The Electoral College is the name for the electors who formally
choose the President and Vice President of the United States. Each of the states
receives a certain number of electors, which is determined by the total number
of Senators and Representatives it sends to the U.S. Congress. Therefore, each
state has at least 3 electors. The Electoral College was devised by the
Constitutional Convention as a procedure to elect the President by the people,
at least indirectly.
When the Constitutional Convention chose a method of
selecting a President, they took several problems into consideration. The first
problem they had to solve was the lack of information that the people had due
to poor communication. At the time the U.S. contained approximately 4 million
people who lived spread apart along the Atlantic coast with very little
communication or transportation. This made it difficult for the people to
choose a President from a list of people that they knew little about. Another
reason was the direct election of the President would give them much power.
After choosing the Electoral College as the method of
selecting the President, the Framers described it in Article II, Section 1 of
the Constitution. In this new procedure, the process of choosing the electors
was left to the states, in order to eliminate the states’ suspicion of the
federal government and members of Congress. Employees of the government were
not allowed to serve as Electors. In order to prevent bribery and secret
dealings, Electors from each state were required to meet in their own states
rather than all together in one large meeting. Also, the Framers tried to
prevent the possibility of having no majority by requiring that each Elector
vote for two candidates, one of which had to be from outside their state. The
person with the majority would become President, while the runner up would
become Vice President. If there was no majority the election would be turned
over to the House and they would select the President.
The Electoral College is not an efficient way to vote at
this time because everyone can access information on the internet, television,
radio, or in the press. There is no excuse to be uninformed about the
candidates for President or Vice President.
In order to change the way the President is elected, it
would require changing the Constitution. Amending the United States Constitution is not a small task. From the
article, “The Electoral College”, there are essentially two ways to amend the Constitution.
The first method is for a bill to pass both houses of the legislature, by a
two-thirds majority in each. Once the bill has passed both houses, it goes on
to the states. It has to pass three-fourth of the states to become a law. The
second method prescribed is for a Constitutional Convention to be called by
two-thirds of the legislatures of the States, and for that Convention to
propose one or more amendments. These amendments are then sent to the states to
be approved by three-fourths of the legislatures or conventions. The first
method is the one that is commonly used.
Although there is a legal way
to solve the problem, debates about the Electoral College will never end. According
to the “Should Electoral College be Eliminated?” article on Creators.com, Presidents
Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter both supported proposals to eliminate the
Electoral College and replace it with a direct popular election, with a runoff
between the top two candidates if none received at least 40 percent of the
vote. The most recent example of the power of the Electoral College to elect
the President and Vice President is the election of 2000, in which Al Gore won the
national popular vote but lost to George W. Bush in the electoral vote.
Although Al Gore lost less
than 4% of the popular vote in Florida, New Hampshire,
Missouri, Ohio, Nevada and Tennessee (his home state), he lost all the popular
votes in those states. If Al Gore had won any of those small, insignificant
three-vote states, he would have been President. However, according to Matthew
Venia, a
writer for Helium online newspaper, it shows that “the Electoral
College did its job.”
If we were to change and go
with just the popular vote half of the states would become irrelevant. All a
politician would have to do is campaign in California,
Texas, New York,
Florida, Illinois,
Pennsylvania, Ohio,
Michigan and Georgia to reach 50% of the nation.
If a politician could get half of Cal, Tex,
NY, FL and Ill
to vote for them they would have as many votes as Al Gore had in 2000. With
just a popular vote only about a dozen cities would need to be visited: LA, NY,
Houston, Miami, Chicago, Philly, and a
few others. No need to visit small cities like Pierre,
Green Bay, or even Portland. (“Should the Electoral College
Be Abolished?”)
Venia’s solution to adjust the
number of votes each state gets is using the Banzhaf Power Index. It measures
how much power an individual has in swinging a particular contest. In the
current system California measures 3.4 and New York
2.4 while Oregon is 1.2 and Kentucky is 1.2. In other words a vote cast
in New York is twice as likely to affect the
outcome as a vote in Oregon or Kentucky. California is three
times as likely.
"We are a very
different country than we were 200 years ago,” said Senator-elect Hillary
Clinton.
I believe strongly
that in a democracy, we should respect the will of the people and to me, that
means it's time to do away with the Electoral College and move to the popular
election of our President. I hope no one is ever in doubt again about whether
their vote counts. (“Hillary
Calls For End To Electoral College”).
Another reform worth serious consideration is for all
states to do as Maine and Nebraska do, awarding electoral votes by
congressional district.
