what are the arguments for discarding the electoral college?

Its also an opportunity. I disagree with the prompt, as it ignores other alternatives that residents of Smithtown might use to cope with the increased heat, such using more air conditioning to lower temperatures (which, according to the prompt, would decrease thirst) or quenching their increased thirst with sport drinks rather than water.. However, this required billions of dollars and would not have been possible had Apple not already had such capital.. But would this have really made a difference in the Electoral College in 1787? Support for direct popular election. Stories of people committed to public purpose and to making a positive difference in communities throughout the country. This is because the president is not. Correct. Theyhoped thissystem would allowforbetter presidentsby givingmore virtuous mencontrollingauthority in choosingapresident. Virginia emerged as the big winnerthe California of the Founding erawith 12 out of a total of 91 electoral votes allocated by the Philadelphia Constitution, more than a quarter of the 46 . Get the latest news sent to you as soon as it is published. Making the system consistent nationally would require a constitutional amendment. Exhibition goes beyond idyllic landscapes to cramped apartment, 19th-century wardrobe malfunction, cancer-defying self-portraits, Pathbreaking scholar will start in role on Aug. 1, Sarah Lockridge-Steckel (from left), Emily Broad Leib, and Anne Sung are among the dozens of Harvard affiliates featured in "To Serve Better. And it should be noted that popular votes for electors occur only within each state; the electors then go on to do the presidential balloting. 1. There is hardly anything in the Constitution harder to explain, or easier to misunderstand, than the Electoral College. Ahmed said problems attributed to the system actually reflect the weakening of the two major parties, which itself stems from the increasingly narrow coalitions they pursue. Rheumatologist, epidemiologist discusses growth, spread of deer ticks, which transmit malady, and offers tips for how to avoid parasites, Political experts suggest ways media can blunt former presidents skillful manipulation of coverage to spread falsehoods, divisiveness, Mashail Malik was always interested in human experience. Published Aug. 15, 2022 Updated Aug. 15, 2022 It remains one of the most surprising facts about voting in the United States: While the popular vote elects members of Congress, mayors, governors,. At least 700 amendments have been proposed to modify or abolish the Electoral College. Financial benefits are not the only reward on an investment. After the popular vote of each state is certified,the winning slate of electors, chosen by each states political parties, meet to cast two ballots one forvicepresident and one forpresident. Pennsylvania adopted a gradual emancipation plan in 1780, but it still had slaves in 1840. At the national level, a constitutional amendment would require the approval of two-thirds of the Congress and then three-fourths of states' legislatures. Abolish it, and it would not be difficult to imagine a scenario in which, in a field of dozens of micro-candidates, the "winner" would need only 10% of the vote, and would represent less than 5% of the electorate. Question stems will ask you to explain why an argument is not convincing, and discuss improvements to the argument. The number of representatives is determined by state population, and the Constitution originally permitted states in which slavery was legal to include three-fifths of their slave populations for the purpose of determining the number of representatives they could send to Congress. It revived the English practice of passing bills of attainder, and its courts tried 28 people for treason against the commonwealth. After that, there would be no sense in having a Senate (which, after all, represents the interests of the states), and eventually, no sense in even having states, except as administrative departments of the central government. This means California controls roughly 10 fewer votes in the Electoral College than it would if votes were allocated based on population alone (because 12.1% of the total 538 votes is about 65 electoral votes, but California . Headmits thateven political scientists have troubleexplainingit. Turn on desktop notifications for breaking stories about interest? Many people know that the Electoral College is part of the Presidential election process but may be unsure about its importance and how it works. E. An entrepreneur can easily take out a loan to pay for his companys startup costs, spending a banks money rather than his own. that the Legislative, Executive & Judiciary powers should be separately exercised, it is equally so that they be independently exercised. Excuse me. L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School, outlined a new proposal for a constitutional amendment he suggested could garner broader support. But campaigning in 10 or 12 states is better than trying to score points in just two. Adding to this argument, proponents of the electoral college might say that the reason we have seen a recent disconnect between the popular vote and the electoral college winner is that one party has primarily been serving the demographics of the more densely populated states of the East and West Coast, while the other party has had support from. Wilson claimed that an executive appointed by either house of the new Congress would be beholden to the legislature and have no resources to restrain legislative overreach. A monthly newsletter sent from August through June that highlights some of our best news, stories and events. Correct. A far more likely candidate for judicial scrutiny under the "one man, one vote" rule would be the states themselves. There is little incentive for political parties to play registration or ballot-box-stuffing games in Montana, Idaho, or Kansasthey simply won't get much bang for their buck in terms of the electoral totals of those states. But without the checks and balances provided by a bicameral legislature, the new Pennsylvania Assembly bolted ahead to revoke a college charter, override judicial decisions, fix the price of grain, issue 200,000 in tax-anticipation notes, and revoke (temporarily) the charter of Robert Morris's Bank of North America. But Muller said that the sum of vote tallies of all states does not constitute a single popular vote because of the varied rules on voter identification, early voting, and voter eligibility. During the National Popular Vote panel, moderated by Richard Hasen, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, School of Law, Richie cited some of the flaws he sees with the Electoral College system. Through the National Popular Vote compact, states pledge to award all their electoral support to the winner of the popular national tally. hile there aremanyimportant issues at stake and candidates on both sides take different positions on those issues, the result and aftermath of this election could be more important than past elections in either preserving or further eroding our democracy, saidTaninchev. "I believe we