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Ever since its creation at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the Electoral College has been the most widely debated aspect in the Constitution. There have been over 700 proposed constitutional amendments aimed at fixing or abolishing this process. And Congress has on several occasions held highly publicized hearings on Electoral College reform but overall has remained fairly inactive (Best, p. vii). And while the Electoral College is a cornerstone of our Constitution and therefore a major aspect of American democracy and government, its very nature is quite unfair and undemocratic. Many of its aspects portray biases and favor certain groups of people and certain states. It is deemed archaic, undemocratic, complex, ambiguous, indirect, and dangerous by many scholars and is in direct need of reforming (Kura, p. 30). It especially contradicts Walter Stone’s instrumental voting model for the Electoral College at first makes one believe as if one’s vote counts but eventually one figures out that it is in fact quite unimportant (Stone, p. 51). For with the Electoral College, the people are not in charge but rather the system is – the Electoral College presidential election system that is.…
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When citizens vote and cast their ballot for the candidate that they believe will be fit for president, they are not voting directly for their favored candidate. Instead of a direct popular election, the United States has the Electoral College, a group of elected electors who represent a certain states votes. The Electoral College was established by the constitution to protect minority interests and reduce the possibility of a regional candidate. However, some believe that the advantages of a direct popular vote election, such as its consideration of democratic values, outweigh the disadvantages. While others believe that the Electoral College has been put in place to hinder regional candidates not allow it to happen.…
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The Electoral College is an institution that may have served a purpose 200 years ago when the founding fathers needed a system that would be met with approval by both large and small states. The Electoral College is a flawed method of electing our President that has created problems in previous elections and is likely to be the source of problems in the future. The Electoral College provides an undemocratic method of choosing our president that potentially undermines the will of the voters. Not only can a candidate be elected without actually winning the most votes, it puts our elections at the mercy of electors who don't always cast their vote as pledged. I intend to demonstrate that the problems inherent in this voting method far outweigh any benefits it may provide. Replacing the winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes with a system such as proportional representation or eliminating the college altogether in favor of direct election is the best way to ensure a trouble-free and fair election…
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The electoral college is not a fair and equitable way to elect the president of the United States. What if your vote was actually used to elect someone you don’t even know to cast a presidential vote for you? Members in the electoral college are expected, but not required to vote for the same party you did, so what if they voted for another party? Is that fair?…
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The Electoral College was established in 1787 as a compromise between having Congress select the next President of the United States, and having a direct democracy in which the popular vote selected the next President. The system has worked for over 200 years, so why change it now?…
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The founding fathers were not gods. Consequently, they were not perfect, and neither were the systems they set up to run the country. Nevertheless, they knew that things would change, and they set up ways to fix the government when needed. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote that the American people have the right to alter or abolish the government if it does not fit their needs. The Electoral College is flawed, and the American people need to replace it because this system does not fairly represent the people, it forces people to vote a certain way, and it does not always guarantee that the winner of the popular vote will win the election. These imperfections in the Electoral College make voters feel like their votes…
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Over the years the Electoral College has been proven to be outdated. People wonder constantly if their vote counts anymore or, if this method is affective any longer. There are three main reasons why the Electoral College is outdated and should be abolished. The presidential candidates only pay attention to the states with the most Electoral votes, we also have a larger and more educated population then when this was originally set up, lastly it does not seem as if your vote really counts since there have been at least four occurrences where the president with the popular vote has lost the election.…
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The argument most used against the Electoral College is that there is a possibility for a candidate to win the popular vote and still lose the election. This has happened four times since the Electoral College went into effect. The most recent time this had happened was in the elections of 2000. Historian Rick Shenkman from George Mason University states that “there has been no aspect of what the founders worked up in Philadelphia that has received more criticism than the Electoral College.” (Dotinga, 2008) Ever since the Electoral College went into effect there have been more than 700 attempts to either abolish it completely or to drastically ratify it (Uhlmann,…
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Imagine if you cast a ballot in the last election and after you cast your ballot you find out that the President was chosen by 538 delegates each from all different states. This is reality and that process is called the electoral college. The electoral college should be abolished because it does not reflect the common Americans opinion, also the process has not worked as there were many unqualified Presidents, finally, the delegates that elect the President are all very partisan towards their party…
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The Electoral College always has it’s print on the elections and more importantly on the very close elections. It has done it’s job the over 200 plus years and throughout fifty presidential elections. So the electoral college is promising and durable. Both parties Republican and Democrat candidate feel at times as if they win the popular vote they win the election, but that’s when the electoral votes play their part. The electoral votes are combined by states…
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In my opinion, the Electoral College should go. I have three reasons why the Electoral College should be either get rid of. My reasons are that it focuses more on smaller states than big states, Hamilton had other intentions for the Electoral College, and the Electoral College was meant to be for small states so it would be more equal.…
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If the presidential elections were simply based on the popular vote, the United States would no longer be represented as a Constitutional Republic, but as a democracy. As explained in a Washington Post article by Charles Lane, a journalist and editor for the website, there is still need for the Electoral College in the United States, as he stated, “our current system elevates popular-vote losers to the presidency: that's because popular votes cast in a state-by-state contest for 270 electoral votes do not reflect the national will. Rather, they reflect the results of a competition…
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There are numerous negative points to having the Electoral College. The Electoral College weighs the votes from smaller states more than larger ones because each state's electoral votes are equivalent to the number of House and Senate seats it has, thus giving one of those smaller state’s votes the power to really make a difference. Secondly, the Electoral College only acknowledges majority votes of the states and ignore the minority votes. Those who do not agree with everyone else are not represented at all.…
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Although the electoral college has worked for us all these years we need a change. The election would run so more smoothly if it was just based on the popular vote, and it would be beneficial for all. The electoral college needs to be abolished for the sake of the equality of the people's vote, state power, and for a candidate to actually be…
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The Electoral College is the current system America uses to elect the president. How this systems works is when you vote, you aren’t really voting, you are telling an elector where you would like your vote to go to. Once everyone has voted, the elector votes for a candidate based on the votes of the people. There are anywhere from three to about 55 electors per state. I believe this system should be replaced with the popular vote method.…
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