In the constitutional convention of 1787, our nation's founding fathers came together to come up with a method to elect a president at a time when the majority of Americans couldn’t make an educated decision when voting so Electors who trusted with the responsibility to represent their state and make an informed choice. Our founding fathers came up with an indirect method, the Electoral College, which proved successful by allowing Americans to choose their state representatives and senators who would represent their vote and through a majority choose a president-elect. Through the electoral college, each state gets two senators and a varied number of state representatives depending on the population of their state that the people vote for themselves …show more content…
They believe that it would be a hassle trying to reform what our founding fathers envisioned from the start and could cause political fragmentation in an already very divided two-party system. Supports of the Electoral college also believe the Electoral College proves to be crucial to supporting our nation's two-party system which proves to be the most effective in providing the nation with a majority popular vote (Kimberling). They believe that changing our Electoral College system would lead to issues that as recounts that could delay results during elections for weeks or months and undermine the federalist principles that our forefathers founded our nation upon …show more content…
On the other hand there are those who wish to abolish the Electoral College and label this action as “past its due date”. These people argue that it is no longer effective in a nation where media presents us with the information needed to make informed decisions. These critics argue that it presents unequal and unfair representation of the people and individual states by not always being representative of the popular vote and place the final vote in the hands of only a select amount of elected officials. The most significant aspect to be considered by the American people is whether or not the Electoral College is still efficient in the mass media influenced society and ever changing world we live in today in order to decide whether the system our forefathers created for us needs to update, is outdated, or a fair representation of the American
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.
Throughout this time, our views on the Electoral College have went in all kinds of ways. The big reason for the Electoral College, was so that the whole country had a more equal say on choosing the national president. In each state the electors gather on the Monday following the second Tuesday of December. Each state has electoral votes according to the number of House members and Senators it has in Congress.
There are several arguments both for and against whether or not the Electoral College should still be used today. Some of the key arguments against the Electoral College are as follows: the possibility of electing a minority president, the risk of faithless Electors, and that the Electoral College upholds the two party system. The arguments in support of the Electoral College are as follows: it contributes to the cohesiveness of the country by requiring a distribution of popular support to be elected president, it enhances the status of minority interests, and it maintains a federal system of government and
I. The Electoral College is an unnecessary institution that undermines democracy by not ensuring the victory of the presidential candidate who wins the plurality of the popular vote, by creating a system in which not all votes are equal, and by incentivizing politicians to focus on the needs of specific states while ignoring others. II. A. The Electoral College is a body of people that represent each state within the United States and formally cast votes for their state in the election of the president.
As of recently a debate that has existed in American politics for centuries has flared up again. The debate in question is whether we should keep our Electoral College for the purpose of electing our President or abolish it and elect our Presidents through a popular vote. Those who seek to abolish the Electoral College cite instances -recent and past- in which Presidential Candidates have won the popular vote yet lost the majority of the Electoral College. They also argue that the undemocratic philosophy behind the Electoral College, the thought that the American people aren’t competent enough to choose their own Commander in Chief, is an outdated piece of a backwards past that has no place in modern society and law. Those who seek to preserve the Electoral College as it is state that the electoral system the framers of the Constitution created is as good as it can
The Electoral College, in states where they have the winner takes all system, make voters that are voting in states that are strongly controlled by the a certain political party feel like their votes aren’t really important considering that all the electoral votes will just go to the political party that wins. This feeling like out votes don’t count is the biggest argument against the Electoral College that it should’ve been for quite a while already a popular vote decision not an Electoral College decision (Davis). This argument also goes hand and hand where a president and vice president voted into office won because of the popular vote and received a majority of the support. Also removing the Electoral College would remove the power that only a certain states have, the swing states, but the downfall is swing states will just be replaced with high population states. Some people also view the Electoral College as being undemocratic especially in large population states where the votes of the losing political party, are a large number of voters, are essentially
The first words in the Constitution are “We the people”, yet the Electoral College takes away power from the people to directly elect a President. To better understand the Electoral College, we will delve into the basics of the Electoral College and presidential elections, the pros and cons of the Electoral College in modern times, and a specific instance in which the Electoral College majorly affected the outcome of an election. The government should abolish the Electoral College, so United States citizens can directly elect whom they feel should head the Executive Branch. To begin, the Electoral College is a process, not an educational institution.
