...Electoral College Alan A. Garcia GCC On the first Tuesday of November, the US citizens cast their ballots for the upcoming president. All of the votes go towards a state elector which then casts the vote for the state. There is a total of 538 electoral votes and in order for a presidential candidate to win the election, they must gain majority of the votes, at least 270 electoral votes. “A state's number of electoral votes equals the number of the state's Congressional delegation (2 Senators + the number of Representatives)” (Vote Smart, Paragraph 5). The ballots go to a block of electors, which pledge to vote for what the majority chooses. There are many flaws to the Electoral College, as well as positives. The Electoral College is used to distribute power from heavily populated states, which helps out small states such as Wyoming, a small state that only counts as 3 electoral votes, compared to...
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...“The Electoral College is a process, not a place (What is the).” The Electoral College has been around since the Constitution, but the reason for its existence is strange. When the Constitution was being created the Founding Fathers believed that the new found American citizens would be too stupid to govern themselves, and thus, The Electoral College was born. The Electoral College functions by giving each state a select number of votes based on population (What is the). Once each state gets their Electoral votes they must choose Electors; this is a two part process. First, Political Parties from the state chose potential electors, and then the people of the state vote on which electors they see fit (Electoral College Fast). Since its creation, The Electoral College has gone unquestioned, and we’ve never stopped to ask ourselves if it should still be in place. People are in opposition to The Electoral College because they believe it creates a sense of inequality, and lack of voice in vital elections. On the other hand, some people believe that The Electoral College gives states with smaller populations a voice, and is helping stupid people from making the wrong choice in elections. To some, The Electoral College has a magnitude of flaws perpetuating a unfair social hierarchy; to others, it is a system that is preventing inequality and anarchy to flourish in the United States. People believe that the The Electoral College is an unfair process created to silence the...
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...The Electoral College was created for the purpose of making the little guys seem important, therefore making the number of Electoral College votes per state unequally dispersed. If the amount of Electoral College votes a state received was based on population, smaller states would not be relevant. While this dispersion method made our small states happy, it produced many a consequences and made the value of each person’s vote different. Each individual vote in California counts for about five times as much in the Electoral College as each individual vote in Maine. For instance, California has fifty-five electoral votes for a population of about 38.8 million people and maine has four electoral votes for a population of almost 1.33 million. California...
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...The Electoral College is derived from Article II of the Constitution, which asserts that each state has a number of electoral votes equal to its total number of Representatives to the House of Representatives and its two Senators. The 12th amendment dives further into the Electoral College process by establishing a majority is needed to be elected president and setting the guidelines to electing a president if neither candidate has a majority (House of Representatives votes). Recently, the Electoral College has become a subject of controversy. The primary concern with the Electoral College is that it raises the importance of particular states during the election cycle. The election focuses on those states thus diminishing the impact of the...
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...this election, where both candidates are corrupt and unfit. Also, I feel as though the electoral college should be abolished. Voting is a waste of time because it is the electoral college who ultimately chooses the president and not the American people.Many people don’t understand the logistics of the electoral college and just how much they impact the lives of Americans. In...
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...The popular vote should be used for an Presidential Election. The Electoral College is basically people voting for people to vote for who they want as president. The Electoral College makes something simple so much more complex. It would be easier to just use the popular vote instead of having people vote to vote for who they want. The popular vote is a much better representation on who people really want as their president. A reason the Electoral college shouldn’t be used because it shows lack of faith in American voters . The Electoral college was formed in the late 1700’s because of people that might lack knowledge of presidential candidates and because the founding fathers didn’t want a direct election. At the present time, We can easily...
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...Do you think that the electoral college should be abolished or is it a good idea. The electoral college is a good thing because it gives everyone the right to vote and it helps to elect the president of the United States. I am going to use document A which is the electoral votes and the states that have the most votes. Then I will use document C which talks about the way the electoral college is and how it helps pick the leader for the United States. Then use document E which is how the electoral college should not be a thing and how it takes so long to figure out the president or who it will be as the next leader. Then last document F talks about how the electoral college and how the electoral college is unfair to smaller states. So the states that are bigger like california that has 55 electoral votes is unfair because is you take a state like wyoming that has 3 votes then they have less say. The two...
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...Electoral College Debate Introduction As said by Juan Williams, a journalist for FOX News, “In the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore got more votes than George W. Bush, but still lost the election. The Supreme Court's ruling in Florida gave Bush that pivotal state, and doomed Gore to lose the Electoral College. That odd scenario - where the candidate with the most votes loses - has happened three times in U.S. history.” Although forty-five U.S. presidents have been elected and this scenario has only happened three times, it still leads to scrutiny, questions, and arguments about the effectiveness of the Electoral College. These disputes have gone on for quite a while as to which method of choosing the president is the best option. The electoral...
