Homework Lance
What is an Electoral College?
The United States is headed for the elections, and the candidates are traversing the land to ensure that they garner as many votes as they can get from the electors. In some nations, every individual has the right to vote, and their constitutions provide that the person who gets as many votes is declared the winner. However, the system is slightly different in the United States. The country used what Mintz & McNeil (2016) refer to as the Electoral College. Consequently, this paper explores the concept of Electoral College, how it was set up and how it functions. The discussion shall also compare the system to that of the popular vote approach. It shall finally examine the outcomes of an electoral system against that of a popular vote.[MR2]
This system was established in 1787 after the developers reached an agreement on how to choose the leader of the land. Since then Aruoba, Drazen & Vlaicu (2015) observe that the system has been evolving to accommodate the current changes. Despite its flaws here and there it has managed to withstand the test of time to see over 56 presidents. Before adopting this system, the delegates debated on different options such as the popular vote and the congressional vote.
The arguments against the popular vote were that there would be many candidates receiving many votes.[MR4] Secondly, there would come a time when each state wants to vote one of their on to be president. Another option was to allow the Congress to choose the president. James Madison’s argument, however, saw a shift from this idea. He argued that such a system would compromise the check and balance process as provided by the constitution. Such arguments led to the establishment of a complex Electoral College system as specified by the section two of article two of the US constitution.
Currently, the system is made up of five hundred and thirty-eight [MR5] electors and three representatives from the District of Columbia. There is no particular standard on how each state chooses and elector. According to Van Wesep (2014), the constitution did not specify what an elector should have. On the contrary, it excluded officers of the United States, the federal officers, and the Congress members. The 12th amendment provides [MR6] that each elector poses two votes one for the president and another one for the vice president.
A presidential candidate must get 270 of the 538 electoral votes cast to be elected president. This number is, at least, a majority of the Electoral College vote. If no presidential candidate attains a majority of the Electoral College vote, then the United States’ House of Representatives is allowed to choose the president from the three candidates receiving the most votes. An example is in the year 1800 during the election of Thomas Jefferson and in 1824 the election of John Quincy Adams.
The candidate vying for vice presidency and ends up receiving a majority of the electoral votes is elected vice president. If the candidates are unable to attain a majority of the votes, then the Senate selects the vice president from two of candidates with most votes, and each senator has one vote. To conduct the vote, two-thirds of the senators must be present, and an outright majority of the senators is necessary to elect the vice president.
Electoral College system versus a popular vote
The United States Constitution provides that the Presidential candidate with the most electoral votes will become president. The determinant factor is the Electoral College and not the popular vote. So whereas the popular vote is a determinant factor at the state level, the Electoral College vote, on the other hand, is the determinant factor at the national level.
In 2000, George W. Bush won the majority of the electoral votes but lost the popular vote to Democratic presidential candidate, Al Gore. According to West’s Encyclopedia of American Law (2005), this was not the first time that a presidential candidate became president despite losing the popular vote. It happened in 1824 when Andrew Jackson won the popular votes and House of Representatives selected John Quincy Adams as president since no candidate won a majority of the electoral votes. It also happened in 1888 when Benjamin Harrison won a majority of the electoral votes despite losing the popular vote to Grover Cleveland.
According to Chen (2014), the Electoral College system has been accused of thwarting the democratic principles. It is also alleged that the process tramples on the rights of the people by failing to respect their choice. During the 2000 election, Al Gore garnered almost 2.5 million of the state of Texas popular vote. He, however, did not receive any electoral vote from Texas because of the winner take all method. This scenario would not have occurred if the president was directly elected by the popular vote since the votes could not have been wasted. They would be included in the national tally. [MR7] It must, however, be noted that the votes were not lost but were cast to the losing side of the popular vote within that state.
The Value of an individual vote under the Electoral College system
There have been complaints since the 2000 elections that if the winner of the popular vote is not the president, then their votes don’t count (Gelman, Silver & Edlin, 2012). There is, therefore, no need to vote. It is worth noting that every citizen’s vote does count. The feeling arises from the fact that when a person votes for a presidential candidate, he or she is voting in a state election and not at the national election. Therefore, his or her vote counts in his state just like anyone else’s in that state.
The state of California has approximately 37,253, 956 people with 55 Electoral votes whereas Alaska has a population of 83,299 with 3 Electoral votes. The state of Alaska has fewer residents per electoral vote as compared to California. Therefore, a voter in Alaska has more influence [MR8] on who becomes the president than a voter in California. Even though some people deem this to be unfair, this was the reasoning behind the creation of the Electoral College system. These opinions have arisen because the so-called small states require equal representation of their interests similar to the interests of states like California Texas and New York. It is, however, worth noting the influence of a voter in a particular state should be pegged on the number of the registered voters as against the electoral votes instead of using the population of a state to determine the influence.
Conclusion
Even though the Electoral College system is not perfect and it might have its flaws, it was established for the benefit of the people and various states that make the United States of America. According to the wisdom of the founding fathers, the purpose of this system was to ensure peaceful coexistence, unity, and the inclusion of all states in electing the head of the executive arm of the government. So far the Electoral College system has achieved its purpose.[MR9]
References[MR10]
Aruoba, S. B., Drazen, A., & Vlaicu, R. (2015). A Structural Model of Electoral
Accountability (No. w21151). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Chen, L. (2014). Robustness instead of accuracy should be the primary objective for
subjective pattern recognition research: Stability analysis on multicandidate Electoral
College versus direct popular vote. Computational Intelligence, 30(2), 167-204.
“Electoral College.” West’s Encyclopedia of American Law. 2005. Retrieved April 05, 2016
from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3437701572.html
Gelman, A., Silver, N., & Edlin, A. (2012). What is the probability your vote will make a
difference?. Economic Inquiry, 50(2), 321-326.
Mintz, S., & McNeil, S. (2016). Digital History. Retrieved April 07 2016 from
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu
“President.” The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English. 2009. Retrieved April 05,
2016 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O999-
president.html
Van Wesep, E. D. (2014). The Idealized Electoral College voting mechanism and shareholder
power. Journal of Financial Economics, 113(1), 90-108.
[MR1]This isn’t exactly the right template. You are missing a header with the title and page number.
[MR2]Great job on this intro and thesis statement
[MR3]I like these clearly defined subtopics to organize your paper.
[MR4]You could expand on this a bit. I believe you are saying that it’s possible that a single candidate may not obtain a clear majority…negating the two-party structure.
[MR5]For numbers 10 and greater you can write it out as 538.
[MR6]Very good.
[MR7]Great point regarding the value of the individual vote.
[MR8]Yes!
[MR9]This doesn’t really explain why the Electoral College system is still used today.
[MR10]Great job on these references!
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