Changing The Electoral College
...chosen to elect the President and Vice President of the United States. It is a controversial mechanism of presidential elections that was created by the framers of the U.S. Constitution as a compromise for the a failed presidential election process in the election of 1800. The founders believed a pure democracy was too reckless, while others objected to giving Congress the power to select the president. The compromise was to set up an Electoral College system that allowed voters to vote for electors, who would then cast their votes for candidates, a system described in Article II, section 1 of the Constitution. In this system the electors are granted the discretion to vote for the candidate that they choose, but in practice the electors vote for the candidate that wins the most votes in their repective states. [21] In all the states except Nebraska and Maine, the candidate that wins a plurality of the popular votes wins all of the state's electoral votes. [23] Because of recent divergence of the popular vote and the electoral vote, many people believe that the Electoral College should be reformed for a more proportinally representative system or abolished in favor of direct elections.
The 2000 Presidential Election sparked criticism of the Electoral College because the majority winner of the popular vote, former Vice President Al Gore, lost the election in the Electoral College. This happened as a result of an aspect of the electoral system that is not mandated in the Constitution; how to distribute the votes in the state. It is customary that the states award the winner of the popular vote in the state all of the states electoral votes. Therefore, it makes no difference if a candidate wins a state by 50.1% or by 99% of the vote; the same amount of votes are awarded. This leads to candidates winning some states by large pluralities and losing others by a...
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