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A02-92-6779
Warren 11B
14 March 2000
The right to vote and elect officials is by far the greatest power allotted to
the citizens of the United States of America. The most significant aspect of this
right pertains to the selection of the President and Vice President of the United
States. In reality the President and Vice President are not elected through direct
popular vote but by the Electoral College system. The Electoral College was
developed over 224 years ago during the Constitutional Convention. The
founding fathers, in an attempt to bring the nascent nation into existence, felt it
was necessary to craft a system that would be accepted by all states and not
stall the development of our nation. The Electoral College is an archaic system
that is not an appropriate means for electing the President of the United States
and therefore it should be removed and replaced by a direct popular vote system.
This determination is based on the review of the historical actions of the College,
the proposed reforms to the College, and the current state of technology that
president to the direct vote of the citizens of the United States. The
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that if the congress selected the president it would place the leader of the nation
in a subservient position to the whims of Congress. The direct vote of the people
faced considerable objections consisting of: (1) the lack of awareness and
from the scattering of votes by the electorates in the various states among
favorite sons they new best; (2) the loss in relative influence of the South
because of its large nonvoting slave population; (3) the dislike, on the part of
small, less populous states, of too open an admission of an inferior role in the
choice of the president; and (4) the fear of many that direct election of the
president would consolidate too much power and influence in one person
(Longley 19). With these two systems of electing the president lacking significant
would go between the vote of the people and the election of the president,
creating the Electoral College. The delegates accepted this system with little
Electoral College. Thus the Electoral College was created as a system that was
left for the future to fix, as it was obvious that Washington would be the first
president.
The ultimate error in the Electoral College system is the ability to appoint
the candidate that did not receive the majority of the popular vote. The Electoral
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most recent of cases being the election of 1960 between Richard M. Nixon and
303 electoral votes and Nixon 219. In this instance the popular winner did not
win the election but the reverse. The Electoral College is designed according to
the population of the State (according to the most recent Census) plus 2 electors
based upon the members of the Senate from that state. The Electoral System
was designed to be a means in which free willed electors were able to decide
based on their own intelligence the choice of the President of the United States.
This however is not the reality as the Electoral College is now adjusted to vote en
bloc for the popular winner of the state. This means that in the election of 1996
Clinton won the State of California by the popular vote and thereby received all
54 electoral votes. This in turn cancelled all of the votes by the citizens of the
state who voted for Dole or Perot. This is a reality when it is observed that when
all the electoral votes go to Clinton the popular votes cast for Dole or Perot are
lost as they now carry no weight or significance. The Electoral College in turn
through these weaknesses places the security of the election process in question
as a situation could occur in which the electoral college does not grant a majority
of the votes to one candidate and the fail safes of the system are enacted. The
does not reach a decision is complicated and tedious at best. The decision
reverts to the House of Representatives where each state is given one vote in
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the decision and selection of the next president. If the state is equally divided
between the candidates their vote is not counted and the final outcome is the
candidate with the most votes wins the election. If the House is unable to
determine the next president and the Senate is unable to determine the next vice
president by January 20th (Inauguration day) the speaker of the house will
become the acting president by the 25th amendment. This seems an absurd
outcome to an election in which the acting president did not campaign or run for
the office. This is another inherent flaw of the system. The Electoral College is
The Electoral College has been the focus of reform since its inception in
1787. The proposals for Electoral College reform range from a district system to
a direct popular vote. The first proposed modification of the Electoral College
was the district system (Best 25). The district system would break the states
electoral votes into the congressional districts and in turn the popular winner from
each district would win the electoral vote. The remaining 2 electoral votes from
the senate would go to the electoral vote winner. The second attempt at
changing the Electoral College was the proposed proportional plan (Pierce 162).
This plan would maintain the elector system but it would divide the states
electoral votes according to the respective proportion of the popular vote to that
popular vote of a state a third of the 15 electoral votes (5 votes) would go to that
candidate. The third proposed change to the Electoral College system was the
automatic system (Best 32). This system would end the role of the elector and
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replace the vote of the elector in the hands of the populace. The system would in
turn grant all of the states electoral votes to the candidate with a plurality of the
popular vote. The final proposal for Electoral College reform was the direct vote
plan (Pierce 170). The first presence of the direct vote system was addressed on
March 20th, 1816. The direct vote would now allow the populace to approve the
president directly. This system would remove the Electoral College and allow the
nation to vote directly for the president. These proposals have not received the
required majority in the House or Senate to be enacted but it is clear that the
most effective system in today's society would be the enactment of the direct
vote system.
The possibility of the direct vote is now a reality that was not possible in
the years prior to the revolution of the Internet and the prevalence of personal
the democratic process would be the direct election by the people of the
president. The Internet today unites Americans in a way that was unheard of
during the inception of our nation in 1787. The worry of the delegates that the
direct vote would be unable to count is now unfounded and most recently the
Arizona democratic primary was replaced by an Internet vote and the voter turn
out was the highest it had been in years. The direct vote system is now a
(www.election.com) in which the ability to access and vote for the office of the
president is made possible. The direct vote system will also replace the
people will directly vote and there will be no need for representation by an
Electoral College. The popular vote is the true nature of democracy and it is
everyday life that will allow the citizens of the United States to gain their rightful
The Electoral College is a system that was designed to solve the deadlock
college itself was a means to voice the opinion of the citizenry in an appropriate
college today is however not a useful system of election but a ticking time bomb
waiting to unbalance the democracy that it was formed to protect. In the words of
Thomas Jefferson, "I have ever considered the Constitutional mode of election
ultimately by the legislature voting by states as the most dangerous blot on our
Constitution, and one which some unlucky chance will some day hit"(Longley 32).
The advancement of communication and the Internet will now allow the citizens
of the United States to vote directly for the presidency and it is but only a matter
of time before the Electoral College shall be amended and removed from the
Works Cited
Best, Judith. The Choice of the People?. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996
Longley, Lawrence. The Electoral College Primer 2000. New Haven: Yale
Pierce, Neal. The People's President: The Electoral College in American History
and the Direct Vote Alternative. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.