President Donald Trump won the election in 2016 through the. But I do wonder if he and other defenders of the Electoral College still believe that any of these arguments are worth holding onto. Those ratings help inform our state-by-state assessments of the delegations. Together with our house of representatives in the lower chamber it rules across the land as a bicameral legislature. But it was very disturbing that the election had to be decided by a vote of the Supreme Court. You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. Advocates of the Electoral College argue that it can do three worthwhile actions for us. Alex Keyssar is Matthew W. Sterling Jr. THE HILL 1625 K STREET, NW SUITE 900 WASHINGTON DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 TEL | 202-628-8503 FAX. A national popular vote would have accentuated rather than moderated the zealous enthusiasms roiling the Democratic Party.. 1 The state with the most electors is California, which has fifty-five. Start by abolishing the Electoral College. On the other side of the debate are those who would keep the Electoral college in place. The Electoral College Should Be Abolished - Free Essay Example 24. juuli 2020 . Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Presidential System Much Less Dangerous: ShashiTharoor, Parliament Faces Terminal Decline if Speaker Isnt Independent: ArvindDatar, https://history.house.gov/Institution/Electoral-College/Electoral-College/, https://history.house.gov/Institution/Origins-Development/Electoral-College/, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/opinion/time-to-end-the-electoral-college.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/books/review/let-the-people-pick-the-president-jesse-wegman.html, https://www.vox.com/21142223/electoral-college-2020-election-jesse-wegman, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/01/the-electoral-college-is-racist-heres-how-to-kill-it-without-a-constitutional-amendment/, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-electoral-college-saved-the-election-11610133725, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2012/06/20/duvergers-law-is-dead/, https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1909#Elliot_1314-05_2172, https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/faq.html#changes, Nehrus Role in Constitution-Making Far Greater than Ambedkar. First, lets refer back to the DBQ packet, document D, the chart shows that twelve of the smaller states plus. Most Americans, by a wide margin, believe the Electoral College should be abolished. While not formally one of the national political institutions, political parties today are nonetheless major players in both national and state politics. For example, they created the Electoral College because news traveled slowly, so people weren't . Gates Capital Management Reduces Risk After Rare Down Year [Exclusive]. First, the Electoral College is felt to be an outdated system which is no longer necessary for our elections (The Electoral College). Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors. More amendments have been proposed on this subject than on any other in US history. Available from: [Accessed 01-03-23]. Presidential System Could be More Suitable for India, Why Ambedkar Didnt Like Indias Constitution. Every 4 years our country makes one of the most if not the most important decisions for our future, which is our next president. Presidential candidates wouldnt need to immerse themselves in local issues. But we need bipartisan support in Congress, a constitutional amendment, and a majority of the states to agree. Albert Gore accepted the result, even though he had won the popular vote by 540,000. Interestingly, the electoral vote totals of Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2016 were identical 306. But the Electoral College is worse than merely useless. It was compromise between the states and the people. During three of them, the winner got fewer votes than the loser. , Because a states number of electors is based on total population, not actual voters, it gives the states no incentive to enfranchise new groups of people, or to make voting easier for those eligible. 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. 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. var r = Math.floor(Math.random() * (9999 - 0 + 1) + 0); But in 2020, when many hallowed American institutions submitted to street demonstrations and violence, the Electoral College proved a steadfast guardian of democracy. After reading the article by Thomas Neale, the Electoral College is fair and gives each state a more equal voice in the presidential election based on population census. [3], There have been movements to enact state laws requiring Electors to vote for the winner of the popular election. Abolish Electoral College Essay. Furthermore, Neale gave a detailed description of the General Ticket system and other alternative systems that give the audience a full spectrum of the Electoral College process. Past proposals for change by constitutional amendment have included various reform options and direct popular election, which would eliminate the Electoral College system, but no substantive action on this issue, has been taken in Congress for more than 20 years. Certainly not many of the Republicans I know and respect who have not become Democrats but cannot stand their party under Trump. F- It is Unfair Doc. Why is that a big deal? Professor of History and Social Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. 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. Please sign this petition to pressure the government to change the process of our presidential election to a 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]. I am a fan of rural Americans and remain devoted to the success of our farmers and heartland. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. The district plan is the one that Maine and Nebraska use now. With Trump`s win, the debate of whether to keep or abolish the Electoral College has heated up and intensified. He relates the process of allocation of the electors and shows how the electoral vote is distributed to the electors of each state. But does anyone still believe it is a great idea for our politics? 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. a. 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. Get the entire 10-part series on our in-depth study on activist investing in PDF. Those who wish to abolish the system have laid out plans to replace the system with a more Popular vote oriented system which counts each individual vote directly (Neale 2004). Certainly not many of the Republicans I know and respect who have not become Democrats but cannot stand their party under Trump. The Constitutional crisis was finally over. ValueWalk also contains archives of famous investors, and features many investor resource pages. This helped our country pick a winner in many presidential elections where there were multiple candidates. [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]. Two electoral votes would be awarded to the candidate winning the overall popular vote in each of the then . . All of our essays are donated in exchange for a free plagiarism scan on one of our partner sites. 