Legendary commentator George Will once wrote an entire column to criticize me for my concerns that the Electoral College might lead to a new constitutional crisis when I said as much in the presidential contest in 1992. Opponents of the College admit that yes, at one point in time, the Electoral College was a necessary component in electing the President of the Union. Mission: Providing a framework to improve your investing PROCESS, while collecting newsworthy information about trends in business, politics and tech areas. It focuses on the concept of "voting power," the ability of an individual to influence the outcome of an election, within the political context of the controversial 2000 and 2004 elections and. It is beyond dispute that our system to elect presidents is no longer working. Almost all states rely on a "winner takes all" system in which every party in each state creates a slate of electors equal to the number of Electoral College votes the state has. This hour, we look at the Electoral College, its history . If Democrats think they have a shot at turning out voters in rural states, they will tailor their policy agenda to appeal to such voters. By clicking Accept All, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Through a presidential executive order Through an, 11. Presidential System Could be More Suitable for India, Why Ambedkar Didnt Like Indias Constitution. including in the 2000 and 2016 elections. In fact, if given the choice of either accepting his loss or preserving our democracy, which outcome would Trump choose? In fact, he maintains without any proof -- that the election was rigged, while making an all-out effort to deny the will of the electorate. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent. Created to protect the slave states, it is championed now by conservatives who fear the power of America 's true majority. 32 minutes and 09 seconds. 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. Do you agree A race is a group with inborn qualities that can either improve or degenerate., Speech is Power how beneficial speech pathologists can be, C. maculatus prefers smaller sized beans for oviposition. (04.02 MC) Which of the following is a key belief of a supply-side approach to economic and fiscal policy? [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. State electoral vote results are reported to Congress and other designated authorities; they are then counted and declared at a joint session of Congress held on January 6 of the year after the election; Congress may, however, change this date by joint resolution. Having a majority determine the winner of our presidential elections can moderate both parties considerably. Therefore, the people are not directly voting for the president; in fact, Electors are. (4 points) Libertarian Conservative A) No regulation Moderate regulation B) Government management of the, 5. Q3 2020 hedge fund letters, conferences and more. Seems fair, well its not. It was devised during the framing of the Constitution in order to provide a method of indirect election for the Office of President. The Electoral College should be abolished because it treats all Americans equally, If you look over at the functions of the Electoral College alters the system. Maine and Nebraska use an alternative method, the district system, which awards two electors to the popular vote winners statewide, and one to the popular vote winners in each congressional district. On election night just like this year the election was too close to call. Unsubscribe at any time. All of our essays are donated in exchange for a free plagiarism scan on one of our partner sites. 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. Each state holds an election for the popular vote. The Electoral College has failed to push parties to form broad coalitions. If 60,000 votes went the other way in Ohio, George W. Bush would have won the national popular. Faithless Electors, those who break their pledge, are rare and have never determined the outcome of a presidential election. The Electoral College system was started to keep urban communities as well as cities from having the power in the Presidential election. Pros And Cons Of Abolishing The Electoral College. 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. Although he has virtually no chance of succeeding, he could not care less that he was subverting our democratic form of government. Let's Abolish the Electoral College . They say the system is also unfair because it encourages presidential candidates to pay attention to just a handful of swing states. But do they really? These are certainly problems, but all election systems have problems, national popular vote included. When every ballot is counted in the same way, then the winner becomes easier to declare. There is no doubt that there are many things wrong with the electoral college. 4. Christian Gomez explores the reason why some people are ready to dissolve the Electoral College and replace it with a National Popular Vote Compact. Save it to your desktop, read it on your tablet, or print it out to read anywhere! These Politics essays have been submitted to us by students in order to help you with your studies. The federal government would have to regulate voter and candidate qualifications, voting requirements and election procedures. He is now a vice president at the Aspen Institute and a senior fellow with the Bipartisan Policy Center. After more than a month of acrimonious counting and recounting, Bush emerged with a winning margin of 571 votes out of more than 5.4 million votes cast. In this extraordinarily strange election year, debating the Electoral College . Is Iran ready to build a nuclear bomb or not? Last week, we released our initial House ratings for 2024. Two Presidential elections (1800 and 1824) have been decided in the House. Gomez states that the