The Pros And Cons Of The Electoral College

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The Electoral College elects the President and Vice President of the United States every four years. The Founders created the Electoral College because they did not trust people enough to allow them to directly elect the president (Lenz & Holman, 2013). Neither one of the candidates are elected from the popular vote. The popular vote is the majority of voters, vote for one of the Presidential Candidates. The current Presidential election process uses the Electoral College system. Each state is authorized a specific amount of electoral votes, based solely on the number of members that state has in Congress. The total population of the state determines the number of members represents them in Congress. The Presidential election is considered a “take all” election. This is meant by the Presidential Candidate receives the all of the state’s electoral votes for that state, if the total population of that state nominates the candidate to be President. Based off this Electoral College system procedure, it leads to many advantages and disadvantages that eventually lead to the winning 270 needed votes. …show more content…

The state can only reward the candidate a specific number of votes. This forces the candidates to diversify themselves within the country to campaign in both Republican and Democratic areas. This also prevents the candidate from solely campaigning in very dense populated areas, which only helps with the popular vote in that specific area. Additionally, the Electoral College system keeps the government in line with the checks and balances. Certain proponents have argued that when the President is directly elected he can declare a national well-known mandate, which will undermine the other branches of the government, which would lead to tyranny (Advantages and Disadvantages of Electoral College,

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