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]. Despite sharp polarization of the parties on many issues in 21 st century politics, Republicans and Democrats broadly agree on both longstanding election reform proposals. Far from being undemocratic, the Electoral College serves Americas republicanism. It empowers rural states, allows presidential candidates to moderate their views to form broad coalitions, and ensures the stability of the two party system. Its as simple as that! The Electoral College is made up of Electors who represent the states in a presidential election. Dan Glickman served as agriculture secretary under President Clinton and represented Kansas as a member of Congress. With the Electoral College, the value of a vote depends on what state a person lives in. Get the entire 10-part series on our in-depth study on activist investing in PDF. Reasons for getting rid of the Electoral College include: The desire for a direct popular vote, where the person with the most votes wins. Survey Methods. Instead of pitting the top two candidates against each other for the same electorate to vote again, the College allows an additional filter of state Electors to make the choice. The Electoral College we have today isn't the one in the original Constitution. In fact, the problems it would cause became quite evident as early as the election of 1800, and were repeated in 1824 and 1876. Mr. Bidens opponents soon abandoned their campaigns. It's composed of senators, each representing a single state. Electors assemble in their respective states on the Monday after the second Wednesday in December (December 19 in 2016). The Electoral College can result in a president who lost the popular vote winning the election, as seen in the 2000 and 2016 elections. Compare and contrast Sample's and McConnell's views about the Electoral College. The electoral college started with the constitution of the united states, it cited how many electors each state is able to have. . Candidates would need to travel everywhere instead of only to a handful of swing states that currently enjoy this attention. Therefore, they are not focusing on the needs of the people all over America which is going against what the founding fathers wanted. The Founding Fathers knew that there needed to be a system like an electoral college in place to ensure the USA flourishes. Right now, small states have no voice because they, like big states and medium-size states across the country, are not battleground states. The electors cast separate ballots for President and Vice President, after which the Electoral College ceases to exist until the next presidential election. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Calls for reforming the College grow louder every time it produces as the winner a presidential candidate who lost the popular vote. The College delivers a Chief Executive vetted not just by the people of every state but also by their state governments. In conclusion, the opposing view of the system insists the Electoral College is unfair and that every vote should count. Christian Gomez explores the reason why some people are ready to dissolve the Electoral College and replace it with a National Popular Vote Compact. 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. Instead, the delegates settled on a system involving an Electoral College. But we need bipartisan support in Congress, a constitutional amendment, and a majority of the states to agree. He shows how the Constitution's text, history, and structure are a crucial repository of collective wisdom, LET'S ABOLISH THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE Are the people smart enough to choose their own leader? By Jack Rakove, the William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies and a professor of political science. They believed it wasn't a good idea for the people to elect the president directly. In 2020, the Electoral College began showing its stuff in March, when Joe Biden, who had done poorly in early primaries, suddenly emerged from a pack of far more vivid candidates to become the presumptive Democratic nominee. 1830 State of the Union Address In 1830, Jackson returned to the Electoral College and repeated his request to Congress. The Electoral College system was started to keep urban communities as well as cities from having the power in the Presidential election. Although the Electoral college may have its flaws, many support keeping the system in place. 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. It is these officials who choose the President and Vice President of the United States. EssaySauce.com is a completely free resource for students. EssaySauce.com is a free resource for students, providing thousands of example essays to help them complete their college and university coursework. The funds added 7.7% overall in the second half of 2022, outperforming the 3.4% return for Read More. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. Each state has at least three representatives, no matter the amount of people living in the state. They say the system is also unfair because it encourages presidential candidates to pay attention to just a handful of swing states. Now, Republicans will have a 222-213 majority once Rep.-elect Jennifer McClellan (D, VA-4) is sworn into the House following her special election win last week. The brightest students know that the best way to learn is by example! Both Democratic and Republican candidates focus on issues that are important to, say, coal miners in Pennsylvania or auto workers in Michigan, but those arent the only issues in the country. Created to protect the slave states, it is championed now by conservatives who fear the power of America 's true majority. Each state holds an election for the popular vote. For example, in 1824, 1876, 1880, 2000, and 2016, the Electoral College elected a president against the popular vote. - Albert Einstein. The Electoral College no longer serves a purpose in protecting against uninformed voters in an age of information and protecting states' rights in a branch of government that doesn't involve. Why should the Electoral College be abolished? 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. Younger voters also tended to support abolishing the Electoral College. Gomez explains that the National Popular Vote Compact is supported by many politicians including Senator Joseph A. Griffo, Newt Gingrich, and Billy Hewes of Mississippi. majority of the people are not always represented in the Electoral College, This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google. (4 points) The federal government is responsible for raising taxes on businesses to, 14. When the Electoral College was almost abolished? I respect Will as an astute observer of politics. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. 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. It authorizes each state to appoint, by whatever means the legislature chooses, a number of electors equal to the combined total of its Senate and House of Representatives delegations, for a contemporary total of 538, including 3 electors for the District of Columbia. Alexander Keyssar explains its persistence. At 100 signatures, this petition is more likely to be featured in recommendations! Republicans won the 2004 election, but the Electoral College actually gave the Democrats a boost. The United States, Presidential elections provide a level of legitimacy to each new administration by following the will of the people (Clayton 2007; Koza 2016). Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the popular vote the Electoral College, this site protected... Under Trump or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data keep urban communities as well cities. Started with the Constitution of the then state of the Republicans I know and respect who not... 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