The Electoral College
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This paper will take an in depth look at how the voting process works in the United States, but mainly focus on the Electoral College and its wrongs and rights in the American voting system. Its difficult to understand and let alone appreciate the Electoral College unless one completely understands its past circumstances and problems it was attempting to solve. The Electoral College was established to elect a president in a country that was split up into thirteen states that lacked communication and transportation between each other and was made up of 4 million people scattered through out thousands and thousands of miles (Dorgan, 1).
After many attempts to set up a voting system that was accepted by the Constitutional Convention, the idea of letting the people elect the president indirectly was brought up. Which lead to the idea of the Electoral College, which was a system that was made up to let the people indirectly elect the president through a college of electors.
The Electoral College is made up of electors in each state, who represent the states popular vote. Each presidential party or candidate designates a group of electors in each state, equal to the States electoral votes, who are considered to be loyal to that candidate, to each States chief election official. The number of electors a state receives is equal to its number of U.S. Senators plus its number of U.S. Representatives which is determined by its population (Rae, 23). Meaning that bigger states would have more Electoral votes than little states since their population is bigger. On the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November in years divisible by four, the people of each state submit their votes for the slate of electors representing their Presidential candidate which is inevitably the election of the States electors and not the election of the President (www.fec.gov/pages, 1). This “winner takes all” system is what decides which presidential candidate wins the states electoral votes. The Presidential candidate who wins the popular vote in the state has its designated electors given the electoral votes for that state which means that candidate wins all of the electoral votes for that state. You need 1 more than the majority of the electoral votes to win the presidency (Rae, 34). The only problem with this is that a presidential candidate can win the Presidency with out winning the popular vote, by winning the larger states electoral votes, such as George Bush did in 2000.
Many people stand against the Electoral College system and claim that the system is out of date. There are three Presidential elections that are frequently used as an argument against the Electoral College. In 1800 Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson accumulated the same amount of electoral votes which was later broken by the House of Representatives in the favor of Jefferson within jurisdiction of the original form of the Electoral College (Kimberling, 7). In 1824 Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William Crawford, and Henry Clay were four strong competitors for the presidency and none of which received a majority of electoral votes to win the presidency. The selection process was then kicked to the House of Representatives who slightly favored Adams and resulted in the first time the person who won the popular vote didnt win the Presidency (Kimberling, 7). In 1872 Horace Greeley died in the period between the popular vote for the Electors and the meeting of the Electoral College. Devoted electors were then forced to change their vote for Ulysses Grant who had already won a majority of the Electoral votes (Kimberling, 8). These three presidential elections are often brought up because of what happened in them had brought attention to some of the flaws in the Electoral College. When these arguments are made in the present day they are hard to accept though, for the fact that they happened over 100 years ago in a political system that was still trying to figure out how to work itself, and with politicians that didnt know much about the election process and how to take on a presidential election.
If you take a second to look at the Electoral College you will see that, yes, there are some flaws, but there are also many good things that come from it as well. The problems that exist from the Electoral College are just a few, one being the fact that a candidate can win the Presidency with out winning the popular vote. This raises the big question of; does the peoples vote really count? Are the people really indirectly electing the president? Looking at the situation, yes, they still are. The votes are just represented in a smaller proportion. The Electoral College takes the peoples popular votes and turns them into a smaller number that is easier to keep track of and regulate. If the United States counted every single vote in the nation the voting numbers would be much harder to represent and keep track of. Another problem people claim is wrong with the Electoral College, in spite of the 2000 election, is the miss representation of votes, people voting more than once, and peoples vote not even being counted. This has come mostly into play after the problems that occurred with the state of Floridas voting. When votes in Florida were said to not be counted at all (Dorgan, 2). Yes this may happen from time to time, just as there are flaws in everything. People are corrupt and cheat. It was once said if youre not cheating youre not trying. Baseball players take steroids, boxers are paid off to take a fall, and Presidents surely cheat as well. Abolishing the Electoral College would not get rid of corrupt politicians. There would still be just as many votes that were counted twice, or not counted at all if the American voting system was changed to the people directly electing the President through the popular vote. Another problem that arises with the Electoral College is that it is claimed to discourage people from turning out to vote. With the feeling that not everyones vote counts many people stay far away from the voting polls on the first Tuesday in November (Silbey, 89). This may be the case for the people who are uneducated about the voting system and the aspects of the Electoral Vote, but there is no reason that justifies the reasoning that the Electoral College is to blame for the decline in voter turn out. Voter turn out at the polls has been on a steady decline for many years. Since 1960, when, the voter turn out was at 60% of the age populated Americans who were qualified to vote it has declined to 51% in 2000 and hit 49% 1996, the lowest over the 40 year span (www.infoplease.com/ipa, 1). These numbers have been decreasing over a period of time where nothing has gone wrong in the Electoral College, and each President won the popular vote as well as the majority of Electoral