Get Rid of the Electoral College free essay sample

Get rid of the Electoral College Harvard, Stanford, and Cornell College are all renowned colleges, but have you heard of the Electoral College? It has been in existence for over two hundred years. This is a unique college where the only requirement to participate is that one must be at least eighteen years old. The Electoral College has no campus, meal tickets, football team, or even academics. However, it is the most important college because it helps the American people make one very important decision, determining the President. The Electoral College is not actually a â€Å"college,† it is a voting method. This is the only voting method ever used to elect the President; however, it may not represent the voters’ choices as accurately as other methods. The 2000 presidential election wasn’t a true reflection of the voters’ choices when Al Gore received over half a million more votes than George Bush, and Bush became the president. We will write a custom essay sample on Get Rid of the Electoral College or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page A nationwide popular vote will reflect the voters’ choices better than the Electoral College; the Electoral College is outdated amp; needs to be wiped out because of the numerous defects it has. In 1787, two things forever changed the face of American politics: First, a group of national leaders drafted the U. S. Constitution and second, they decided the average citizen wasnt knowledgeable enough to elect a president without the bridge of a system known as the Electoral College. The Electoral College was created by the framers of the U. S. Constitution as a compromise for the presidential election process (Bonser, and Dove). At the time, some politicians believed a purely popular election was too reckless and would give too much voting power to highly populated areas in which people were too familiar with a certain presidential candidate. Others objected to the possibility of letting Congress select the president. So the Electoral College was a system that allowed voters to vote for electors, who would then cast their votes for candidates. In the 1836 election, the Democratic-Republican’s Presidential candidate, Martin Van Buren, won both the popular vote and the electoral vote. His main competition was the Whig Party. The Whig Party was a political party active in the early 19th century in the United States. The Whigs hoped to expose the design of the Electoral College by running several different candidates in different areas, picking individuals with a great deal of regional appeal. The Whigs hoped to win a party majority throughout the country with this method, which would then allow them to choose the individual they wished to become President. They were unsuccessful and Martin Van Buren won the election with nearly 60% of the Electoral votes, though his popular vote lead was just over 50%. His running mate, Richard M. Johnson, did not fare so well. 23 Democratic-Republican Electors of Virginia refused to give him their votes. Without those 23 votes, Johnson did not receive a majority vote within the Electoral College. The decision was deferred to the Senate where Johnson was finally elected by a majority vote as the new Vice President. One of the flaws of the Electoral College is that a candidate who wins the national popular vote can lose the overall election. This phenomenon has actually occurred in the past. The most recent occurrence was in the 2000 election. George Bush received 271 electoral votes but lost the nationwide popular vote by half a million votes to Al Gore, who received 266 electoral votes (â€Å"What Is the Electoral College? †). Larger states carry a tremendous amount of power in swaying the presidential election, since their large population allows them to receive a multitude of electoral votes. The Electoral College has been the basis for nearly all of our presidential elections, but it is time to update to a more logical system. The Electoral College is not the best solution to elect the president, as it has become obsolete (Dayen). The Electoral College was a solution for the problems that were relevant when it was first established. Now, these problems cease to exist. The Electoral College was an idea that was feasible when first instituted, because communication was limited and national political parties had yet to be established. Travel and communications are no longer problems. The Electoral College needs to be replaced to fix the current problems, not the problems of the past. The Electoral College makes it possible for citizens’ votes in certain states to essentially not matter at all. Since all of the electoral votes go toward the candidate that wins the popular vote in a state, if a state has a majority of people who vote for a certain party and a voter votes for the other party, his vote does not have any effect on the election outcome. The Electoral College system is leaving hundreds of thousands of vote’s discounted and irrelevant. The Electoral College twists each vote’s worth per state, causing the nation’s desires to be misrepresented. The Electoral College does not always show a distribution of support. A candidate could win the electoral votes in only eleven states and that amount of electoral votes would be enough to become president. Supporters of the Electoral College remarked that the Electoral College would enforce the concept of federalism. Federalism is the division and sharing of powers between the state and national governments. The states, through the Electoral College, are empowered to choose the president and vice president. It restores some of the political balance that states with a large population lose, by benefit of the distribution of the Senate decreed in the Constitution. This is illogical, given that electoral votes are weighted in favor of less populated states. There are many drawbacks to the Electoral College, in terms of campaign effects, that outweigh the benefits. If the presidential election was decided by a national popular vote, instead of the Electoral College, campaigning would broaden to every state (Buttery). Every American’s vote would make an impact on the election outcome and would have the same worth as everyone else’s. Getting rid of the Electoral College will not be a walk in the park, but representing the voter’s choice by implementing a nationwide popular vote would be worth the work. To change the Electoral College, legislators would need to pass a bill to override the Electoral College and establish a nationwide popular vote as the voting method for electing the president. Passing a bill that changes the system for electing the president would be a monumental task. If a bill is successfully passed to change the Electoral College to a nationwide popular vote, it will reduce disagreement about election outcome by lessening the controversy regarding accurate representation of the voters’ choices.