Electoral Problems

When it came to drafting the Constitution, the Framers had different options and ideas of the ways to select a president and the Electoral College seemed to fit their society well. After all, politics in 1787 was different than what it has come to be in this time. During that time, there were only 13 colonies, which are states, all of which were located on the Atlantic border. This made “national campaigns... impractical...”, because transportation and communication wasn’t well built between colonies (Kimberling 1). The founders also believed that “State loyalties could trump the best interests of a national government” which would make it difficult to elect a candidate with a national influence and that it would be difficult to elect a candidate …show more content…
Although in the year 2000, twenty-six states have state laws that “bound their electors to vote” for the candidate they are pledged there have been cases of faithless electors (("The Electoral College." 12). There haven’t been many and none have actually affected the outcome of an election, but it still worries some, because it may end up affecting a close race. There are three scenarios and rules that could take place if the death or resignation of a candidate or president-elect were to occur. The first incident occurred when Horace Greenley, died after the popular election. The meeting of the Electoral College had not occurred and this left confusion to many, because they didn’t know what would happen at this point. Although the Electoral College has been around for a long time, there are people who disagree with the process. However, the Electoral College has evolved in few ways. For example, choosing electors has varied. For the first presidential elections, there were no records of popular vote, because the State legislatures would make this decision without the citizens’ feedback. This changed in 1832, where electors, excluding those “from South Carolina were chosen by…” the citizen’s popular vote ("The Electoral College." 6). The way electoral votes were distributed has also changed where now electoral votes follow the winner-take-all system. In early presidential elections, electoral votes distributed to more than one candidate was common. Yet in the Electoral College now, only Nebraska and Maine have given their votes to more than one candidate ("The Electoral College." 6 ). There have been ideas discussed on changing the way electoral votes were distributed and in 2004 a proposition was considered to award the State’s votes “in proportion to the statewide…” general vote ("The Electoral College." 7). California also presented a proposition where they