I am not alone in holding. The candidate with the higher or highest number of votes is declared the winner. Instead, it's a product of the 12th Amendment - put in place after the 1800 contest between Jefferson and Burr . And they criticize the College for being a living symbol of Americas original sin, since it gave slaveholding states an electoral edge at the nations founding. There is no need to worry about the excesses of majority rule. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. First, the Electoral College is felt to be an outdated system which is no longer necessary for our elections (The Electoral College). 1998 - 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. | All Rights Reserved. Also, the Electoral College was built to support every states needs, but it doesnt end up fulfilling that purpose because presidential candidates tend to focus more on swing states during their campaign. It's time to ditch the antiquated. Albert Einstein. It frequently bestows a broad-based majority mandate on a candidate who has won only a plurality of the national popular vote, which is particularly important in messy elections with three or more candidates. They devised a method to elect a president that would ensure that the person elected would not gain too much power and independence. Save it to your desktop, read it on your tablet, or print it out to read anywhere! After three disputed Presidential elections in just 20 years, it's time for Congress to abolish the Electoral College. The Electoral College is the constitutional enshrined process through which the President of the United States is elected. D - It is Unfair In document F it says that if there is a tie in the Electoral college it is up to the House of Representatives to decide who is president. Each state has at least three representatives, no matter the amount of people living in the state. But the the closest Congress has come to amending the Electoral College since came in 1969, when a proposal for direct popular election of the president, with a runoff if no candidate got more. Right now, small states have no voice because they, like big states and medium-size states across the country, are not battleground states. Even if the Electoral College is abolished, the Senate ensures that rural states have great influence beyond their populations. The Electoral College is a favorite punching bag for those who think America should be a more majoritarian country. Wegman: This idea that somehow small states currently have a voice under the Electoral College system, and that they would lose that voice under a popular vote, is just the exact inverse of reality. But Trump considers himself the winner this year. (Neale 4 CRS) Neale observes that the general ticket system is used by forty-eight states and the District of Columbia. Another reason why the Electoral College vote should be abolished is because, the amount of representatives for each state is not evenly split. You can view ourterms of use here. Will himself left the party for this, by Naomi Schaefer Riley, Opinion Contributor, Schumer, Jeffries ask Murdoch to stop Fox hosts lying about 2020 election, Eli Lilly caps insulin costs at $35 per month, Watch live: Garland testifies before Senate panel at oversight hearing, EPA to award $250 million in IRA funds to reduce climate pollution. Will closed his piece by saying what I called a catastrophe can generate moderate mandates for parties that seek a broad consensus., I will concede that the Electoral College might ensure the stability of the two party system. [7] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/books/review/let-the-people-pick-the-president-jesse-wegman.html, [8] https://www.vox.com/21142223/electoral-college-2020-election-jesse-wegman, [9] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/01/the-electoral-college-is-racist-heres-how-to-kill-it-without-a-constitutional-amendment/, [10] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-electoral-college-saved-the-election-11610133725, [12] Duvergers Law is a dead parrot. At that time, 80% of Americans supported abolishing the Electoral College, and an amendment to do so passed the House 339-70, only to be killed in the Senate through a filibuster coordinated by. If 60,000 votes went the other way in Ohio, George W. Bush would have won the national popular vote by 3 million votes, but John Kerry wouldve been elected. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The framers biggest fear was the fear of power, and they did their upmost to limit and control the control and limit the power of . . Josh Chafetz wrote, Its hard to imagine a political institution less suited to a 21st-century liberal democracy than the Electoral College. "Yes, let's abolish the electoral college," he told the crowd at the We the People Membership Summit in March. Each registered voter gets just one vote. The result is that a small number of voters in certain battleground states become kingmakers. If 60,000 votes went the other way in Ohio, George W. Bush would have won the national popular. Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. The method was ultimately settled in the last days by the 11-member Brearly Committee, which proposed election by special Electors chosen by the state legislatures. Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features. (download the rest of the essay above). Its primary function is to malapportion political power, and it does so indeed, has always done so with strikingly awful consequences. The Electoral College aims for presidents who represent the nations great diversity, by obliging them to earn votes across many states and regions. And if you have a campaign that is forced to pay attention to everyone in the country and has to treat every vote as equally important, which is what a popular vote election would be, this would solve these problems and it would be more fair to the country as a whole. In September 28, 2004, Thomas H. Neale wrote an article called The Electoral College: How It Works in Contemporary Presidential Elections for the Congressional Research Service. Thanks to Donald Trump, what was once the relic of our system is now an active threat to the future of our democracy. The state with the most electors is California, which has fifty-five. Illing: But the dynamics have changed, right? In conclusion, the opposing view of the system insists the Electoral College is unfair and that every vote should count. Your IP: A majority of Americans believe the Electoral College should be eliminated. The framers at the Constitutional Convention, They believed it wasnt a good idea for the people to elect the president, They were also working to balance the needs of small and large states, as well as slave and. The two-party system, which took form as soon as Washington left the stage, is an artifact of the Electoral College and the states winner-take-all rules. