At issue is the uniquely American system of the Electoral College, which provides that a group of specially chosen representatives (538 at present) for each state choose the president, generally using a winner-takes-all model based on the popular vote. The genius of the Constitutional Convention lay in its successfully drawing the American states toward a "more perfect union." Five short essays by Brian Morton, K-Sue Park, Katha Pollitt, Natasha Lennard, and Asad Haider. It is possible, for example, that the temperature study was conducted during a single odd summer in which one city had higher temperatureswhen the two cities had equal temperatures every other year. On the other end of the spectrum, California represents 12.1% of the US population and has 10.2% of all electoral votes. Is the Electoral College a Problem? Does It Need to Be Fixed? And it should be noted that popular votes for electors occur only within each state; the electors then go on to do the presidential balloting. You have read a lot more academic treatise on this subject than I suppose I have. Cooler heads in a second house might have tactfully pigeon-holed such legislation. Majority supports changing Electoral College system for U.S There is hardly anything in the Constitution harder to explain, or easier to misunderstand, than the Electoral College. I dont accept that the current system is sustainable or that its too hard to change, because it just is incredibly bad,. Purity is a luxury only the privileged can afford. Gouverneur Morris joined Wilson in arguing (over the course of two days) that. Burden also reminded there is a small-state bias already built into the Electoral College since every state gets three electors -- it's minimum number of senators and representatives combined -- so even with proportion by population, small states would still carry more electoral weight. More than 74 million votes had been counted for Mr. Trump. If anything, the Electoral College was designed to act as a brake on over-mighty presidents, who might use a popular majority to claim that they were authorized to speak for the people against Congress. PDF It's time to abolish the Electoral College - Brookings Northern Californians could then be represented the way they wantas they have been demanding, in fact, since 1941, when the first proposals were put forward to create a new state from the rural counties of northern California and southern Oregon. The Electoral College is an election topic that inspires confusion, controversy and conflict. Under this method, an electoral college vote is allocated for every congressional district that they win. This would grant the president "a broad and solid Base for him to stand upon." The first occurred in 1824, when Andrew Jackson won a plurality of the popular vote over John Quincy Adams, William Crawford, and Henry Clay, but failed to win a majority in the Electoral College. Without the Electoral College, there would be no effective brake on the number of "viable" presidential candidates. contributes to the political stability of the nation by encouraging a two-party system, and. There are two basic types of examples, both of which you must master to succeed: 1) The Real-World Example: These imbalances effectively ensure that some votes in presidential elections are worth more than others, and as that imbalance scales up across the entire Electoral College, it can (under the. This type of example is wholly imaginary and created by you for the sole purpose of supporting or opposing the prompt. Incorrect. It causes some votes to have greater weight than others. It proposed to govern Pennsylvania through a simple, unicameral "assembly of the representatives of the freemen." The democratic energies behind these denunciations offer a hint of the key problem with them. If states possessing at least 270 electoral votes were to sign on, the pact would ensure that the presidential candidate who received the most votes nationwide took office. Home Free GRE Prep Course Free GRE Prep Course Dissecting Arguments. Prompt: The political party whos slate gets the most votes then controls all of the states Electoral College votes. This may not be quite equal or, some would argue, quite just. The Electoral College is neither antiquated nor toxic; it is an underappreciated institution that helps preserve our constitutional system, and it deserves a full-throated defense. Critics say that without the consent of Congress, the interstate pact is unconstitutional, and election experts, considering partisan politics, predict it will be challenged in court if enough states sign on. Contact Us, GMAT Prep | GMAT Classes Because the Electoral College is based on the structure of state populations and representation in the House, some people have a vote that carries more weight per delegate than others. California gave 61.5% of its popular vote to Hillary Clinton, and she collected all 55 of California's electoral votes as a result. In this sense, the Electoral College is no more "undemocratic" than is the Senate or the Supreme Court. Panel debates a proposed system that would elect the president by popular vote. GRE Prep | GRE Classes Be on the lookout for assumptions and poor critical reasoning used to come to the conclusion. The Electoral College Is At The Heart Of Debate Over Vote - NPR But the Electoral College system is not only embedded in the structure of our constitutional governance; it is also emblematic of the fact that we are a federal republic. I disagree with the prompt, as it ignores other alternatives that residents of Smithtown might use to cope with the increased heat, such using more air conditioning to lower temperatures (which, according to the prompt, would decrease thirst) or quenching their increased thirst with sport drinks rather than water.. After alldemocracy isthecore of the country and without it,the nation is likely to see increased violations of citizensrightsaspolicy is made in the interest of a small group of people with power. And the idea that a national popular vote would lead to clearer and more representative results ignores the nature of our constitutional republic and fails to contemplate the challenges that a truly national election in our vast country would involve. LSAT Prep | LSAT Classes Texas has not voted for a Democrat since 1976, although there is regularly talk about the state turning purple. Even without the three-fifths clause, Virginia would have been allotted more representatives in Congress and a larger electoral vote. The Pros and Cons of the Electoral College - SmartAsset A dissenting opinion is the opinion of a judge of a court