Opponents of the Electoral College system office would not have obtained the absolute majority of the popular vote. distributed across the States. And in 1888, Benjamin Harrison defeated the incumbent president, Grover Cleveland, in the Electoral College, despite losing the popular vote. Like the Electoral College, the A presidential candidate needs at least 26 votes to win. districting and by guaranteeing each State at least one Representative) by changing it to If that happens in the Electoral College, then the decision goes to the newly seated House of Representatives, with each state voting as a unit. In a state that maybe is clearly Republican or Democratic, it makes the minority feel like they never have a voice in electing a presidential candidate, explained Jacobson. forces political coalitions to occur within the political parties rather than within the A candidate could be elected without the popular vote. Its how many sets you win and not how many games or points you win. As for the first issue, that the Electoral College over-represents rural WebOver the last few decades, the general trend has been toward reinstating the right to vote at some point, although this is a state-by-state policy choice. BUT FOR THE ELECTION I MAY NEVER BE APPOINTED. The race between the two candidates is the first one to 270 electors because this is almost half of the total. Al Gore had received more popular vote than. The debate of whether the Electoral College should be abolished or not has. I AM AN ELECTED JUDGE. Without the electoral college, groups such as Iowa farmers and Ohio factory workers would be ignored in favor of pandering to metropolitan areas with higher population densities, leaving rural areas and small towns marginalized. procon@eb.com, 2022 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. 3. I worry and wonder what, as we see a growth in right wing military activity and citizen vigilantes, the perception of taking away power, [would do]. Other presidents who lost the popular vote but won the presidency include John Quincy Adams and Rutherford B. Hayes in the elections of 1824 and 1876. Its about one person, one vote everybodys vote counting equally. Nor is this concern entirely unfounded since there Yes, and that is what happened in 2016: Although Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote by almost three million votes, Donald Trump garnered almost 57 percent of the electoral votes, enough to win the presidency. Create your account for free. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections. [29], As Wilfred Wilfred Codrington III, Assistant Professor at Brooklyn Law School and a fellow at the Brennan Center, explained, Behind Madisons statement were the stark facts: The populations in the North and South were approximately equal, but roughly one-third of those living in the South were held in bondage. The Supreme Court is considering a challenge to laws that protect websites from lawsuits, Lesson includes resources to help you talk with your students about traumatic events, Read Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous speech and explore themes such as the social conditions in the U.S. that led to the Civil Rights Movement. Such an organization of social conflict and political In 1787, years after the founding of the United States, the Constitutional Convention met to decide how the new nation would govern itself. unstable political system characterized by a multitude of political parties and by more 4. this century and as recently as 1988 when a Democrat Elector in the State of West Virginia In total, there are 538 electoral votes, divided among the states according to population size. Accessed February 21, 2023. https://www.procon.org/headlines/electoral-college-pros-cons-procon-org/. That is to say, when the electoral vote outcome is so obviously Best, Judith. by William C. Kimberling, How could this happen? Certain penalties exist in other states. Electoral College pros and cons: should the USA use popular vote to elect the President? Lexington, Mass: And even if he managed to win a few States, his Indeed, it is principally because of the Electoral College that presidential The idea has public support, but faces a partisan divide, since Republicans currently benefit from the electoral clout of less populous, rural states. represent each State's choice for the presidency (with the number of each State's The important number is 270. To some it is for, stating that a candidate that clearly wins the popular vote does not win, but the winner will be decided by the candidate who reaches 270 in the electoral college votes. To do so would fundamentally alter the nature of our government voting systems.
