of electors, the meeting of the electors is where they vote for the President and Vice President, and the counting of the electoral votes by Congress. In the Electoral College it contains 538 electors and to win the majority they need to have 270 electoral votes. As well as, the number of electors for every state is equal to the number of Representations that the state has in congress which is based on the population and there is also one vote for each Senator. So, each state has at least three electors and votes.
Like many others great creation the Electoral College has some downfalls. The first con of the Electoral College according to Amelia Josephson " It gives too much power to swing states". What this means is when candidates run for president are more likely to target swing states rather than going to a state that always goes blue or red. Candidates do this because they are trying to sway the swing there way so they can win, which then gives the swing states power into picking the presidency. The second con the Electoral College according Kathleen McCleary
1)First of all, I have learned that Electoral College was established in the U.S Constitution (Article II, Section 1) to find a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and popular vote. It was created to give an extra power to small states. Madison thought that Electoral College would be the better that popular voting because of the prevalence of slavery in the South. In my opinion it had more sense back days than today.
The Electoral College and the Pros and Cons of Electoral Votes and Popular Votes When planning on the election process of the USA during the Constitutional Convention, the politicians of the time wanted to make it so that citizens chose their president indirectly. This was the initial birth of the Electoral College, which is composed of state electors. These state electors make their vote based on their state’s popular vote. The parties
When people go to the polls to vote, they aren’t voting directly for who should get elected, instead they are telling their state how they want it to use its electoral college votes. 48 states use the “winner takes all principle” This means that in these 48 states, if one candidate wins the majority in that state, then that candidate gets all the electoral votes in that state. These “Votes” are actually electors. Each elector has one vote, and although they are supposed to vote for the candidate their state supports, they are not required to.
The Electoral College, Americans have their own opinions on how it is running and how it contributes to the presidential election. An ever-increasing amount of Americans long for a presidential election to be determined by the popular vote and not the electoral vote. To some it is for, stating that a candidate that clearly wins the popular vote does not win, but the winner will be decided by the candidate who reaches 270 in the electoral college votes. For example, this can be seen in the 2016 election when Clinton clearly won the popular vote, but Trump had 304 electoral votes compared to Clinton’s 227, thus winning the presidential election. I know how the president is chosen, and I believe that the set up of the electoral college is no longer
In an article by Procon.org, it states “The Founding Fathers enshrined the Electoral College in the US Constitution because they thought it was the best method to choose the president” (The Electoral College: Top 3 Pros and Cons). This is important because the Founding Fathers created the Constitution to establish the rules of the nation, basically to keep the peace. They figured that if they set rules and precedents in place, there would be tranquility. Without the government, there would not be life, liberty, and property. It was not easy for George Washington and the others to establish this new rule.
The Meaning Behind the Electoral College The United States of America is one of the most powerful countries this world has ever seen and currently is the world’s superpower. The President of the United States has a very important job for this reason. Not only is he a very influential figure around the world, but he serves a very important role when it comes to domestic affairs. This is the reason there is a very distinct way of choosing the president of the United States. The electoral college has been the primary decision maker of who becomes president since 1787 (Kimberling).
The Founders of America used great discernment when creating this
In 1787, years after the founding of the United States, the Constitutional Convention met to decide how the new nation would govern itself. The delegates understood that the need for a leader was necessary but still bitterly remembered how Britain abused of its power. The delegates agreed that the President and Vice President should be chosen informally and not based on the direct popular vote, thus gave birth to the Electoral College. The Electoral College is defined as “a body of people representing the states of the US, who formally cast votes for the election of the president and vice president.” Since 1787 the Electoral College has been the system for voting in the United States, but with our nation ever more changing and growing it
Current day, it has little relevancy since it was originally included to address also issues that do not exist anymore, including not trusting the decision to be made by the American people. When originally founded, they wanted to ensure the President was decided by electors who had the knowledge to make what they felt was informed decisions. Now, many people feel as though too much power is given to the electoral votes, and that their vote does not mean as much as someone in a different state. As it stands, many feel that small states are largely misrepresented and given too much power since the votes are not divided equally among the population. In fact, if the Electoral College system was not in the Constitution, it would undoubtedly be removed due to it being unconstitutional, because using the electoral votes violates the principle of one-person, one-vote.
The Electoral College is a longstanding organization in place in the United States of America that was originally established by the Founding Fathers in create equality in presidential elections has become a topic of harsh criticism and controversy over the years. The Electoral College was established by the Founding Fathers of the United States at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in order ensure there was representation of the people while keeping the best interests of the nation in mind (“What is the Electoral College?”). At the time of the writing of the Constitution, there were two main ideas on how to elect a president. The first was that there should be a simple vote of all eligible people and who ever gets the most votes becomes
This compromise helped give each state equal say in the government. As John Samples said to the Cato Institute in In Defense of the Electoral College, “ … the Electoral College makes sure that the states count in presidential elections… an important part of our federalist system - a system worth preserving… federalism is central to our grand constitutional effort to restrain power.” (Doc C). Since this nation is founded on federalism (the sharing of power between national and state governments), it only makes sense that each individual state would want equal say in the nation’s government. Samples knew that to keep the government running smoothly, each state needed equal representation in the government, thus the Electoral College.