Friday, December 7, 2007

The Electoral College has been under a significant amount of scrutiny over the last several decades in our country. This debatable issue rears its ugly head in earnest once every four years, coinciding with the election of the President of the United States of America. Supporters of a strictly popular vote cite polls which show that over seventy percent of American voters would like their Presidency to be awarded to the candidate who receives the most votes nationally. While this is usually the case under the current process, it is possible for a different outcome to occur. For example, the majority of votes in the 2000 Presidential election were cast for Al Gore, yet George W. Bush still accumulated enough Electoral votes to win the election. Similar results were observed in two other previous elections, causing vast amounts of controversy over the future leaders of our country.

While the Electoral College certainly has its critics, there are also those that support the system and would like for it to remain the method of electing the President. There are several problems that would accompany the removal of the Electoral College. First of all, it would create a constitutional crisis and certainly get challenged in the Supreme Court. Another problem that supporters of the Electoral College fear is that a strictly popular vote will cause candidates to focus only on the most densely populated regions of the country, ignoring several states and even regions of the country entirely. It will eliminate any semblance of equality between states, a concept that our Founding Fathers had to work extremely hard for.

Ultimately, my partner and I were able to reach a compromise, although there were several issues that had to be taken into consideration. From his point of view, it was completely unacceptable to leave the process as it is, but I, on the other hand, felt that it would be impossible to reach an agreement if the Electoral votes were done away with. This made the mediation procedure significantly more difficult, but we came to the conclusion that the Electoral College could be kept if the manner in which votes were cast could be changed. I decided that I could compromise on the issue of every Electoral vote for a state going to the candidate who wins the popular vote in the state. By giving two Electoral votes to the winner of a particular state and dividing the rest of the state’s votes up according to district, the overall election moves one step closer to a strictly nation-wide popular vote, yet it ensures that every state still carries a significant amount of importance, forcing candidates to give each and every one attention during their campaigns. However, this is not an entirely revolutionary idea. Both Maine and Nebraska currently use similar district based systems, and we believe that if every state were to do so, it would lessen the controversy over the Electoral College and do a better job of electing the President of the United States in general.


Works Cited

Bennett, Robert W. Taming the Electoral College. Stanford: Stanford Law and Politics, 2006.

Kristof, Nicholas D. “No More Sham Elections.” New York Times 20 Nov. 2004: A19.

Richie, Rob. “Failing Electoral College.” Nation 285.9 (2007): 4-5.

“Should the Electoral College be Changed?” State Legislatures 33.7 (2007): 10-10.

Steinhauer, Jennifer. “Frustrated, States try to Change the way Presidents are Elected.” New

York Times 11 Aug. 2007: A1-A10.

U.S. Election System. Ed. Paul McCaffrey. New York: H.W. Wilson, 2004.

“Voting on the Electoral College.” Christian Science Monitor 96.227 (2004): 8.

“Why Keep the Electoral College.” http://usgovinfo.about.com.

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