Electoral College Essay, Research Paper

At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, in Philadelphia, delegates

made numerous decisions over our new nation s form of government. When

they began talk of the executive branch, the question of how the president

would be chosen posed itself. The delegates mulled over many options,

searching for an appropriate and agreeable means for selecting a president.

There were two main factors that contributed to the decision. One was the

fear that giving the people a direct vote would open the way for an

over-powering ruler, much like they had witnessed with Oliver Cromwell in

England. The other factor was being able to appease both federalists and

anti-federalists. Federalists proposed a direct election by Congress, while

anti-federalists thought that the decision should be based more largely on

the vote of the populace. The solution to this problem was the electoral

college. This method of selecting our president would be made up of

electors , chosen by state legislatures. The number of electors for each

state was to be the same as the number of that state s representatives in

Congress; however, no member of Congress would be allowed in the

electoral college to prevent the dominating political party in Congress from

choosing the president (found2). The electoral college was a way for the

politicians at the Constitutional Convention to allow the people s choice to be

heard, while protecting them from their own ignorance. Although it was

seen as the most plausible method of selecting a president by the delegates

at the Constitutional Convention, the electoral college, was and still is an

illogical and fallible method for a democratic presidential election.

One reason for criticism of the electoral college is that small and

swing states are overly represented in the electoral college. Because each

state s number of electoral votes is determined by its number of

representatives in the House with an additional two from the Senate, the

states with smaller populations have a greater ratio of electoral votes for

their population than states with a larger population. This means that a

state with four electoral votes, like Nevada, is getting twice as much

representation in the electoral college as its population should deserve. A

swing state is a state that receives an over-whelming amount of electoral

votes, like California s 54 votes (Government). By allowing states to have

electoral votes, which are not proportional to the states population, the

electoral college can not have an accurate representation of each state s

vote.

Another problem in the electoral college is that the candidate, who

wins a state receives all of that state s electoral votes, which would distort

equal representation of all voters in a state. This means that if a candidate

won a state by a seven to six electoral vote margin, all thirteen of the state s

electoral votes would go to the candidate who won the state. This method is

inaccurate, because it discounts the vote of the people, who voted for the

losing candidate in that state. The winner take all part of the electoral

college gives a misrepresentation of a portion of the vote and can make a

substantial difference in the outcome of the vote.

The fact, that electors are able to change their decision on who they

are voting for after the populace has already voted is yet another

contributor to the faultiness of the electoral college. Before the popular

election, the electors are required to state for which candidate they will be

voting. This is, because each vote of the populace for a candidate is really a

vote for that state s elector who chose, prior to the popular election, to give

his vote to that candidate (wikman). The problem with this is that the

electors are bound only by their word and may change their vote, which

would give a complete distortion of the people s true vote. Although half of

the states now have laws to prevent an elector from changing his vote, there

have been instances in the past when an elector changed his vote. In order

for there to be a valid representation of the people s vote, an elector can not

change his designated candidate after he has already been elected by the

people under the assumption that he will vote for his original choice.

A final concern about the electoral college is the way it is designed to

put the entire election into the hands of the House of Representatives if

there is not a candidate with a majority of the votes. There have been two

elections decided by the House (Found2).This reverts back to the issue of

not allowing Congress to choose our president, so that one political party can

not become dominate in all branches of government. This is especially

concerning, because not only does this give the House of Representatives

the power to choose the president of our country, it gives them the power to

determine the outcome of what was an extremely close vote by the electoral

college.

At the time of its conception, the electoral college was most likely the

best choice as a method of selecting a president, but times have change and

the imperfections of the electoral college have been realized. The electoral

college has never been an ideal means of selecting the president. It served

as a good way to settle the debates over a menial problem at the crucial

time when our nation needed to quickly strengthen its central government.

It has long since, been time to amend our presidential election system.