When the United States first gained its independence, a set of laws and regulations had to be formulated in order to keep the country running. The Founding fathers came up with these laws and regulations in a meeting now known as the constitutional convention. In this convention, the method for electing the president and vice president was created and it was called the Electoral College. The Electoral College is a method the United States uses to vote for the president and vice president. It was first created back in 1787 and over the years it has been ratified continuously to keep up with society’s changes.
When trying to come up with the method to be used for electing a president in 1787, there was much …show more content…
Michael M. Uhlmann, government professor at the university of Clairemont, explains the benefits the Electoral College has to offer. He claims that the if the Electoral College were to ever be abolished, terrible consequences would follow. If abolished, the two-party system would disappear and a drastic growth in factional parties will arise. Without the two party system, Uhlmann believes that, candidates would not have a center to work toward. He argues that the two-party system “forces the ambitions of presidential candidates into the same constitutional mold that defines and tempers American political life as a whole” (Uhlmann, 2008). This system makes for a more equitable …show more content…
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,