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...The Electoral College should be changed to election by popular vote when choosing the president. The standard way of explaining the Electoral College would be a process that “consists of the selection and the meeting of electors” (Source 1: What is the Electoral College) this is then where the president and the vice president are voted for and the counts of the presidential electoral votes are taken place Basics of the Electoral College are the entitled allotment of electors a state has equals the number of members in its congressional delegation. Article one points out “one for each member of the house of Representatives and two for the senator. (Article 1) To elect a president 270 electoral votes are required. So at least 270 electoral votes from 538 electors guarantee’s office, or at least a certain party in office. When you think you’re voting for your candidate to be the president you’re really...
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...that the electoral college is undemocratic and outdated, in actuality, the electoral college is still necessary to prevent the more populated states from controlling the presidential election. The electoral college was put into place more than 200 years ago by our founding fathers. The founding fathers were striving to find the fairest way to selecting a new ruler and best avoid having a power hungry dictator. Their solution was...
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...Christian Llerena BUS 200 Dr. Lasher 3/19/12 The Electoral College is defined as “a body of electors chosen by the voters of each state to elect the President and Vice President of the United States”. The Electoral College system has been a staple in the United States since the ratification of The Constitution, however there is much debate on whether it should remain or be done away with completely. In this essay, I will give a brief history on the Electoral College, how it works, and why it was created in the first place. Despite the shortcomings and limitations of the Electoral College I believe that it should not be abolished because it contributes to the cohesiveness of the country, it maintains a federal system of government, and it maintains the interests of minority groups. To begin with, I will discuss how the Electoral College works. The Electoral College operates by having each state allocate a number of electors equal to the number of its U.S. Senators (always 2) along with the number of its U.S. Representatives (varies from state to state depending on its population). Next, after all their caucuses and primaries, each party nominates their candidates for president and vice president. After that, the people from each state vote for a party’s slate of electors. Whichever party slate gains the most popular votes becomes the slate of electors for that state. Then, the electors meet in their respective state’s capitol and cast their votes for president and vice...
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...The Electoral College and the Popular vote have been a part of U.S. history since the founding of our country itself even though the actually process of both systems have changed since the late 1700’s and early 1800’s when they were first implemented. The debate on these two-unique systems have been brought to light due to the recent 2016 Presidential Election between the Presidential Candidates, Senator Hilary Clinton(D) and Donald Trump(R), when Donald Trump(R) won the 2016 Presidential Election by winning the Electoral College vote, even though he lost the popular vote. The purpose of this essay is to explain both voting systems and explain both in the best and most detail possible, as well as my personal opinion on the two, and if the current...
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...MacBride attended Princeton and Harvard University achieving his law degree. His diverse careers include writing history books, co-founder of a successful television series, and failed run for the U.S. Presidency in 1976 under the Libertarian Party. Before 1972, MacBride favored the Republican Party until he exchanged his views for the Libertarians. Even in his mid-twenties, when the author wrote, The American Electoral College his viewpoint skewed towards a conservative/libertarian viewpoint. This book elucidates the founding fathers of the United States political viewpoints in framing the Electoral College in 1787. As these scholars embark in creating, an architectural conception that determines how to select the President of the United...
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...and paste the links into your browser): State elected officials and members of Congress by state: http://www.commoncause.org/siteapps/advocacy/search.aspx?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=4860375 Presidential election outcomes by state: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_election_results_by_state Presidential election outcomes by state: http://www.historycentral.com/elections/states/List.html 2012 election outcome by state: http://www.politico.com/2012-election/map/#/President/2012/ Good Advice: · Do not wait until the day the assignment is due to begin work. That is a prescription for a very poor grade. · Don’t complete this project until you have studied up on presidential elections, especially the Electoral College. · Read the questions closely before answering them. Students frequently lose points for failing to fully answer each question. In particular, if the question asks you to write a paragraph, that means you need to write several sentences. A paragraph is not a single sentence. As you recall from your English class, paragraphs have topic sentences, several sentences in the body that develop the topic sentence, and a concluding sentence that ties the paragraph together. · Review all of your answers before you submit your completed project. Students often lose points for submitting answers that are contradictory. Make sure your answers are consistent and make sense. · Never, never, never copy and paste from a website. The purpose...
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...The factors that influence the founders in creating the Electoral College were brought on by lessons learned in the early elections the result of those factors are still used to this day, two centuries later. The founding fathers had a lot to consider when it came to selecting how they would choose the leader for their newly formed government. The first president was chosen by the founding fathers before the election of 1800 in which the candidate with the most votes was elected president and the runner up was to be the vice president. This was proven to be a problem due to the different views of the parties that were running against one another. Having just won its independence from Great Britain and only having the Monarchy as a model to obtain guidance it was very important that the founding fathers looked at every angle of picking the person to lead the country at the time. The wrong type of man at the helm of the country could be devastating to what the founding fathers had worked on establishing. If the people were to have a say in who was to be president the electoral college could be seen as a way to protect them from a person that could persuade them with words but truly have a hidden agenda or not have the best interest of the country in mind a “demigod “. Adolf Hitler is a good example of this type of person becoming a leader that was able to persuade an entire country into trying to take over the world and this kind of person was exactly what our founding fathers...
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