Many forces shape the political strategy of presidential elections, but few are more significant than the Electoral College. This complex, rather odd institution was yet another compromise at the Constitutional Convention, a means to moderate the “passions of the public” and to allow smaller states a greater say in the selection of the president.
Today, the Electoral College system shapes the politics of how and where presidential candidates campaign in the general election. And, occasionally, as in the 2000 and 2016 presidential elections, the Electoral College is decisive in determining which candidate wins the White House.
Walter Berns, scholar at the American Enterprise Institute says KEEP IT: “I doubt we could come up with a better system than they (the Founders) did.”
Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) says DUMP IT: “The Electoral College is an antiquated institution that has outlived its purpose… it represents a serious and persistent flaw in our current system.”
21st Century Citizenship 
I believe that we should amend the Electoral College and replace it with the existing popular vote. Back in the days, the voters turn out depended upon how much the person is informed about the politics, which is to say, more the voters turn out, more the people knew about politics. But the only means of communication during that age were horses. So with this delay in and lack of communication, the founding fathers manifested the Electoral College to prevent from uneducated voters to vote, and hence choosing the one who “possess the information necessary to make the best decision.” Reflecting upon how this country was formed, on the ideals of democracy, everyone in this way can be heard equally and the president can be chosen upon the majority of the voters turn out than just 538 anonymous electors. This will also remove the so-called “the faithless electors” too. This way, however minuscule the chances may be, even a single vote
can change the outcome of the whole election.
https://www.procon.org/headline.php?headlineID=005330
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The Electoral College should be removed and we should just go with the popular vote by the citizens. In this past presidential election we directly saw how the College negatively effected the vote and an a candidate not like by many wanted the vote. Many believe that the E.C. also lowers voter turnouts because citizens voting in certain states believe that their votes don’t matter in states that are already pre-determined in the way the vote will swing.
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US should alter electoral college system. According to Newsmax, the system “preserves the voice of states with lower populations & rural area. Nevertheless, small and swing states have more power, “one man does not equal one vote.” One electoral vote in California represents more people than one electoral vote in Wyoming.
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Doug McAdam, a sociology professor at Stanford, says, “No principle is more fundamental to the theory of democratic governance than political equality; that is, the idea that every citizen’s voice or views should count as much as anyone else’s.” This passage was stated in order to oppose the electoral college. The system’s “winner-takes-all” policy often deters people from voting since they feel as though they don’t have a say in who becomes President. I agree with Doug McAdam in that the electoral college, in way, doesn’t provide the most accurate representation of the will of the people. Because of our “winner-takes-all” policy, the minority of the voters who did not see their candidate win, get pushed into the background and their voices don’t get heard on the national level. In light of this, I think the electoral college should not be preserved. As positive as an alteration of the system sounds the base structure of it doesn’t allow for us to be an effective democracy where “every citizen’s voice or views count as much as anyone else’s.” In the end, I follow McAdam’s view that we should switch to a popular vote without any influence from the electoral college. With widespread technology, we don’t have as great a risk of people being mis-informed and unaware of developments so implementing a sole popular vote could allow the entire population to be heard in a fair and democratic way.
https://news.stanford.edu/2016/04/08/electoral-college-bad-040816/
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In order to full fill most people’s willingness I think the system should be abolished, since there are two times recently that the candidate receiving more votes didn’t got elected. with more people disagree with the decision the system should be abolished
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Also there is an unfairness to those small states and those that has huge difference on votes, where the candidate won’t focus too much, so their needed won’t be satisfied.
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Tyler Lewis of Huffington Post explains, one of the main reasons the electoral college was created was to make states feel important to the federalist government. I think this alone explains that despite the Founders work being impressive and deserving recognition, things change, especially a nation. For us to not recognize that the Electoral College’s purpose is outdated and needs to be altered or abolished is for us to be completely blind to the evolution of our country.
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I believe that we should amend the electoral college so that it represents the will of the American people as a whole, not state by state. This system renders votes in traditionally democratic states for a Republican worthless and vice-versa. For example, a candidate can win a state by 51% and still get 100% of that states vote. Consequently, the votes of the dissenting 49% are not recognized whatsoever in the electoral election. In theory, a president could win only 22% of the popular vote and still win the election, that how broken the system is.
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Electoral College System should be altered, It is unfair for the small states with less votes since the system makes them less influential.According to John A. Tired,”the system also does violate that spirit of fairness that leads to a ‘one person one vote system,’ especially if a Delaware citizen’s vote is worth twice that of a Georgian’s.”
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We should alter the electoral college to make the presidential election more public centered rather than state centered. The college is effective in giving small states more power but it should not allow those states to be deciding factors in an election so that candidates only campaign in those areas and not to parts of the country where they know that one party will always win a certain state. Give power to the people, and let the electoral college be a safety net.
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The advantages of the electoral vote system are that minority groups actually have a large influence in the vote, so that more people are in the sight of the candidates. Also, it avoid the situation that candidates focus on only populate area. However, the disadvantages are that the voters might be discourage for that their votes do not work. Also, candidates pay much more attention on swing states instead of everywhere. https://occupytheory.org/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-electoral-college/
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I think that the electoral college should, if nothing else, be altered to fit the current needs for such a system. At the time of creation, the electoral college was instituted because of an almost dangerous lack of communication amongst states and the country as a whole. Saying that, it does offer minorities and states with a smaller population power in the outcome of an election. One downside to that is the fact that “swing states” can be given too much power over an election and can cause a candidate to overlook certain states and people because of their lack of influence in the election.