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. Clearly, we need to drastically change the way we elect presidents. Lewis is saying that the "playing field" is not equal when it comes to the vote. Legitimacy for any elected official is an important factor for governance of a State. The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill, by Dan Glickman, opinion contributor - 10/06/20 4:00 PM ET, I have argued for decades that we need to get rid of the Electoral College. One reason the Electoral College should be abolished is that one of the candidates could win the popular vote and still end up losing the election. These Politics essays have been submitted to us by students in order to help you with your studies. That is how it works in every state election. Are the people smart enough to choose their own leader? Although this is very unlikely to happen, the fact that a candidate could win the elections with only 21.8 percent of the popular vote clearly shows that the majority of the people are not always represented in the Electoral College. The Electoral College we have today isn't the one in the original Constitution. How Do Bacteria Become Resistant Answer Key; Peds Exam 1 - Professor Lewis, Pediatric Exam 1 Notes; MKT 2080 - Chapter 2 Essay; Chapter 8 Practice; Nearly all states follow the winner-take-all system, awarding all electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in that state. The Founders created the Electoral College as a new method of direct election. [15], [1] https://history.house.gov/Institution/Electoral-College/Electoral-College/, [2] https://history.house.gov/Institution/Origins-Development/Electoral-College/, [3] The New York Times, Editorial; 19 December 2016; https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/opinion/time-to-end-the-electoral-college.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article. jo.src = 'https://www.financialjuice.com/widgets/voice-player.js?mode=inline&display=1&container=FJ-voice-news-player&info=valuewalk&r=' + r; method is known as the Electoral College. Quote Reply Topic: Let's abolish the Electoral College Posted: 11 February 2008 at 7:20pm: Let's abolish the Electoral College. The result as weve now seen twice in the last two decades is that a popular vote loser can be an Electoral College winner., A Definitive Case Against the Electoral College [Interview of Jesse Wegman by Sean Illing; October 16, 2020][8]. "The main complaints against the Electoral College are that it can elect someone who didn't win the nationwide popular vote and that it causes candidates to campaign heavily in 'battleground states' while ignoring those they think they are certain to carry or not. Republicans won the 2004 election, but the Electoral College actually gave the Democrats a boost. Please sign this petition to pressure the government to change the process of our presidential election to a popular vote. Each state holds an election for the popular vote. It's completely rigged. We do NOT offer any paid services - please don't ask! var jo = document.createElement('script'); In presidential elections, the voters actually vote for a slate of Electors who have vowed to cast their ballots for their preferred President/Vice President ticket. Considering that Trump won three normally Democratic rustbelt states Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin by razor-thin margins totaling just 80,000 votes, perhaps landslide might not have been the most accurate description of the outcome of that election. Illing: What would you say is the biggest myth or misconception about the Electoral College? At present, however, a non-governmental organization, the National Popular Vote (NPV) campaign, proposes to reform the Electoral College by action taken at the state level through an interstate compact; 10 states and the District of Columbia have approved the NPV compact to date. Since the 18th century, the United States has used the Electoral College, made up of 538 individual electors, to elect its presidents instead of going by the popular vote. Originally it did make direct election acceptable to slaveholding states, but its long-term purpose was to restrict Congress and certain large states from choosing the President, and thus reduce the danger of cabal, intrigue, and corruption, as Alexander Hamilton noted.[11]. Its appointed every four years for this sole purpose by state legislatures, and consists of Electors in a number equal to each states congressional delegation (Representatives and Senators). 36, an amendment that would abolish the Electoral College and require a majority popular vote, but that bill also had no actions and attracted no cosponsors. But we need bipartisan support in Congress, a constitutional amendment, and a majority of the states to agree. The Electoral College is a antiquated voting system, slipped into the U.S. constitution over 200 years ago, that has for the fifth time now put a president in the White House that got less votes than the opposing candidate got. (Neale 2 CRS) Basically, Neale is saying the Electoral College provides additional leverage to states that have a smaller population. Parliamentary Vs. Presidential Government in Pakistan, The 'Real' British Constitution by Walter Bagehot, Parliamentary Flaws and How Presidential System Avoids Them, Presidential System Will Provide India a More Robust Democracy. Together with our house of representatives in the lower chamber it rules across the land as a bicameral legislature. Those ratings help inform our state-by-state assessments of the delegations. What Would Gandhi Think of Our Constitution? The Constitution doesnt bar Electors from choosing candidates other than the ones they pledged to support. Survey Methods. 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