I believe that the reason why the public should get rid of the Electoral College is that it is a biased system, and this system is the opposite of equality. It can be argued that there are many reasons why we should get rid of the Electoral College. The first reason is the Electoral College has a biased system. From the source of George C. Edwards, in his take on why the Electoral College is Bad for America, in 2004 he quotes,
Democracy within our country has been questioned and tested through our voting system. In America, our system for electing our president has remained under a process that aims to benefit our nation. By doing this, America uses the Electoral College, in which may cause disputes about the process of electing our president. Overall, there are advantages and disadvantages within the concept of winner-take all system, representing our nation as a whole, and equality of our votes. The Electoral College can be reformed to establish a more democratic voting system in order to allow for the voices of American citizens to be heard.
Beginning with modern technology, people are able to access information to make educated decisions, therefore the Electoral College isn’t seemed to be essential. Also, “Electoral College are now selected by the political parties and they are expected to vote along party lines regardless of their own opinions about the candidates”(procon.org). Meaning that their decisions are based on their party system alone, and the electorate personal opinion does not count. In addition to this, some may agree that the general people's opinion is being disregarded. This was seen in the most recent election in 2016.
In today’s world, I believe the Electoral College is outdated and that it is time for a change. Established in Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, the Electoral College is the formal body which elects the President and Vice President of the United States. Each state has as many "electors" in the Electoral College as it has Representatives and Senators in the United States Congress, and the District of Columbia has three electors. When voters go to the polls in a Presidential election, they actually are voting for the slate of electors vowing to cast their ballots for that ticket in the Electoral College.
“The Electoral College was created by the Founders because they did not trust people enough to allow them to directly elect the president.” Since the majority of the American people had limited education and communication, the founders felt the “average voter lacked the information to be an informed, unbiased judge of candidates for presidency.” Therefore when voters cast their ballot, the college reviews the peoples’ choices and then decides which of their preferences are best. (Lenz and Holman, 87) Many people feel that this system is undemocratic because they are not able to directly vote for their candidate and because the winner of the popular vote can lose the electoral vote.
To Dan Newhouse, Although some people say the electoral college is best for the public, it is actually putting chains on their opinions. Many people would say that the founding fathers made the electoral college because it was the best way to vote in their time. But what they don’t realise is that the electoral college is outdated, we have more people, and technology now, and that allows everyone to vote. That is why the electoral college should be stopped, so the chains that keep the citizens opinion’s down are broken.
Once the foundation of this institution had been laid out, the Electoral College went through two iterations - one before political parties were created and one after. The former involved a complicated series of events that would ensure the votes of the members of the Electoral College were fair and just without both political parties and national campaigns (Kimberling). The latter involved the creation of the 12th amendment (“requiring one vote for president and a separate vote for vice president”) in order to accommodate for the formation of political parties (Kimberling). Since then, the Electoral College has been proposed to be reformed or eliminated “700 times in the past 200 years” in order to get to the institution we know today (“U.S. Electoral College”). Thus, despite the overwhelming backlash over the last 200 years, the Electoral College still stands proud as our defining presidential election
Several years after the United States came to be, the Constitutional Convention met to determine how the new nation should govern itself. The delegates saw that it was crucial to have a president and vice president, but the delegates did not want these offices to reflect how the colonies were treated under the British rule. The delegates believed that the president’s power should be limited, and that he should be chosen through the system known as the Electoral College. The Electoral College is a body of people who represent the states of the US, who formally cast votes for the electing of the president and vice president. Many citizens feel that the Electoral College goes against our nation’s principle of representative democracy, while others