Kadoka High School
Kadoka, South Dakota
Teacher: Teresa Shuck
The Election Process
By Preston Patterson
Grade 11
Should they change the election
process? Many people have argued whether to
change the election process to popular votes or stay with the same Electoral College. The Electoral College should not be tampered with. Our founding fathers made it this way and it
should stay this way.
When our founding fathers met in
Philadelphia in 1787, they considered several different methods of choosing a president. They considered election by Congress, election by
various state governments, and election by the people.
The Electoral College allowed each state to decide how its citizens would choose
their electors. Originally, Article 11
Section 1:2 of the U.S. Constitution said that the candidate with the largest number of
votes should be president and the runner-up, vice-president. This was changed during the time of the
Constitutional Convention and the House was substituted for the Senate. The House said that members were to vote by
states. (The Election Process essay 2001, pg. 5)
The Electoral College is good for
all the smaller states. If you were to go by
popular votes, the big states would overpower the smaller ones. The smaller states would have no say in what was
going on. This is bad in many ways. Big states, like New York,
Each state has a certain amount
of electoral votes. The number of electoral
votes for that state is equal to the number of senators and representatives within the
state. If you win the popular vote, you can
still loose by electoral votes. This has
happened in many elections over the years. The
candidate has to have 270 electoral votes to win the election. Because the electors are usually chosen at large,
the electoral vote of each state is cast as a unit. The
president and vice-president nominees win the entire electoral vote; they are not split
up. The candidates that get the most
electoral votes are elected as president or vice-president. My opinion is that every state should have a
certain amount of electoral votes. This way
it keeps everything equal and nobody has to worry about not getting any say in the
election
Before the 12th Amendment was
established, people voted for two different candidates.
They were not from the same party. The
candidate with the highest amount of votes was president, and the candidate with the
second amount of votes was vice-president. This
causes many problems because the president and the vice-president were not of the same
party.
There was a big controversy
during this year's election between Al Gore and George W. Bush. It all came down to Florida's votes. They are one of the bigger states, so they have a
lot of electoral votes. There were a great
deal of people who were angry because Al Gore won the popular vote, but he did not win the
electoral votes. Those angry people think
that they should change the electoral process to popular vote only, so you have a clear
and official winner.
I think that we should defiantly
keep it the way it is. Our founding fathers
made it this way, so we should leave it how it is. If
we were to change it, people would have to go through a great deal of controversy. Only a constitutional amendment could change the
Electoral College.
How could the Electoral College
system be bettered? They could try to make it
so that there is a more clear-cut winner. The
feature of the Electoral College that is a requirement, the election goes into the House
of Representatives to determine the president. The
election goes into the Senate to determine the vice-president if the Electoral College
fails to reach a majority. There might be a
delay in determining the victors, and the president-elect and vice-president elect could
be members of opposing political parties. I
think that if they went to the same House, there would not be any delay.
The reason our founding fathers
continued the Electoral College is because it was a very good idea for presidential
election. If we were to change it all the
smaller states in the United States would have now say in the presidential election,
because all of the larger states have a great deal of people. The larger states have different life styles than
the smaller states also. It would take a
constitutional amendment to change the presidential election to popular votes any way. Why go through the trouble criticizing
something when it should not be criticized in the first place.
1. How and when did the United States elect a president and vice president of different parties? Name them and their respective parties. This happened because back in the late 1700’s the electors vote separately for president and vice president. Then it was decided that a candidate had to receive an absolute majority of electoral votes to be a winner. It was in the election of 1796, when John Adams, a Federalist, was elected as president. Thomas Jefferson, a Republican, was elected as vice president.
2. Describe four ways that were suggested to elect the president between 1808 and 1846. In 1808 the proposal to choose the president by lot first surfaced, to be unsuccessful in 1844 and 1846. The Candidates are originally to be chosen by lot were to come from retiring Senators: in the later Proposals the states were to elect a native-son candidate. In 1816 the first direct-vote plan was proposed by Senator Abner Lacock of Pennsylvania and was defeated 21 to 12. In 1826 representative of Georgia first introduced the automatic plan where all of a state’s electoral votes would automatically be cast for the candidates who received the highest popular vote. The last one is the Electoral College this eliminated the winner-take-all provision and its bias toward urban power and against minority parties. This would eliminate the electors and assign electoral votes to candidates on the basis of popular votes received.
3. Name five U.S. presidents who were elected with less than a popular vote. Abraham Lincoln, Grover Cleveland, Zachary Taylor, Harry S. Truman, Woodrow Wilson.
4. Describe the winner-take-all system. Which states use this system? The winner-take-all system gives a great deal of leverage to a few popular votes in low turnout states, which in turn gives ethnic minorities, and others who tend to congregate in urban areas, power beyond their numbers in presidential elections. Which states use this system; this system is used in every state but Maine. Maine in 1969 adopted a district plan whereby two electors are chosen on a statewide popular level and one is chosen from each of Maine’s two congressional districts.
5. When do the electors vote and when are the results known? The congress may determine the time of choosing the electors, and the day on which they shall give their votes; this day shall be the same throughout the United States. The day has been set as the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. In January the votes are counted before both Houses and the results are officially announced.
6. What affect would substituting a direct popular vote for the Electoral College have on the third party candidates? Why? I think that it would give the third party popular a better chance at winning. Because if they get more popular votes they could win.
7. Give four arguments for and against a direct vote system? Supporters of direct election claims such a system would always ensure that the candidates with the greatest popular vote would win the office of president. That it would do away with the faithless elector problem, would reduce the chance of fraud, would encourage greater participation and place the election more fully into the hands of the people where it belongs.
8. Describe the difference between the direct plan, the proportional plan and the winner-take-all plan. The direct plan would encourage minor party candidates, giving them a chance to get at least a few electoral votes, and would elevate local leaders at the expense of national party officials. The electoral vote may be different that those of the winner-take-all plan. Under the proportional plan, the margin of victory of every president would have been decreased between 1864 and 1968. The winner-take all is like the plan for election we have now. The election college and the winner-take-all are pretty much the same, they give points to the candidates for winning the states.
9. State the four points experts in 1969 agreed should be included in an ideal plan for electing U.S. president. The four plans for electing a U.S. president are (1) the need for a quick decision and clear-cut winner. (2) The victor should be the people’s 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. All agreed that the method of electing the president holds broad implications for the political system as a whole.
10. Write a paragraph describing what is meant by one of the following: Crisis is opportunity. There were many crises going on with this year’s election process. The opportunity is open for the people to change the election process if America does not like the voting process they should change it then. I don’t think that there is anything wrong with the election process and they should keep it the same.