Centerville High
School
Centerville, South
Dakota
Teacher: Terri
Buechler
The Electoral College
By Seth Eide
My opinion of the Electoral College runs very deep within my
heart. After the election of 2000 it made me very ashamed to be an American, but at least
I am free and have a home. I think that the electors should vote the way the people vote
or just get rid of it because the people’s votes would mean more, and we would get
the President we want. Plus I think each state should get the same amount of electoral
votes no matter the size of the state.
The electoral
system was created by the drafters of the Constitution of the United States, who hoped to
entrust the responsibility to the people whose choice would be unaffected by partisan
politics. I think that has gone down the drain. The electoral procedure was originally
specified in the Constitution, to elect a President and a Vice President. Since it does
not work that well, I think we should just have a popular vote. I would rather have a
communist government instead of our electoral process because our election process is so
bad.
The person that
gets the highest number of electoral votes would be president and the second highest
number would be vice-president. I think that
we should just throw away the electoral votes so we would not have so much confusion.
Each State is
allocated a number of Electors equal to the number of its U.S. Senators plus the number of
its U.S. Representatives. This is just unintelligent because it should not matter what
size your state is to get more electoral votes. Each
state should have the same. Political parties
in each State submit to the State’s chief election official a list of individuals
pledged to their candidate for president and equal in number to the state's electoral
vote. Most of the time, the major political
parties select these individuals either in their state's party conventions or through
appointment by their state party leaders while third parties and independent candidates
designate theirs. I think this is ok if people’s electors would vote the way the
people voted instead of who they want. Members
of Congress and employees of the federal government are illicit from serving as an Elector
in order to maintain the balance between the legislative and executive branches of the
federal government.
I think someone
should come up with some way to vote over the Internet so people wouldn't mess up with the
ballots plus I think this would be safer.
Either party slate
who wins the most popular votes in a state becomes that State’s Electors winner so
that, in effect, whichever Presidential ticket gets the most popular votes in a state wins
all the Electors of that that state. I think
that this is a good idea, but instead of getting the electors to vote we should just throw
them out. We need to get rid of the electoral votes because our votes do not really count.
Sometimes electors vote their way instead of what way we want. In order to nip in the bud Electors for voting
only for “favorite sons” of their home state, at least one of their votes must
be for a person from outside their state. This
has been a problem since the parties have time after time nominated Presidential and Vice
Presidential candidates from diverse states.
On the other hand
some people think we should keep the Electoral College since it gives smaller states more
votes. I think it doesn’t matter because we don’t get what we want anyways. An
easier way to elect our President and Vice President would be a direct vote system where
we all would vote and who ever would have the most votes would be president and the second
highest vote would be the vice president. I
think that more states should use this system because I think it would run more smoothly.
Existing Electoral College and automatic plans say by states themselves; the district plan
says by state subdivision; the proportional plan says by party vote by states and the
direct-vote plan says by the entire nation. Well,
to wrap up this essay I think the Electoral College is not so bad but I think we should
get rid of it.
Required Questions
1) The United States
elected a president and vice president of different parties by the candidate with the
highest number of votes was named the president and the second highest vote winner was
named the vice-president. The first major problem occurred in the election of 1996, which
resulted in the election of John Adams, a federalist as president and Thomas Jefferson, a
Republican as vice president.
2) The four ways to
elect a president between 1808 and 1846 were: Lot, Automatic plan, four regions on a
rotating basis, and direct vote plan.
3) Five U.S. Presidents
who were elected with less than a popular vote were Nixon, Truman, Hayes, Taylor, and Polk
4) The Winner Take all
system provides that whoever gets the popular vote gets the popular vote gets all of that
state’s electoral votes.
5) The electors vote the
first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, and the results are known in January
after the votes are counted in both houses and then the results are announced.
6) The direct popular
vote for the Electoral College would have an affect on third party candidates by the
proportional plan which called for a division of each states Electoral College votes
according to the popular vote received by each party under the proportional plan, urban
areas lose power as they would with out plan other than the current winner-take all
system, and third parties are encouraged.
7) Two arguments for and
against a direct vote system are: Advocates of direct elections claim such a system always
ensure that the candidate with the greatest popular vote would win the office of
president. Richard Nixon won the presidency
with 43.4% of the popular vote to Hubert Humphrey’s 42.7 % and George Wallace’s
13.5% but even with a direct vote Humphrey would have lost by 510,000 votes out of 73.2
million. Opponents claim they thought the direct vote would encourage minority parties
because there would be a greater probability that two major parties would not receive a
majority, would weaken the states and strengthen the national government
8) The differences
between the district plan, proportional plan, and the winner-take-all plan is: the
district plan- the states congressional district elects an elector: proportional plan-for
example when there is three candidates and one of them gets 10% of the votes, one gets 40%
of the votes, and the other one gets 50% of the votes the electoral votes are divided
accordingly, winner-take-all plan-when the winner of the state gets all the electoral
votes.
9) The four points
included in the ideal plan for electing U.S. presidents are 1. Need for a quick decision
and clear- cut winner; 2. The victor should be the peoples choice winner of the most
popular votes; 3. The president-elect should have a mandate to govern, a legitimacy which
comes from a good margin of victory; and 4. The ideal system should not undermine the
two-party system.
10) I think that the
ballots were just messed up since they thought some of them weren’t counted.
11) No, I don’t
think that Florida and the U.S. Supreme Courts politicized their votes, I feel this way
because I think they voted the way they felt. About every site I go on there is something
about the election.
12) The election of
2000 made me ashamed.