Corbin Pon, in his article “Electoral College should be eliminated,” says that the Electoral College needs to be thrown out for the
2012 election and simply replaced by a nation-wide popular vote. Pon goes on to
explain that United States
citizens have the resources, so the voting infrastructure would not need to be
changed. They have the models, as large states like California have no serious issue running
popular vote elections for their chief executive officers. They have the
motivation, as the smothering embers of the Gore vs. Bush Presidential election
still flare up now and again with the fact that Gore lost while holding the
popular vote.
Jeffry R. Fisher, a computer
programmer who has been writing as an "aspiring statesman,” says that the
ways to reform the Electoral College are:
1.
Don't
allow states to bind electors to a particular candidate; require a secret
ballot by electors,
2.
Don’t
allow candidates to select electors. Every elector would become a candidate,
and every Presidential hopeful would need to first prevail as an elector.
Nobody would really know until after the election who the final candidates
would be,
3.
Use
approval voting at all stages. With approval voting for electors, the two party
strangleholds on power would evaporate. With approval voting among electors,
there would always be a winner, so we could eliminate all the rules about
sending the election to the House of Representatives.
One of the writers of Helium online newspaper,
Matthew Venia, says,
“Refined, yes. Abolished, no.” He explains that the Electoral College does
serve the important purpose of making votes in “flyover country” count. The
idea is every state casts a ballot with size based on population. Therefore the
smaller states aren't completely ignored, but the larger states do, rightfully,
earn more attention. (“Should the Electoral College Be Abolished?”)
Paul Shlesinger, a consultant from Virginia, who is involved primarily with the
Federal government, assisting them in commercial services management, public policy,
and quality assurance initiatives, says that while the Electoral College system
is not perfect, it should not be abolished. Although people point out the
disadvantages of the Electoral College, it is important to consider the
advantages. The Electoral College is fair, simply due to the fact that the
rules are known upfront. Candidates know that the only thing that counts is how
many electors they end up with. They campaign based on it, and they make all
their decisions with full knowledge of the rules. The Electoral College system
acts as a stabilizing force. What this means is that candidates competing for
electors are pulled more to the middle on issues, which helps to avoid radical,
destabilizing change. In a purely popular vote system, candidates would focus
on heavy population centers where the most votes could be gained. The Electoral
College system, however, forces candidates to compete in states where the
population is closely divided politically. The system rewards the candidate
that can win independents and moderate voters. This reduces the likelihood that
a candidate holding extreme views will succeed. Another benefit is that the
Electoral College system ensures that non-voters are fairly represented. The
point here is that the biggest benefit to the Electoral College is its ability
to handle rare events that the Government may not have even considered before.
Although the Electoral
College has always been the way to vote for President and Vice President, it
does not mean that the Electoral College is the way to do it forever considering
the development of the country. In contrast to the statement that the Electoral College system ensures
that non-voters are fairly represented, non-voters consciously choose not to be represented by not voting. The
Electoral College makes sense in the condition of a lack of information, but
for today, there is no excuse to uninformed about the
candidates for President or Vice President. A popular vote is more fair and effective than a vote by the Electoral
College.
WORKS CITED
Fisher,
Jeffry R. "Should the Electoral College Be Abolished? - by Jeffry R Fisher
- Helium." Helium - Where Knowledge Rules. Helium, Inc. Web. 15
Mar. 2010.
.
"Hillary
Calls For End To Electoral College - CBS News." Breaking News
Headlines: Business, Entertainment & World News - CBS News. The
Associated Press, 20 Nov. 2000. Web. 23 Feb. 2010.
.
Pon,
Corbin. "Electoral College should be eliminated - October 31, 2008
-." Technique - The South's Liveliest College Newspaper. Georgia
Institute of Technology, 31 Oct. 2008. Web. 26 Feb. 2010.
.
Shlesinger,
Paul. "Should the Electoral College Be Abolished? - by Paul Shlesinger -
Helium." Helium - Where Knowledge Rules. Helium Inc. Web. 04 Mar.
2010.
.
"Should
Electoral College be Eliminated? by Newspaper Contributors on Creators.com - A
Syndicate Of Talent." Creators Syndicate - The Best Content in The
World. Ed. Creators Syndicate. Creators Syndicate. Web. 23 Feb. 2010.
.
"The
Electoral College." Electoral-vote.com: Election news. Web. 23 Feb.
2010.
.
Venia,
Matthew. "Should the Electoral College Be Abolished? - by Matthew Venia -
Helium." Helium - Where Knowledge Rules. Helium, Inc. Web. 15 Mar.
2010.
.
English-4 Class.