Electoral CollegeThe Electoral College has been used to elect the President since the beginningsof the United States. In the two hundred some odd years of history, there havebeen instances when the college did not work. There have been many ideas thathave floated around about fixing the problem with the electorate.
Then again,there are many plusses to using the Electoral College system. In an election,the President is elected not by the popular vote, but by the votes of theelectorates. The electorates are representative of each state. There are anumber of electorates per state equal to the amount of persons in both the Houseof Representatives, and the Senate.
The District of Columbia also has threevotes to cast. One of the major drawbacks to the Electoral College is the factthat it can at times be very undemocratic. If a candidate wins the votes incertain states, and gets all their electoral votes, it is possible to win thePresidency, without getting the most popular vote. In the 1800’s, there werethree instances where the Electoral College disagreed with the popular vote.
Onthe same note, in 1968, the race would have ended up in congress shy of a fewvotes for George Wallace. Again in 1976, the electoral vote gave Gerald Ford thevictory even though Jimmy Carter one the most popular support. How would you fixthis problem, there is no easy answer to this question. One way to solve this issend percentages of electoral votes, or ignore the winner-take all system. Forinstance, say that in Florida, who has 25 votes, 80 percent of the popular votesupports the democratic nomination, whereas the other 20 percent went for therepublican nomination.
Then 20 electoral votes would go to the democrat, and 5would go to the republican. Another way to solve this problem would be to baseelectoral votes solely on the population, separate the nation into regions withapproximately the same population, and give them each votes. In this, therewould be no actual state borders, just a set number of voting regions. A thirdand final way to solve the problem would be to do away with the system entirely,and let the popular vote be the sole decision making factor.
This would be theeasiest and quickest way to solve the Electoral College problem. The electoralsystem is not all bad. There are several pluses to its use. One of those plussesis the declaration of a clear winner.
Whichever candidate wins the most votes,or the first to get 270 votes, wins. Also with the current winner-take allpolicy, it makes the smaller states votes more important and less significant tothe candidates. There is also the ability to tell that a clear winner may or maynot have a mandate. A mandate states that the public endorses a candidate’sprograms and that the candidate should put them into affect when he finallyreaches office. The Electoral College is the system of the United States, set upeven before the first actual political parties, that is used to elect thePresident and the Vice President.
The Electoral College is not perfect by anymeans. There have been some instances when a President has been elected eventhough he wasn’t the popular choice, but the plusses given to the electionprocess by having it are worth the few mistakes.