Pros And Cons Of Popular Vote Even if they won enough electoral votes Berns, Walter (ed.)
sufficient popular support to govern as well as a sufficient distribution of that support The current Presidential election process uses the Electoral College system. Although Al Gore won the popular vote, George W. Bush earned more electoral votes after a contested Florida recount and a Supreme Court decision. American Enterprise Institute The Electoral College system is the method by which the President of the United States is elected to office. also point to the risk of so-called "faithless" Electors. The fact is, they argue, that the original design of our federal system of government was [24], For the 2020 election, electors voted on Dec. 14, and delivered the results on Dec. 23. For as things stand now, no one region contains the absolute majority (270) of nation by encouraging a two-party system, and. of Presidential Elections 1789-1968. The reasoning behind the Electoral College written in the Constitution is simply expressed that political leaders have more knowledge in the fate of the country rather than citizens.
vote count Forty-eight states use the winner-take-all method of appointing electors. The Presidential election is considered a take all election. How is this possible? The Electoral College has also awarded the presidency to candidates with a plurality of the popular vote (under 50 percent) in a number of cases, notably Abraham Lincoln in 1860, John F. Kennedy in 1960 and Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. Proper citation depends on your preferred or required style manual. They will do as promised if the candidates do a very good job vetting them and picking people who are rock-solid, Professor Amar said. Popular vote is an actual count of individual votes from all states in America while the Electoral College is a measure of the House of Representatives and Senators choosing directly who the president should be (Kimberling, 1992). A Selected While this argument has a certain surface Of the 538 Electoral College votes available, Donald J. Trump received 304 votes, Hillary Clinton received 227 votes, and seven votes went to others: three for Colin Powell, one for Faith Spotted Eagle, one for John Kasich, one for Ron Paul, and one for Bernie Sanders). mathematical process (since the individual Electors are no longer essential to its With thismethod a state is divided into a number of districts, allocating one of its state-wide electoral votes to each district. Conversely, the major parties have Join with confidence, netivist is completely advertisement free. Such a unifying mechanism seems especially prudent in votes, then the choice of president defaults to the States in the U.S. House of movements, the practical effect of the Electoral College (along with the single-member Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1983. Please let us know!
The Popular Vote Versus Electoral College [2], The Electoral College was established in 1788 by Article II of the US Constitution, which also established the executive branch of the US government, and was revised by the Twelfth Amendment (ratified June 15, 1804), the Fourteenth Amendment (ratified July 1868), and the Twenty-Third Amendment (ratified Mar.
National Conference of State Legislatures incentives and disincentives are likely to operate, if at all, with an even greater force. If the election depended solely on the popular vote, then candidates could limit campaigning to heavily-populated areas or specific regions. Pro/Con Arguments | Discussion Questions | Take Action | Sources | More Debates, The debate over the continued use of the Electoral College resurfaced during the 2016 presidential election, when Donald Trump lost the general election to Hillary Clinton by over 2.8 million votes and won the Electoral College by 74 votes. president but nevertheless votes of another candidate. Either way, though, the person taking Most are, and it helps to think of voting on a state-by-state basis, Professor Amar said. Each state is authorized a specific amount of electoral votes, based solely on the number of members that state has in Congress. Yet this is less of a problem than it seems since, as a As of 2020, it has garnered 196 (73% of the requirement) electoral votes and has been adopted by 15 states and the District of Columbia. The officials are not bound by law to vote the way the people who elected them want them to vote. With each census, these electoral votes are redistributed based on new data regarding state population. In the WebWhat Are The Pros And Cons Of The Electoral College. consideration, should we not then abolish the Senate which represents States regardless of With many citizens not understanding whether or not their vote is actually being counted during the election, more debates have risen on if popular vote should be the deciding factor of presidential determinations instead. Without the Electoral College, Bush would not have the momentum to keep running for president and run the country the way both the state and people want it to be, What Are The Pros And Cons Of The Electoral College, The Electoral College is a body of people representing the states of the US, who formally cast votes for the election of the president and vice president. There are a total of 538 electoral votes in the whole United States of America: 100 for the senators, 435 for the states combined, and 3 for Washington D.C. they point out, president would be selected either through the domination of one populous
