The Electoral And Electoral College

First off, what is the Electoral College? The Electoral College is the process put in place by our Founding Fathers in which America votes for its President and Vice President every four years. The Electoral College was put in place to help prevent abuse of power and corruption by having a separation of government. The Electoral College is made up of representatives from each state based on how many Senate and House of Representative delegates that state has. These numbers range from 3 to 54 with the total number of electors being 538. This system has taken much scrutiny over time. According to Lenz and Holman, “The Electoral College may be the least-known and most misunderstood government institution in the American political system.”

The Electoral College has been instituted since 1787 and is a group of people that elect the United State President and Vice President. The United States citizens do not directly vote for the president, but their vote is considered by electors that have pledged to vote for the winning candidate. There are 538 electors which corresponds with the 100 senators and the 435 representatives plus 3 electors for the District of Columbia. An elector is nominated or appointed by their state’s party and are usually well connected. Congressmen and high ranking U.S. officials are prohibited from being electors. In most states they follow a “Winner takes all” format, where the elector votes for the candidate who wins the popular vote. The Electoral College systems is outdated and illogical for the present and should be abolished.

The Electoral College gained its origins when our countries fore fathers gathered at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and began brainstorming on different methods to elect a President. The Electoral College at the time was created to be a

When Americans vote for president, they are actually voting for presidential electors, who are known as a whole to be the electoral college. These electors, who are elected by citizens of the United States, are the ones that elect the chief executive. The electoral college has shaped the past, present, and future of the United States ever since it was constructed by the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The electoral college was created with fair and good intentions.

The electoral vote allotment is based on the population of each state, collected from the census. This method of division leads to severe imbalances between the decisions of small states and the decisions of the larger states. In 2010, Alaska, Delaware, DC, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Montana, North Dakota, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming had a total amount of 44 electoral votes. Illinois, a single state, had 20. This means that one sole state had as many electoral votes as six states put together. While the electoral system is usually unfair to smaller states, in the case of ties, the larger states suffer the most. When the electoral vote is tied, each state can only cast one vote for the final decision, meaning that a “representative from Wyoming, representing 500,000 voters, would have as much say as the 55 representatives from California, who represent 35 million voters,” according to Bradford Plumer, author of the article “The Indefensible Electoral College.” No matter what happens during the election, one group is always being cheated out of their rightful votes. The choice of our country’s leader should not be based on a system that is unfair to a specific group of voters simply due to their state

The electoral college, per Wikipedia, is a mechanism set up to select the president and vice president of the United States. (The Electoral college, 2016) It was during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that the founders established Article 2. Article 2 Section 1 details the innerworkings of the executive branch of government. The constitution states, “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress”. (The Constitution of the United States, n.d.) The framers of the Constitution had many different ideas about how the selection of our president should go but ultimately

In June of 1804 the states had ratified the Twelfth Amendment which enacted the Electoral College in time for the 1804 election. When election time comes, Americans vote for the President and Vice President who are chosen by Presidential electors, who as a whole are known as the Electoral College. As a decision was needed for a method of choosing candidates, the Constitutional Convention of 1787 contemplated many different ways of electing the President, but toward the end of the proposals and ideas the matter had to be taken to the Committee of Eleven on Postponed Matters which is the committee who conceived the original Electoral College. In recent years, much debate has been stirring regarding whether or not the Electoral College has a place within this country's elections. For many states this method of tallying and casting votes is great because every state receives a minimum of three electoral votes considering each state has two senators and at least one representative (Lewis). However, these minimum electoral votes make the distribution of electoral college votes uneven throughout the fifty states, making each American citizen's vote count less or much more which is cause for change. If the information on these weighted votes is analyzed it can be concluded that states with a population similar to Wyoming has one “elector” for every 177, 556 persons while Texas has one “elector” for every 715,499 persons. While the Electoral College has worked for generations, there are some negative factors that give cause to abolish this practice, such that are; faithless electors, the winner take all system, and finally, safe and swing states.

electors are chosen. All electoral votes in a state go to the candidate that gets the most votes, and

In presidential elections, citizens do not actually vote for the candidate of their choosing, instead citizens are voting for electors known as the Electoral College. The Electoral College chooses a President, and Vice President. The Constitution gives each state a number of electors that equals the number of House of Representatives and Senate, which totals five hundred and thirty eight and also includes three electors for the District of Columbia. Each state receives a certain number of electors based on population size. The results in a state determine which electors are chosen. All electoral votes in a state go to the candidate that gets the most votes, and after state elections appointed officials certify the popular vote of each state. Two hundred and seventy votes are needed to elect a President; the candidate with the majority of the votes becomes the president.

