A major flaw with the electoral college system is a failure to accurately reflect the national popular will. Meaning that if a president wins by popular vote and doesn't win “270” with the Electoral College point they will not be the president-elect. This…
Even though President Bush lost the popular vote in 2000, he was still able to win the election because he still had the majority. There are 538 total votes in the Electoral College and a presidential candidate must win a majority of the electoral votes to be elected, exactly 270. In 2000 there were a total of 538 electoral votes available with 270 needed to win the election between George Bush and Al Gore. Bush won 271 electoral votes by winning over more states that count for more electoral votes. Al Gore, won only 266 electoral votes and even though he won the popular vote, the states he won in did not count for enough electoral votes, therefore Bush…
a strong central government was intended to favor the elite class and allowed the National…
Consider connotation in this context. At first blush, do you expect the term “iron triangle” to have a positive or negative connotation? Please approach this topic with the aim to both critique and assess validity.…
The way our country has elected the president is very unique compared to other countries so in order to understand it, Tanay and I broke down in pieces. In order, for a person to win the presidency they must, campaign in as many states as possible to the backing of their political party. This means that they have to win primary’s to even have a shot at winning the presidency. Once a person has the political backing, they continue to campaign and begin speaking at debates. In regards to the presidential, people vote in their state for president they would like to win. Since most voters were farmers, a two day voting window was needed. weekends were a problem because the majority of people attended church on Sunday. In addition to weekends, Wednesdays were bad because that was market day…
The Electoral College, established by the founding fathers in the United States Constitution, is a process whereby a body of electors chosen by voters in each state cast a formal vote to elect the president and vice president. Among many other things established within the Constitution, the Electoral College requires extensive reform. The Constitution itself was merely a framework for the United States government and did not take into account the extent to which society would change between 1787 and 2015. Amidst the several problems constituted by the Electoral College, the four most threatening complications consist of the possibility for the loser of the popular vote to win the electoral vote, the inequality among the distribution of votes according to population, the exclusion of third party victors, and the consequences that arise in case of a tie.…
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…
The first problem with the Electoral College is that the presidential candidates only pay attention to the states…
This is not how a democratic system should function. Outcomes of this sort are attributable to the federal nature of the system. This feature is not a logical consequence of having intermediate elections of Presidents but rather the winner-takes-all method of allocating each state's slate of electors. Allocation of electors in proportion to the state's popular vote could reduce this effect. Scenarios exhibiting this outcome typically result when the winning candidate has won the requisite configuration of states (and thus their votes) by small margins, but the losing candidate captured large voter margins in the remaining states. Given the allocation of electors in 2000, it is possible a candidate could win with only a small margin of support in the 11 largest states. In such an example, the very large margins secured by the losing candidate in the other states would aggregate to well over 50 percent of the ballots cast nationally. Claims that the Electoral College suppresses the "popular will" are therefore open to debate. A result of the present functionality of the Electoral College is that the national popular vote bears no legal or factual…
1. What is the minimum number of states that a candidate needs to win in order to win the election? What are those states?…
They can’t just win a majority of individual votes; they have to win a majority of votes in a majority of states (or, at least, a majority of large states). This helps legitimize the election” (Arguments in favor of the Electoral College). The electoral college forces candidates to win the majority in the majority of the states. This makes presidential elections much more accurate. For example, in 1968 President Bill Clinton and President Richard Nixon both had tied with a 43 percent plurality of the popular vote. Although this happened, the electoral college helped in determining the winner of the election. Without the electoral college, elections would be a complete…
With the use of the electoral college it is taking away the weight of the peoples vote. The amount of importance that a person’s vote has in a very spread out population than a densely populated area is much higher in that area, but is nothing when you look at the entire state. The election, for the president, was created to allow the population of the entire country the ability to choose their president. The electoral college is taking away the peoples vote and a large portion of the qualified population is not voting because they know their vote doesn’t really…
Many Americans believe they pick the President of United States on Election day. The truth is, we really don't have a say so. We, in reality, just vote for State Electors who then hold the electoral vote to vote for the next president. This is an unjust way to do this in a “democratic” country. I do not believe the electoral college is an equitable way to elect the President of United States.…
Among the most apparent implications of the Electoral College is that the election is effectively decided in a few number of “swing states”. (Heuvel 2012) In an entrenched two-party system as seen in America, it means that both parties – the Democratic Party and the Republican party – need to pay close attention to the partisan leaning of every state. For most of America’s electoral history, there would be states that voted the same way every time (“base states”) and a relatively few that produced mixed results and would effectively determine the winner of the election (“swing states”). (Heuvel 2012) Since there is no extra incentive in winning more than the necessary majority of the electoral votes, candidates or parties would not feel the need to run the table in order to win the general election. For instance, this would mean that the candidates would concentrate their limited allocation of resources such as campaign visits and television advertising in “swing states” such as Florida and Ohio rather than the “base states” such as California and…
The Electoral College is a process that began as part of the original design, of the U.S. Constitution and was established by the founding fathers as a compromise between the election of the president by Congress and election by popular vote. As we all know, Americans were given a serious reminder in 2000 that the president is not elected by nationwide popular vote, but by a majority of the electoral votes. It’s an example of indirect election as opposed to direct election by U.S. citizens, (i.e. the members of the U.S. House of Representatives.) Should the Electoral College be reformed or done away with altogether, has been a hotly debated subject since one of the first ever public polls, on the subject matter, was given in 1944? According to a Gallop Poll taken on November 11-12, 2000, sixty-one percent of Americans supported a constitutional amendment to allow the national popular vote winner to assume the presidency, (http://www.galluppoll.com). Critics of the Electoral College argue, among many things, that it is at its very core undemocratic because only 538 people are responsible for the election of our president and vice president while proponents argue that it protects the rights of smaller states. It is my desire, through this discussion, to highlight the arguments for and against the Electoral College, bringing about dialogue on this controversial subject.…