Personally, I think the electoral college should be altered to keep in mind the emotional spectrum (and its influence on voters) within the country, minorities, the unintended power of swing states, and maintain an even power amongst all the states and people.
https://www.newsmax.com/t/newsmax/article/653350
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Electoral College should be abolished since most candidates is taking advantage of bigger states because they have a larger number of electors according to Thomas E. Mann,”Presidents are elected not by direct popular vote but by 538 members of the Electoral College.” It is no longer the direct popular vote because it is possible that the reflect of the popular votes of the citizens is not accurate enough, and also the minority candidate can be selected in this condition. “The Electoral College was necessary when communications were poor, literacy was low, and voters lacked information about out-of-state figures, which is clearly no longer the case,” said by Gene Green.
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I think the Electoral college is not the only problem. The system is outdated and the last election is an example of the system’s failure. It allowed a candidate whose campaign was driven by emotional response, through its radical stances on America’s issues, and using American’s fears in order to get into office. The Electoral College is just another symptom of the problem. In a community that has been driven by the fast paced media that feeds off of shock and exploitation everything is determined by emotional reaction. We see being right as more important than solving the problem. Everything has become a debate. The media is the problem and Electoral College is a side effect of this problem.
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I think it should be removed because it can sometimes not accurately represent the majority vote, especially when some candidates who get the popular vote sometimes don’t win the election. Originally, this plan worked well because the two results weren’t conflicting and even seemed easier to count votes and see who the majority wants to lead them. Although it does give the states more power, it fails to reflect national popular vote.
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I think the electoral college needs to be replaced, and the popular national vote needs to determine the prresidential election. Bianco says “…you don’t actually vote directly for a presidential candidate. Rather, you select your preferred candidate’s name, you are chosing that persons slate of pledged supporters from your state to serve as electors.” This is undemocratic since in a way, the vote of the people does not really matter in states that usually fall to one side. People are voting for some one to then vote for them which seems counter-intuitive, and peoples voices are being shut down especially if you are a minority in state that is opposite your view.
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I personally believe the Electoral College is a flawed system because it sometimes fails to accurately represent the majority’s will and can limit the voter turnout. William C. Kimberling, Deputy Director FEC National Clearinghouse on Election Administration states, “the distribution of Electoral votes in the College tends to over-represent people in rural states”. He also states, “since each State is entitled to the same number of electoral votes regardless of its voter turnout, there is no incentive in the States to encourage voter participation.”
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Peter Augustine Lawler of the Britannica Blog explains how “it’s obviously pointless to vote for a candidate who’s not competitive for your state’s electoral vote.” This illustrates how voters are less likely to use their right to vote because they don’t think it will make a difference. Furthermore, “Voters have little incentive to turn out in non-competitive (non-Battleground) states.” As a result, the Electoral College
From my perspective, the Electoral College should not be preserved as it currently exists. Although it was originally made to ensure the president was chosen by an informed, educated group of representatives. But now that voters have access to political debates and news articles, citizens have all the information they need to make an informed decision. From the creation of the Electoral college, the winner of the popular vote has only lost the Electoral vote five times. But choosing the president based on 538 individual’s opinions -rather than the 300 million citizens in the United States- goes against the Democratic ideals this country was founded upon. In the presidential election of 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by over one million votes, but she lost the election due to the electoral votes. Many Hillary voters were outraged because the candidate the majority of American citizens wanted in office had lost. In this way, the president should be chosen by the people, not just by 538 of us.
For those of us who oppose completely removing the electoral college, there is a way to improve it. If every state instituted a Congressional district plan like Maine and Nebraska, the people would have a representative per district. Then, it would be safe for the Electoral College to generalize the opinions of the US population.
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The electoral college should be removed because of one of the key reasons it was created was the lack of communication in the time that the electoral college was founded. The fastest form of communication between people during this time was still horses making it harder to inform voters and harder to count votes, but now we have much faster forms of communication via the internet so it can be much easier to vote and count the votes with modern technology.
“In the 18th century, communication and transportation were primitive and the country was sparsely populated. Most citizens were assumed to have no knowledge of candidates for federal office.” – Daniel Ullman, professor of mathematics at George Washington university
https://www.procon.org/headline.php?headlineID=005330
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The electoral college has been under scrutiny in the past 20 years because it seems to be misrepresenting the true feelings of the country in the presidential election. I would say, however, that it has given a vioce to states that might otherwise never be concidered in the corse of an election. As Charles Fried says in the New York Times, “states have their own political cultures” which should not be ignored at the federal level. Although it could be tweeked, possibly in a similar fashion to Maine and Nebraska, who split their elctors by congressional district, in order to allow even more centralized political divisions to have a voice on the national stage.
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I think it should be kept, because the electoral college system preserves the power of states big and small to influence the election.
https://www.newsmax.com/FastFeatures/Electoral-College-voting-rights/2015/07/02/id/653350/
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William C. Kimberling, Deputy Director FEC National Clearinghouse on Election Administration, says “Proposals to abolish the Electoral College, though frequently put forward, have failed largely because the alternatives to it appear more problematic than is the College itself. The fact that the Electoral College was originally designed to solve one set of problems but today serves to solve an entirely different set of problems is a tribute to the genius of the Founding Fathers.” I agree because, while the Electoral College has had some anomalies in recent years, it seeks to serve the purpose of everyone feeling like their voice is heard, valued, and respected, no matter if they are in the minority, or majority.
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