of appeals, including the U.S. Supreme Court, which disagrees with the majority opinion. But the Electoral Collegeinstead let each southern state count its slaves, albeit with a two-fifths discount, in computing its share of the overall count. Lillian Roberts wears a face mask reading 'Let my people vote' while waiting in line to cast her ballot in the U.S. Senate runoff elections on the first day of early voting in Atlanta, Dec. 14, 2020. Numerous studies, meanwhile, confirm a direct link between temperature and thirst. MCAT Classes Incorrect. Many people know that the Electoral College is part of the Presidential election process but may be unsure about its importance and how it works. The Electoral College - Top 3 Pros and Cons - ProCon.org As there have been fewer landslides in presidential races yet the electoral vote remains competitive, he said, the current system will continue to generate uncertainty, recounts and litigation, despite the popular vote winner being clear on election night. "The systemfails to reflect voters' preferences adequately. D. The first space shuttle launched into space cost taxpayers more than a billion dollars.. That was enough to turn some Americans off from the electoral college forever. How could the country enact a popular vote system? Beyond the Nuclear Family . Why is there so much confusion around it? Correct. It is. Each arguments stimulus has been intentionally loaded with flaws or fallacies that you should acknowledge and discuss. Those states received extra, and illegitimate, political leverage. But Derek T. Muller, associate professor at Pepperdine School of Law, called talk of a national popular vote a misnomer at best and an outright lie at worst because states have such widely different voting rules. The second popular argument against the Electoral College is that it was designed to protect slavery. Sherman was not trying to undermine the popular will, but to keep it from being distorted by a president who mistook a popular election for a mandate for dictatorship. Building the space station, for example, was quite expensive; however, its construction was a one-time expense. Excuse me. And from that, we may well have a lot more to fear than from the Electoral College. Missouri's Electoral College members take photos of themselves and the audience as they meet Monday, Dec. 14, 2020, in the Senate Lounge at the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City, Mo. Correct. Find other voting and election resources here: What wastheoriginalpurpose of the ElectoralCollege? This fails to explain why it is important to know this information. And in 2016, Donald Trump garnered 2.8 million fewer popular votes than Hillary Clinton, but won a decisive victory, 304 to 227, in the Electoral College. Currently, legislatures in 15 states and Washington D.C. -- representing 196 electoral votes -- have enacted the national popular vote bill into law, so if states having 74 electoral votes were to sign on, potentially a minimum of three more states, it would automatically go into effect. No one really believed in it all that much and it was cobbled together at the. Financial benefits are not the only reward on an investment. Adding to this argument, proponents of the electoral college might say that the reason we have seen a recent disconnect between the popular vote and the electoral college winner is that one party has primarily been serving the demographics of the more densely populated states of the East and West Coast, while the other party has had support from. That could have happened in the 2000 election, in which the popular vote was close and the contest hung on one state, Florida. Ultimately, it was a result of lack of trust in the people. It draws attention to the small aspects of election laws in those states that end up being really consequential because a few thousand votes in a place like Wisconsin or Georgia could change the outcome of who wins the White House," he said. A stronger example would explain that warts are spread through direct contact, then highlight the potential absence of direct contact if the wart appeared on the authors wrist when the author only touched the toad with his or her foot., C. The idea that toads cause warts is a myth. Ultimately, it was a result of lack of trust in the . Is the way Americans choose the president undemocratic and unfair? In the German system, voters in 299 electoral districts each cast two votes in elections for the Bundestag (Germany's parliament): the first for a directly elected member and the second for one of 34 approved parties (in 2017), whose caucuses then identify candidates. It is necessary then that the Executive Magistrate should be the guardian of the people, even of the lower classes, agst. The studies and statistics mentioned in the prompt should be accepted as fact, as they exist only to create a platform to showcase the authors logic. Electoral College | Politics | tutor2u He explained that every state would have to switch to awarding its electors based on proportion of the vote to population at the same time, otherwise a state would be minimizing its power while other states held onto winner-take-all laws. Amar seeks to find the hidden hand of slavery in the debates of the Convention itself, and it is true that the Convention had no shortage of acrimonious discussion of slavery. Adding the example of an internal virus explains why it is important to know the authors relevant background, as the new wart might have appeared due to a preexisting condition. There is good reason for this: The members of the Constitutional Convention had seen how the Revolution produced hyperactivity in state governments eager to distance themselves from the past by making everything into "one man, one vote," all the time. But 2016 set off a swell of complaints nonetheless. If the three-fifths provision operated to give slave-holding states extra leverage in the Electoral College, it gave that leverage to every state, North and South alike. Since most states tend to dependably support either Democrats or Republicans, opponents say the current system also confines most campaigning to a handful of swing states. While the system is currently benefiting Republicans now and has for a few election cycles -- experts say if Texas were to turn blue, the GOP might be more interested in alternatives like awarding electors based on a proportion of population. This has led some to doubt whether Madison even uttered it at the time; he may have interpolated it in one of the many revisions of his notes on the Convention debates.
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