The Electoral College is a group of people who are “appointed by a larger group” of people to represent each state in the U.S. who then vote for the presidential elections (Dictionary.com 2015). The founding fathers created the Electoral College so that qualified citizens could vote for the president. They believed that the average American is uniformed, so they decided that a few educated people would make the correct choice for the entire population. The founding fathers also thought the Electoral College would be effective because at that time the only way of communication was through word of mouth and through letters. With the Electoral College, it was a more simple way to get the votes to one place and count them. A major criticism of the Electoral College is the popular candidate may lose to the electoral vote. This means that if majority of the population voted for candidate A, but majority of the electoral votes were for candidate B, the president of the nation would become candidate B. This situation has occurred four out of the fifty-six presidential elections that have been held in the United States. I believe that the Electoral College should be abolished so that the popular candidate would win the election, people would feel that they are making a difference in the society they live in, and we should replace the Electoral College with popular choice or allow our house of representatives to vote for the presidents instead.

However, there have been several elections where the president did not win the popular vote, but still became president because the candidate received over the bare minimum of two hundred seventy electoral votes. Just recently the election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump took place in November of 2016. As stated in the article, Time to End the Electoral College, “Hillary Clinton beat Mr. Trump by more than 2.8 million votes, or 2.1 percent of the Electorate” (Doc L). Hillary Clinton won the popular vote of the people but she never became president because she did not receive more than the required two hundred seventy electoral votes. The system that we are using today goes against our democracy and does not reflect the people's ideas on what kind of leader they want to rule the United States of America. In fact, the Electoral College favors minority voters and the majority is at a disadvantage in winning elections. Since the popular vote can’t win someone an election, many candidates choose to spend a large deal of time in states that have high numbers of electoral votes and are undecided on which party to vote for. It is up to the candidates to sway voters in these states to win all of the electoral votes with this winner take all system. These states are known as battleground states and are almost always the deciding factor in an election's outcome. In the

The Electoral College was created in the beginning to make a buffer between the selection of a President and the population. It was also created so that the smaller states received extra power as to not be overpowered by the larger states. Currently, the Electoral College consists of 538 electors. The number of members in the House of Representatives and Senate decides the numbers of votes that a state receives. The District of Columbia however has three electors and has been looked at like a state for the Electoral College under the 23rd Amendment (“U.S. Electoral College”). This system was first created by the founding fathers through fear that a person could manipulate the public in order to come to power. Therefore, a candidate running for presidency could win the run even if they do not win the popular vote. However, I think that the Electoral College is out of date and should be changed. This is because we, as a whole, are not fairly represented because we are only represented as a state, and not as each individual.

From campaign signs, bumper stickers, and the constant displaying of campaign commercials; it is election season. This year happened to be a presidential election year. Every candidate wants you to come out and vote for them but does your vote really matter? With the Electoral College in place, they are the ones that actually vote for the office of president and vice president. With this process in place individuals feel that their vote doesn’t matter. However, this isn’t the only problem people have with the Electoral College. There are many different controversies surrounding the Electoral College. The Electoral College is an out of date system that fails to represent the real democracy of America.

The Constitution of the United States of America created a system called the Electoral College where it outlines the rules in which we elect the President of the United States of America. As stated in Article 2, Section 1 of the U. S. Constitution created the Electoral College. Each state receives as many electoral votes as it has senators and representatives. Therefore, each state, including the District of Columbia, will have at least three electors. This is the vision of the Constitution. Now the problem arises when all the Electoral votes from one state are given to the popular winner for that state. This causes a with people’s right to chose their leader as votes of the people that voted for the losing candidate are tossed in the trash. All this while giving the state the ultimate power to elect the president.

“The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy,” (Trump). During American history, there has been a total of the five presidential candidates have won the popular vote, however, lost the electoral college, therefore losing the campaign. When one votes in the presidential election, he or she votes for the electors of his or her state who will choose a candidate (typically from his or her party) and whoever gets the most votes becomes the next U.S. president (Federal Register). Thus, each state decides what electors are sent by whatever way the state goes (Democratic or Republican), so the candidate gets all the electoral college votes (which is based on population) or gets none of that state's electoral college votes (Federal Register).