FREE ESSAY ON ELECTORAL COLLEGE

ELECTORAL COLLEGE

The Electoral College is the collective name for the electors who choose the president and
vice president of the United States. The electoral system was developed by the drafters
of the Constitution, to entrust the responsibility to people whose choice would be
unaffected by partisan politics. In Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution, the
method of selecting electors is delegated to the separate state legislatures. When a
voter chooses a candidate in a presidential election that person is not directly voting
for that specific candidate. The voter is actually voting for the electors in their state
to vote for that candidate. Each state is allotted a certain number of electoral votes
based on population. Presently the fifty states and the District of Columbia have a total
of 538 electors. A simple majority of 270 votes is necessary for a candidate to win the
election. With this system it is possible for a candidate to have enough electoral votes
to win the election, while loosing the popular vote. The issue is whether or not the
Electoral College should be eliminated. 
There is no doubt that the Electoral College is a very important part of the election
process, and therefore should continue to be used. First, turning to a nationwide popular
vote to pick a president would give less power to the smaller states and lesser populated
regions. Voters from smaller states, already struggling for attention in presidential
races, worry about being ignored altogether by candidates who choose to campaign
exclusively in a highly populated region. If the president were elected by popular vote,
it wouldn't matter what the less populated regions wanted. For example, the 2000 election
is so close that loosing the three electoral votes from a smaller state, such as South
Dakota or Rhode Island, could decide the whole election. With a popular vote the only
places that would really affect the outcome of the election would be very highly
populated, such as Los Angeles, New York City, and Chicago. For this reason, a candidate
would campaign in these cities and try to please them instead of the country as a whole.
The Electoral College is meant to require that a candidate have a broad geographic reach.
In addition, changing to a popular vote would require an amendment to the Constitution.
There have been several attempts to change this part of the Constitution in the past, and
all have failed. It is very difficult to amend our Constitution, since both the House and
Senate must pass a two-thirds majority vote for a change to be made. Then legislatures in
at least thirty-eight of the fifty states must ratify it. Even if the amendment passed in
the House and Senate, thirty-eight of the states would not ratify it because of the fact
that it takes power away from the smaller states. We have a Constitution that has lasted
for two centuries because its framers knew how to make the document apply to situations
like voting years in the future. The presidential election was meant to be a vote of the
people in each state, not a vote of the country as a whole. This is not the federal
republic of America, it is the United States of America. Our sense of union is based on
the Electoral College. Finally, the voters of a state choose whom they want to represent
them, and they also tell the electors how they should vote. Although an elector doesn't
have to vote the way their state wants them to they usually do. A few times in the past
an elector has not voted the way his state did, but it has never changed the outcome of
the election. Because the electors are chosen by the people, every state is represented
fairly in the Electoral College. For these reasons, the Electoral College is as effective
today as it was two hundred years ago. The president of the United States should never be
elected by a popular vote.