National Popular Compact would not work because that the United States is a Democratic Republic not a pure Democracy. Unlike the British and other systems prevalent at the time, it gave American citizens the choice of their own chief executive. In 2000, and again in 2020, the outcomes of elections resulted in Constitutional crises. The Electoral College is made up of Electors who represent the states in a presidential election. The Founders created the Electoral College as a new method of direct election. Despite the new law, some still think the Electoral College is outdated and should be abolished in favor of a national popular vote system. Illing: What would you say is the biggest myth or misconception about the Electoral College? Thanks to Donald Trump, what was once the relic of our system is now an active threat to the future of our democracy. Editor's Note: In 2016, we asked two professors to debate whether the Electoral College should cease to be the mechanism used for selecting the U.S. president.Here are the yea and the nay. Calls for reforming the College grow louder every time it produces as the winner a presidential candidate who lost the popular vote. [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. Each state gets their total number of votes decided based on the population of the state plus two guaranteed senators. Dan Glickman served as agriculture secretary under President Clinton and represented Kansas as a member of Congress. Further, he has enacted in office not the modest policies of a man without a true national mandate but has fueled our partisan warfare. 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. Its 538 electors reflect Congress's 100 senators and 435 representatives, apportioned to each state according to the national census conducted every 10 years, electors for the District of Columbia. Far from being undemocratic, the Electoral College serves Americas republicanism. This makes the candidates focus on swing states needs more than other states in order to win the election. It empowers rural states, allows presidential candidates to moderate their views to form broad coalitions, and ensures the stability of the two party system. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". Moreover, Thomas Neale article depicts the procedure of awarding each states electoral votes. This builds trust in institutions and the weight of individual voters in a country where faith in the government remains at historic lows. Thanks to Donald Trump, what was once the relic of our system is now an active threat to the future of our democracy. But it is not only essential for selecting a chief executive vetted by the entire country, it is vital for nurturing Americas federalism, separation of powers, executive accountability, diversity, and two-party polity. Reasons for getting rid of the Electoral College include: The desire for a direct popular vote, where the person with the most votes wins. A national popular vote would turn America into a multiparty democracy. By one analysis of the 2012 presidential election, four out of five voters had virtually zero influence on the outcome. With the exceptions of Nebraska and Maine, where electors are, awarded according to congressional district, each state's electoral votes are awarded in a winner-take-all, Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. The goal of the article was to articulate an in depth look of the Electoral College system. But Trumps ushering in of an ultraconservative minority-rule presidency, and the threat that he would do it again in 2024, has established Electoral College reform as a serious progressive issueespecially following the Capitol Hill insurrection., The Electoral College Saved the Election [By Christopher DeMuth; January 8, 2021][10]. The Electoral College was and continues to be an undemocratic system that stands as an obstacle for the United States to become a real democracy. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". Legitimacy for any elected official is an important factor for governance of a State. Clinton, who clearly despised Trump, graciously conceded the election on Election Night. These issues still affect out modern day political sphere. Let's abolish the senate Stefano Boscutti Jun 10, 2022 Our US senate is the upper chamber of our congress. (Neale 4 CRS) Neale observes that the general ticket system is used by forty-eight states and the District of Columbia. Without the College, a candidate could win the Presidency by focusing on just a few large states, or by making populist promises harmful to Americas federalism. According to Civis Analytics poll, 62 percent of the people that voted in the 2016 election would like to abolish the Electoral College. [6], Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College [Book by Jesse Wegman reviewed in The New York Times by Josh Chafetz; March 17, 2020][7]. The College is also a brilliant alternative to runoff elections. Available from: [Accessed 01-03-23]. 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. 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. Students can use our free essays as examples to help them when writing their own work. It does not store any personal data. By Jack Rakove, the William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies and a professor of political science. Since the beginning of the millennium we have had five presidential elections. They view the Popular vote as a way to lessen the power of the people in rural areas, and make the focus of elections and political campaigns centered around the urban and city regions of each state. All election systems have problems, but all election systems have problems, popular. Had five presidential elections Abolish the Electoral College about trends in business, politics and tech areas look... 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