A democracy is a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people, and the United States claims to have the freest and most democratic in the world. In fact, many consider the American democracy to be a shining beacon of freedom, more so than any other nation on earth. Yet, upon closer examination of the U.S. presidential election process, this claim begins to deteriorate. Due to the founding fathers’ distrust in the ability of average voters to choose a president, they created the Electoral College: a system through which each state is given a number of electors based on its number of members in Congress. State legislatures choose a set of electors who later convene to cast votes for president. Established in 1788, it
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However, the electors no longer work as independent voters. Instead, they are chosen for their party loyalty by party conventions or leaders, expected to vote for said party regardless of their own opinions about the candidates. Since the implementation of winner-take-all laws in the 1820s, electors have rarely acted independently or against the wishes of the party that chose them. In fact, a majority of states even have laws requiring the electors to keep their pledges to a candidate when voting. There have been a sparse amount of faithless electors in the past, and they have never influenced the outcome of a presidential election. According to Time magazine, in the presidential elections between 1992 and 2012, nearly every elector kept their pledge, with only two “faithless electors.”. Thus, the Electoral College is no longer relevant to modern day elections, and fails to accomplish the very action it was created …show more content…
in selecting the President. Many fear that if the election was based on the popular vote, then candidates would limit their campaigning to big cities. The College is seen as a guarantee of candidates building their platforms with a national focus, serving the needs of the entire country, instead of disregarding rural areas. However, rather than making the presidential election more inclusive, the Electoral College does just the opposite. According to an episode of PBS NewsHour, data from the 2016 presidential election revealed that throughout the campaign, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton made more than 90% of their campaign stops in just 11 “battleground states.” Of those stops, nearly two-thirds took place in the four battlegrounds with the most electoral votes: Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and North Carolina. These visits focused almost exclusively on urban areas where most of the voters live. Furthermore, neither of the candidates ever went to 27 states, which includes almost all of rural America. The Electoral College does not evenly distribute the power of choosing the president between urban areas and rural; in fact, it simply redistributes the power to swing states. Because each Democratic and Republican candidate can count on winning electoral votes in certain states, the voters of swing states are the deciding factor in elections. As statistically shown, this
However, the electors no longer work as independent voters. Instead, they are chosen for their party loyalty by party conventions or leaders, expected to vote for said party regardless of their own opinions about the candidates. Since the implementation of winner-take-all laws in the 1820s, electors have rarely acted independently or against the wishes of the party that chose them. In fact, a majority of states even have laws requiring the electors to keep their pledges to a candidate when voting. There have been a sparse amount of faithless electors in the past, and they have never influenced the outcome of a presidential election. According to Time magazine, in the presidential elections between 1992 and 2012, nearly every elector kept their pledge, with only two “faithless electors.”. Thus, the Electoral College is no longer relevant to modern day elections, and fails to accomplish the very action it was created …show more content…
in selecting the President. Many fear that if the election was based on the popular vote, then candidates would limit their campaigning to big cities. The College is seen as a guarantee of candidates building their platforms with a national focus, serving the needs of the entire country, instead of disregarding rural areas. However, rather than making the presidential election more inclusive, the Electoral College does just the opposite. According to an episode of PBS NewsHour, data from the 2016 presidential election revealed that throughout the campaign, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton made more than 90% of their campaign stops in just 11 “battleground states.” Of those stops, nearly two-thirds took place in the four battlegrounds with the most electoral votes: Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and North Carolina. These visits focused almost exclusively on urban areas where most of the voters live. Furthermore, neither of the candidates ever went to 27 states, which includes almost all of rural America. The Electoral College does not evenly distribute the power of choosing the president between urban areas and rural; in fact, it simply redistributes the power to swing states. Because each Democratic and Republican candidate can count on winning electoral votes in certain states, the voters of swing states are the deciding factor in elections. As statistically shown, this