By: Clark Varin
Electoral Vote
Many people wonder why our
presidents are elected by the electoral vote instead of the popular vote.
People shouldn’t be able to get elected if they don’t win the most amount of
votes. For example George W. Bush won was elected president in the 2000
election over Al Gore but he was half a million people short of winning the
popular vote. The strategy of winning electoral votes allows presidents to be
elected when most of the people in the country would rather have the opposing
candidate. Winning the presidency shouldn’t have to be a strategic process like
a chess game. It should be as simple as convincing as many people as possible
that you will be the best president.
To
understand the positive and negative side of the Electoral College we first
need to look at the history of the Electoral College and its purpose—why was it
was made? The electoral vote was made by the founding fathers to balance the
power of each state. The fathers didn’t want a large state like Virginia to
have full control over the president of the whole United States. The powers of
each state needed to be distributed so that each state has a significant, but
not too significant, influence in the election.
As we know
now there aren’t 13 states anymore there are 50, so is it still necessary to
vote through an electoral college? Do we still need to balance out the states
influence on the election? No, we don’t need to balance out the influences
anymore because there are so many states now that the election balances itself
out without the assistance of the Electoral College. There is no longer one
dominant state that can win the whole election single handedly, the population
is more distributed than it was. Therefore the Electoral College is an outdated
concept that has only been kept around because it has always been tradition.
The reasoning behind the electoral
vote is completely corrupt. A state that, for example, that casts 10 electoral
votes shouldn’t have to vote all for one candidate. If 30% of the state’s
population voted for candidate A and 70% for candidate B the 10 electoral votes
that the state has shouldn’t all be cast for candidate B. The votes should be
split up, 3 votes for candidate A and 7 votes for candidate B. The fact that
the Electoral College doesn’t split up the votes of the state allows the
candidates to get elected president even though there may be more people that
wanted the opposing candidate.
Map
of the Current Electoral College
There has been some thought about
changing the system so that the person who has more people supporting them
always wins guaranteed. To guarantee this the outdated concept of the Electoral
College must get eliminated and the popular vote must be what influences the
election.
There has already been a proposed
bill that would change the current way that the Electoral College counts votes
with still preserving the Electoral College. This new bill is called the
National Popular Vote bill, it would “guarantee the Presidency to the candidate
who receives the most popular votes in the United States.” But still “The bill
preserves the Electoral College, while ensuring that every vote in every state
will matter in every presidential election” (National Popular Vote). Though
this bill that would change the minority presidents victories hasn’t been
passed yet and we still remain with the same election process founded when
there were just 13 states.
In this video Dr. Larry Sabato explains how the electoral
college works and how it may or may not make sense to keep it around:
Sources
I agree with you that it's wrong that presidents don;t win by the popular vote! Not only would it be the right thing to do to get rid of the electoral college, but it would probably increase voter turnout, because more people would feel that there votes count. It's also a good point that we dont just have 13 states anymore, we have fifty! Lots of things have changed and gotten better over time, but this is still one thing that has never been improved. Hopefully a bill in the future will take out the policy of having electoral votes determining presidency and having the PEOPLE decide.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on almost everything that you said. The Electoral College is very outdated and should not be used today. It is also very frustrating that we do not split up the votes like you said. It would be a lot smarter if it worked that way because it would represent the people more. If the Government said they represent the people, in a way it is false because they only represent some of the population. Maybe we should have written to someone in Congress to make a bill about abolishing the Electoral College.
ReplyDeleteI think that the whole Electoral College is stupid. Like you said before, we don’t have just 13 states anymore. That system worked out back then but it doesn’t fit our time well. The popular vote is the one that should win because that is the guy that most of the people voted for. The popular vote also shows that person was the one the people wanted to win and lead our country. The whole Electoral College is a big game, it shows who can get the most points to win and not the person the people wanted to win.
ReplyDeleteDaniel Wettstein
Clark, I think you did a really nice job with explaining the electoral college along with carrying out your opinion. I do not think we need to take out the entire electoral college completely, because taking out that "tradition" would make excuses for our country to take out other traditions our founding fathers started. However, I do believe strongly that every state should have a split vote, because it every election, only 1 or 2 small states do. This would take away from the controversy and would split everything evenly through a state. People complain about the electoral college but it is what our country has been living off of for presidential debates for over 200 years. A big purpose it serves is that big states don't overpower smaller states, and even so, there are bigger states that are far less populated than ones smaller than it (midwest). All in all, I do agree with you that every state should have a split vote, but I strongly disagree with taking away the electoral college completely. Chances are, if the candidate who people wanted to win won, they wouldn't be complaining to get rid of the electoral college. This is the way America has worked and probably will work for the rest of our lives.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that it necessarily a big deal simply for the fact that it rarely happens and it if it does it happens for a reason. Andrew Jackson won the popular vote but lost the election to John Quincy Adams (1824); Samuel J. Tilden won the popular vote but lost the election to Rutherford B. Hayes (1876); Grover Cleveland won the popular vote but lost the election to Benjamin Harrison (1888); Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the election to George W. Bush (2000). These are the only four times it has happened in our history and I doubt it's going to happen sometime soon and even in the case of this 2012 election it didn't even happen this year. I don't understand why people don't care for the Electoral College, I think it's fair that states with a greater population gets a larger electoral vote. I don't think people should mind though if it does get changed because like stated before it rarely happens.
ReplyDeleteI think that the fact that the President could lose the popular vote and still win the election is not okay. The Electoral College was meant to make things less chaotic and crazy in the early elections but now it has begun to fail. I think that it would be best to have the the Electoral Votes split between the candidates the state voters voted for. If half of the state voted for each candidates then the electoral votes should be split for each candidate too. It would be difficult to have just a popular vote so at least this way seems to have each person's vote count a little more.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the electoral college is unnecessary because it does not split the votes properly. It does not benefit the economy or our government in any way and should be taken away. Many people seemed to think the same until I read Ashley's quote. If we were to get rid of one tradition that will be used as an excuse to get rid of other traditions, but I am not so sure that that is a bad thing. I think that the way things are run could be updated to better fit the time we are in now, as well as give more power to the people. So I stick with what I said earlier. The electoral college should be cut out of the voting system.
ReplyDelete