Q1
I feel that the electoral college should be abolished. Hillary Clinton even tweeted that even though she has a seat in the electoral college she too feels it should not exist. It doesn’t make any sense for the popular vote to not win as this country is considered a democracy by the people FOR the people. It makes individuals feel as if their vote is not heard if their state is traditionally more left leaning or right leaning.
Regions should not determine who wins the president, the people should. The existing system also can be used in the wrong way because it is not stated that electoral votes coincide with poplar vote, which is why even if the electoral college is not going to be abolished atleast the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact should be implemented to keep it somewhat realistic with the majority vote.
More people would also be inclined to vote if individual votes mattered more than what state they lived in. The arguement that without the electoral college, America wold be at risk of tyranny (unreasonable use of power/control), is untrue, as it has been over 200 years and the United States is still pretty split on whether they are on the left or right side. It is also logically wrong to not want a majority to overule another party because isn’t that what a democracy is supposed to be about?
The system is outdated and should be re evaluated, a majority of ways of life back in the 1800’s is different to today so the government should also be changing and adapting with the people. The party system has even changed as they had different types of party’s and sometimes even more than three were prevelant and major at that time so that is proof that the ways of government has changed. The main issue we have been running into and that has been a debate over the last 20 years is the effectiveness of the electoral college if the popular vote has been losing, adn it should be clear that the elctoral college should be abolished due to this circumstance.
QUESTION 2
In my opinion, I think it is true that the Electoral College no longer serves its original purposes, and that it creates a grave risk that a candidate not favored by a majority of the people will, from time to time, be elected president. There have been three: John Quincy Adams, Benjamin Harrison and George W. Bush. We survived. Not one was a first-rank president, but their selection did not seriously injure the democratic character of our system.
The founders opted for the Electoral College because the two leading alternatives, election by Congress and by popular vote, were thought to have serious defects. Moreover, the electoral college method preserved the two compromises over representation—the three-fifths clause and the big state-small state compromise—and guarded against a fracturing of votes for many candidates, which they thought might occur once George Washington was no longer available as a nationally respected consensus candidate. The three-fifths clause became irrelevant with the end of slavery, and the big state-small state divide no longer animates our politics, if it ever did. The two-party system solves the fractured vote problem more effectively than the Electoral College ever did, and the electors never exercised genuine independence. The Electoral College thus presents democratic risks without serving any of its original purposes.
That is not to say the Electoral College is without its advantages. It gives a slight edge to candidates with broad-based support in many states over those who rack up huge majorities in just a few large states. That probably promotes a more national and less regional vision. It channels presidential politics into a two-party system, which is superior to multiparty systems where fringe factions can exercise too much leverage. It probably reduces the cost of presidential campaigns by confining television advertising to the battleground states. And it confines vote-counting disputes to just one, or maybe a few, states. Imagine a Florida-style recount in every precinct in America.
Still, the advantages are uncertain and relatively minor. Almost no one would adopt an Electoral College today if we were starting from scratch. But reforming the Electoral College does not rank high among our national problems. Given that a change would require a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress and three-quarters of the state legislatures, it is not going to happen. We should be talking about other things.
The great problems with our presidential selection system today stem from the haphazard way we choose the two major party presidential candidates. This year is the poster child for the need for reform. The two parties have chosen the same year in which to nominate a person whom large numbers of Americans, probably a majority, regard as unfit. Generally, we count on the Republican and Democratic parties to nominate not the best people, but candidates who combine a degree of popular support with the experience and temperament to govern
you need to complete at least two responses “the “Final Posts”) of at least 200 words each to classmates
