When you get down to it, we’re voting every four years for electors, not a president. The women who worked for him say that’s not the whole story. In fact, only 18 of the 50 states received a visit from one of the candidates in the last two months of the last presidential election, simply because the margin between popular and Electoral votes wasn’t small enough to warrant their attention. Many say that the Electoral College is undemocratic and that a popular vote concept is democratic, which is why states should dump the former. Perhaps some electors are wise sages with better judgment than the American people, but others are likely malign, corrupt, or driven by their own idiosyncratic beliefs. and demonstrates … Simply put, our country operates on a system that goes against the ideals of democracy. What does happen all the time is the presidential campaign is warped by the Electoral College rules. Here’s why that’s a bad idea. Minor updates have been made to reflect that the election has concluded. It is, quite simply, not a fair vote, which leads us to the next point. Maintain American Federalism. Perhaps most bizarrely of all, in 2004, an elector from Minnesota who was supposed to vote for John Kerry for president instead voted for, And this year, one Democratic elector candidate from Washington state has. Although 27 states have laws that require electors to vote for the candidate that gets the majority of the popular vote, there’s nothing in either the Constitution or in Federal law that requires they do so. Notice that I did not write “democracy”, since the Framers of our Constitution purposely created a republic, not a democracy. So how does that happen? Thanks for Sharing! It’s tough to argue with a straight face that this … has pointed out, that doesn’t necessarily mean that our state’s electors will vote for the winning candidate. It would accurately value them by treating them equal to people who live in cities, rather than giving them an extra weighting. Why the Electoral College Is Bad for America: Third Edition - Kindle edition by Edwards, George C.. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. 5 Reasons the Electoral College Is Bad for Our Country. By Jason Pye. Why the Electoral College Is Bad for America. The presidential election is generally portrayed as a battle to win states and their accompanying electoral votes. These would be some upstanding citizens chosen by the various states, who would make up their own minds on who should be the president (they’d have to vote on the same day in their respective home states, to make it tougher for them to coordinate with each other). But in most, the penalty for not doing so is only a fine, and it’s unclear whether stiffer penalties would hold up in court — it’s never been tested, and the Constitution does appear to give the electors the right to make the final call. This year, only the states in gray above were decided by a margin of less than 9 percentage points, as of Wednesday afternoon. And the winner of the national popular vote is usually also the winner in the Electoral College. Thankfully, the founders established a lot of checks and balances, as well as provisions for the unlikely event that something in government doesn’t go as planned. The growing anger at the electoral college comes from the desire — and expectation — that all your political desires should be fulfilled without constraints simply by voting. This is not a new claim: People have been arguing against the Electoral College from the beginning. Electors filter the passions of the people. For one, the winner of the nationwide popular vote can lose the presidency. I understand why the U. S. Electoral College was first created, but I think times have changed and that we should abolish this outdated system. But it really doesn’t look like there’s much stopping them should they choose to do so. Even the harshest critics would have trouble proving that in more than 200 years of operation, the Electoral College system has produced bad results. The Electoral College is responsible for disenfranchising, in effect, huge swaths of American voters, said Doug McAdam, a professor of sociology who studies American politics. (However, these margins have tightened since the 2016 election.). Gary Gregg of the University of Louisville wrote in 2012 that eliminating the Electoral College would lead to “dire consequences.” Specifically, he feared that elections would “strongly tilt” in favor of “candidates who can win huge electoral margins in the country’s major metropolitan areas.” He continued: If the United States does away with the Electoral College, future presidential elections will go to candidates and parties willing to cater to urban voters and skew the nation’s policies toward big-city interests. Book Description: Americans currently choose their president through the electoral college, an extraordinarily complex mechanism that may elect a candidate who does not receive the most votes. First, the argument. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9H3gvnN468 The Electoral College. Democrats keep losing the Electoral College while winning ever-larger popular-vote victories because their support is overly concentrated in … This hasn’t mattered much in the past because, almost always, the parties do a good enough job of vetting their respective electoral slates to ensure that they will indeed loyally back their party’s presidential nominee. Millions rely on Vox’s explainers to understand an increasingly chaotic world. Mr. As The Huffington Post has pointed out, that doesn’t necessarily mean that our state’s electors will vote for the winning candidate. Why the Electoral College is Bad for America will be widely cited in debates about our method of electing presidents.”—Alexander Keyssar, New York Review of Books “This crisp handbook . By George C. Edwards III. Abolishing the Electoral College was once an outrageous suggestion. Furthermore, small-state interests are built into the Senate’s math (where Delaware absurdly gets as many senators as California), and many House districts are rural. Why the Electoral College is Bad for America will be widely cited in debates about our method of electing presidents.”