The Electoral College System- Article Critique

The Electoral College System

Columbian Southern University

08.07.2016

The Electoral College System

The president of the United States is elected by the citizens through the Electoral College, a method that was devised in the year 1787 by individuals who framed the constitution (Gregg, 2011). The role of these electors is to meet once in the District of Columbia or their respective states to elect the next president of the United States of America (Gregg, 2011). In each election, new electors are chosen and disbanded when they conclude their duties. The Electoral College system was inherited after framers of the constitution came to a compromise during the Constitution Convention of the year 1787 (Gregg, 2011). The constitution framers debated among other options for the highest office in the nation. For instance, some wanted the Congress to make the choice while others wanted popular elections. The compromise made was however reached between these two opinions (Gregg, 2011).

 In the history of America, four presidents have been elected without necessarily winning the majority of popular votes (Gregg, 2011). This was attributed to the fact that 48 states had given their Electoral College votes to the candidates who had won in their states. When George W. Bush was elected as president in a similar manner in the year 2000, an interest in renewing the Electoral College system was sparked (Underhill, 2012).

I, however, support the current system especially because election wars would arise as stated by the vice president of policy at the Center for Competitive Politics, “the Electoral College is an important part of the system of constitutional checks and balance s in our country. Modifying the way we elect the president to a system that increases the chances of electoral chaos and voter anger is not the best interest of our country” (Underhill, 2012).

Some of the proposed changes include the suggestions made by the legislators of both Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to replace the Electoral College system with a model similar to the one used in Maine and Nebraska (Underhill, 2012). In these two states, the statewide winner is allotted with two electoral votes and the rest allocated according to each congressional district’s winner (Underhill, 2012).

The other proposed change is supported by Vermont, California, Hawaii, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Washington, Maryland and Washington D.C and is known as the National Popular Vote (NPV) compact or “Agreement among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote (Underhill, 2012). This proposed change would require the electors to vote for the presidential candidate who emerges the winner in the most nationwide votes (Underhill, 2012).