Arguments Against The Electoral College

During the Revolutionary Period, much debate spurred between the colonists involving the issue of how presidents would be elected. During the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the Founding Fathers “considered several methods of electing the President, including selection by Congress, by the governors of the states, by the state legislatures, by a special group of Members of Congress chosen by lot, and by direct popular election” ( ). This issue ended up being solved by the so-called Committee of Eleven on Postponed Matters. They proposed the idea of an indirect election of the president by electors, which originated from the system Romans used to select the Pope. This idea, known as the Electoral College, was founded due to many unresolved political issues and is a highly controversial and criticized topic to this day. The Electoral College, as stated above, is a system used by the United States government that allows an indirect election of the president. Each state has a specific amount of electors, and each elector votes for whomever they support. The number of representatives in both the Senate and the House of Representatives determines the number of electors per state. For example, California has 55 electors, while North Dakota has 3. All electors are chosen directly by the voters. The Electoral College is “governed by plurality, or winner take-all rules”. ( ) This basically means that if the majority of electors in a state vote for a specific candidate, the candidate receives all of the votes of the electors. For example, if 20 out of the 38 electors in Texas vote for Candidate A, that candidate receives all 38 votes. The first candidate to receive 270 out of the total of 538 electoral votes wins the election. There were many things wrong with the government system established in the United States after the Revolutionary War. The Articles of Confederation was in full effect at the time and was not sufficient enough to hold the new nation together. With its weak federal government and lack of authority to its failure at conducting foreign affairs, change was needed in order to keep the country unified. The Constitutional Convention was called for, the Articles of Confederation was abandoned, and the drafting of the Constitution began. Deciding how to choose the president was an unsettled topic. When the idea of the Electoral College was proposed, there was widespread approval among the delegates. The main reason that the Founders supported the Electoral College was because they wanted to make sure that the uninformed mass would not dominate the …show more content…
Statistics show that 74% of the population is against the Electoral College. The first reason as to why it is so highly criticized is because a president can be won without a majority of the popular vote. If most of the United States population supports one candidate, but the electors’ majority supports the other, the candidate chosen by the electors becomes president. It has happened at least four times in the past and arguably violates the powers of the common people. Another reason why the Electoral College is highly criticized is because the weight each elector has between small and large states vary greatly. In 2010, for example, “an individual citizen in Wyoming has more than triple the weight in electoral votes as an individual in California” ( ). These major criticisms are the reason why the Electoral College is so highly disliked by the American