—Alexander Keyssar, New York Review of Books “This crisp handbook . . http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html Why does pretty much every other country that elects a president use a simple popular vote, or a vote accompanied with a runoff? Well, are there arguments for the Electoral College? The point of all this was to try to make the presidential election function like ordinary statewide elections for governor or senator, at least within each state. And Pete du Pont, a former governor of Delaware (three electoral votes), has made a similar case, calling proposals for a national popular vote an “urban power grab.”. Why the Electoral College Is Bad for America. We’ve seen how inefficiently our government runs when the White House is held by one party and Congress by another. With 538 votes, each electoral vote should represent 570,000 voters. Millions of votes in safe states end up being “wasted,” at least in terms of the presidential race, because it makes no difference whether Clinton wins California by 4 million votes, 400,000 votes, or 40 votes — in any scenario, she gets its 55 electors. And fourth, there’s the possibility for those electors themselves to hijack the outcome. Read 8 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. That’s right: the Electoral College isn’t really based on population. But a key metric is hardly ever discussed. We'll publish them on our site once we've reviewed them. Electoral College: The first acts of a new Congress usually hold great significance. Small-town issues and rural values will no longer be their concern. Uncategorised Thoroughly revised and updated, with an extensive analysis of the 2008 election, this book remains the best analysis of the Electoral College for both students and general readers. For instance, a 2013 Gallup poll showed 63 percent of adults wanted to do away with it, and a mere 29 percent wanted to keep it. After all, why doesn’t any state elect its governor with an “Electoral College” of various counties? Her passion for a healthy mind-body-spirit relationship motivates her to explore all the natural world has to offer. The system was originally designed to protect the smaller states from larger ones, but the current Electoral College underestimates the population in some states and overestimates it in others. It’s those people who are going to technically pick the president this Monday. Yale University Press, Sep 13, 2011 - Political Science - 259 pages. You’ve been invited to Clubhouse. The electoral college is, essentially, a vestigial structure — a leftover from a bygone era in which the founding fathers specifically did not want a nationwide vote of the American people to choose their next president. With just over 50 percent of the popular votes in each state needed to win the entire state in the Electoral College, these four states have a lot of say in deciding who becomes president. If the amount of Electoral College votes a state receives was directly proportionate to its population, smaller rural states would be rendered completely irrelevant. So when Donald Trump won the state of Alaska, the practical effect was that the Republican Party’s nominated elector slate there — former Gov. They carry more Electoral votes per capita than other states. Why the Electoral College Is Bad for America: Second Edition. This means that although more people wanted Gore for president, the way the Electoral College is built, Bush won enough seats to claim the presidency. Gore won large states like California and New York, but Bush won enough key states, like Florida, to secure the White House. adspeed_zones.push({zoneid:82564,numofads:1,div:'vik_82564_1',wrapper:'0'}); adspeed_zones.push({zoneid:91093,numofads:6,div:'ad91093',wrapper:'adspeedsection-sidebar'}); can become president by winning the Electoral College, even if he or she has lost the popular vote. It Creates the Very Real Possibility of a Tie. Hillary Clinton won Vermont, so she got its three electoral votes. 224p. Most Americans are still a little unclear about the Electoral College, why it exists, and why it’s important to our republican form of government. So how does that happen? Every four years, we take to the polls to elect a president, but what many people may not know is not all votes are equal in the Electoral College. This is very much within … eBook Details . Hello Select your address All Hello, Sign in. Die Druckversion dieses Lehrbuchs … The promise and peril of this year’s missing flu season. The House has already passed the For the Politicians Act, H.R. newsletter. . But there’s one big obstacle: All of the states that have adopted it are solidly Democratic, with zero being Republican or swing states. Why the Electoral College Is Bad for America: Third Edition - Kindle edition by Edwards, George C.. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. To All the Boys: Always and Forever suffers from a case of diminishing returns. The key reason is that a constitutional republic protects the rights of minorities from a tyrannical majority. Donald Trump won Alaska, so he got its three electoral votes. Interestingly, instead of beginning with the historical context of its origins, he begins with how the electoral college works, how it among other things, cheats the voters in a particular state who vote for the losing candidate who may actually have more popular votes. Beat explains how the Electoral College is the worst way to elect the President and Vice President in the United States. This is the third edition of the definitive book on the unique system by which Americans choose a presidents, and why that system should be changed. Especially with all the advances that we have made in technology, conducting a popular vote would now be a fairly easy process than a century ago and we need to take steps to change the way that we conduct presidential elections. The Electoral College: Good or Bad Essay Example Electoral College system has failed the United States a number of times, most recently in the 2000 election. But then I will counter some good counter-arguments sent by thoughtful Quorans I respect, who happen to not agree with me on this issue. Amazingly enough, though, nothing in the Constitution gives American voters the right to choose their president. Despite the oddness and unfairness of this system, its defenders argue that it ordinarily “works” just fine.

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