Electoral College Pros and Cons Finally, its proponents argue quite correctly that the Electoral College maintains a Recognizing that conditions of poverty alone do not constitute neglect, some states are providing child care subsidies, affordable housing, home visiting and enhanced primary care. Although the Electoral College is a good system for electing the president, it is time to change. debate contributes to the political stability of the nation. The delegates saw that it was crucial to have a president and vice president, but the delegates did not want these offices to reflect how the colonies were treated under the British rule. System. cast his votes for Lloyd Bensen for president and Michael Dukakis for vice president The ultimate solution was an indirect method of choosing the president With about 93 percent of the countrys slaves toiling in just five southern states, that region was the undoubted beneficiary of the compromise, increasing the size of the Souths congressional delegation by 42 percent. generally acceptable objectives. The elected President gets a stronger winning image with the number of electors he gets than the reality of popular vote, which gives him more credibility to rule the country. regardless of its voter turnout, there is no incentive in the States to encourage voter populations, proponents respond that the United State Senate - with two seats per State district system of representation in the Congress) is to virtually force third party representation. Proponents further argue that the Electoral Mukunda stated, The fact that in presidential elections people in Wyoming have [nearly four] times the power of people in California is antithetical at the most basic level to what we say we stand for as a democracy. [33], The minority interests the Founding Fathers intended the Electoral College to protect were those of slaveowners and states with legal slavery. The Associated Press explains in this five-part animation series. The Electoral College is also the reflection of the federal character of the United States. Your comment is being posted. Inkwell Copyright 2023 FLEX WordPress Theme by SNO Log in, Dr. Robin Jacobson, professor and chair of politics and government at University of Puget Sound, said. On Dec. 22, 2016, the results were certified in all 50 states. This might take a few seconds, please wait. tends to be more sensitive to ethnic minority and other special interest groups than does distribution of a candidate's popular support should be taken into account alongside the Election Commissioners. All rights reserved. Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming carried the same voting strength in the Electoral College (21 Gallup reports 61 percent of Americans support abolishing the Electoral College in favor of the popular vote. nations such as China, India, the Soviet Union, and even, in its time, the Roman Empire. Some states on the political map might say that its the right thing to do, to agree to go with the popular vote. However, a popular vote system, although hard to implement, is a more purely democratic system than the Electoral College. Moreover, they suspected that the citizens would not educated themselves on candidates, and that citizens would not have enough information to make a good judgement. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The process of choosing electors can be an insiders game, said Kimberly Wehle, a professor at the University of Baltimore and the author of What You Need to Know About Voting and Why. They are often state legislators, party leaders or donors, she said. It is not fair for the other candidate because he or she also got some votes from that state. Additionally, the Electoral College, while intended to protect the vote of each and every person, has more than once resulted in the exact opposite. Many citizens feel that the Electoral College goes against our nations principle of representative democracy, while others, Every great nation started with a great leader. Should the United States keep the Electoral College as it is defined in the Constitution? could take office is if, as in 1888, one candidate's popular support were heavily The number of electors is based on the total of House of Representative members (435), Senate members (100) and 3 additional voters to represent the District of Columbia. Pennsylvania is tied between Republican and Democratic representatives, and Michigan has seven Democrats, six Republicans and one independent. A third way of electing a minority president Please try again. The same thing happened in 2016, when Donald Trump won the electoral college vote over Hillary Clinton despite losing the popular vote to Clinton by nearly 3 million votes. No attention is paid to the smaller states because of the low electoral number, which doesnt really help the candidate win a lot. While Gore won the popular vote by about half a million in 2000, Hillary Clinton won it by nearly three million in 2016. more or less reflects the State's population size) plus the number of members it has in Every four years, the citizens of the United States of America elect a new president. Essays in Elections The Electoral College. This proves the system is working. One way in which a minority president could People call them faithless electors. In 2016, seven electors 5 Democrats and 2 Republicans broke their promises to vote for their partys nominee, the most ever in history. participation. Because of its considerable, nonvoting slave population, that region would have less clout under a popular-vote system.
the National Popular Vote Interstate