need a constitutional amendment that. "Imagine," Dionne demands, "basing the winner of a game not on the number of runs scored but the number of innings won, and with some innings counting more than others." MCAT Classes It could perhaps be argued that there was a vast difference between Northern states, which allowed slavery but had tiny slave populations, and Southern states with mammoth slave populations. Prompt: Jettisoning the Electoral College for direct popular elections would not automatically guarantee greater democracy. This type of example is wholly imaginary and created by you for the sole purpose of supporting or opposing the prompt. The White House is seen as the Electoral College cast their votes around the Nation, in Washington, Dec, 14, 2020. This is sound advice, but not appropriate for an analysis essay as it fails to address the authors conclusion from the information given. Citizens vote for president, with the winner in each state taking all the state's electoral votes based on the number of seats that state has in the Senate and House combined. Incorrect. The Collegenever operated as an independent body,asthe Founders intended,andwasquicklyencompassed bythestates political partythatpassed legislation giving each states dominant party greater control over the selection of electors. maintains a federal system of government and representation. Only public investment will deliver a media that can serve the news needs of our time. Ridding ourselves of the Electoral College would not automatically install a national popular vote for the presidency; that would require a highly complicated constitutional amendment specifying comprehensive details for casting such a national vote, and might even trigger calls for a complete rewriting of the Constitution by convention. Republican president-elect Donald Trump delivers his acceptance speech during his election night event at the New York Hilton Midtown in the early morning hours of Nov. 9, 2016, in New York. A federal president (Bundesprsident) is elected every five years by a federal convention that reflects the party majorities in the Bundestag and the state parliaments of the 16 German states. This statement is exceptionally opaque, and it seems to have no logical connection to the speeches made either before or after concerning the method of electing a president. The compact would force the parties to compete everywhere for every vote, added Hundt, the former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Gouverneur Morris joined Wilson in arguing (over the course of two days) that. This was the case in both the 2000 and 2016 elections, which were won by George W. Bush and Donald Trump, respectively. Four short essays by Jeet Heer, Samuel Moyn, Jane McAlevey, and Mitchell Cohen. "The winner is picked not by the laws of elections but by the serendipity of the casino," complained E.J. Dionne, Jr., in the Washington Post. Significantly, the Supreme Court has shied away from applying this rule to the U.S. Senate, since the Constitution mandates that every state, no matter its population, elects only two U.S. senators. Each state is directed to appoint "a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress." Meanwhile, the half-million or so Americans who live in Wyoming get three electoral voteswhich means that each Wyoming voter gets 3.6 times more Electoral College clout than each California voter. And that's evidenced by the fact that the turnout is higher in the battleground states than in the rest of the country.". They hoped this system would allow for "better" presidents by giving "more virtuous" men controlling authority in choosing a president. Find other voting and election resources here: What wastheoriginalpurpose of the ElectoralCollege? This method was slightly altered by the 12th Amendment in 1804, but only slightly, and we have elected presidents in the same way ever since. o "How the Electoral College Works" cites two explanations for the Electoral College: 1) The Electoral College gives small states more political power and prevents more populous states from dominating (the Senate was designed for the same reason). Once youve identified the proper stance, you must support this stance in your body section using clear examples. Still, historical arguments often carry little weight against sound bites, so it is worthwhile to deal directly with three popular arguments against the Electoral College. ", Photos by Justin Saglio/Harvard Staff; Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer; Janice Rubin, We are not seeking perfection. I touched a toad last week and now I have a wart; It incentivizes presidential campaigns to focus on a relatively small number of "swing states.". Here is the election mechanism as it appears in Article 2, Section 1 (in a slightly abbreviated form, as it is the single longest part of the Constitution devoted to a single action, accounting for nearly a tenth of the Constitution's original length): The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. A popular argument on conservative websites and talk radio is that without the Electoral College, candidates would spend all their time campaigning in big cities and would ignore. While it is true that, since the 19th century, each state has decided to appoint its electors by a popular vote, this is a compliment to our democratic predilections and is not required by the Constitution. The temperature in Smithtown averages ten degrees hotter than the temperature in Jonestown during the summer. Rather than pointing out the best way to arrive at a separate conclusion, a stronger example would analyze the logic the author used to arrive at the present conclusion. (For example, one District of Columbia elector cast a blank ballot in 2000; one Minnesota John Kerry elector cast a vote for John Edwards in 2004; and in 2016 five Clinton electors and two Trump electors bolted for other candidates.) The studies and statistics mentioned in the prompt should be accepted as fact, as they exist only to create a platform to showcase . But the great Pennsylvania jurist James Wilson believed that "[i]f we are to establish a national Government," the president must be chosen by a direct, national vote of the people. The studies and statistics mentioned in the prompt should be accepted as fact, as they exist only to create a platform to showcase the authors logic. D. A person with a potentially profitable idea, such as founding the next big fast food chain, will need money to build this ideamoney to purchase land, pay for food supplies, hire and train workers, and hire businessmen to protect these assets.. Editors ▪ August 23, 2021 Five short essays from Sarah Jones, Dorothy Sue Cobble, Sophie Lewis, Bethany Moreton, and Dorothy Roberts. Voter qualifications also differ by state, the experts said. Fact check: That spike in the Wisconsin vote tally was expected and legitimate, not fraud. There is good reason for this: The members of the Constitutional Convention had seen how the Revolution produced hyperactivity in state governments eager to distance themselves from the past by making everything into "one man, one vote," all the time. That was enough to turn some Americans off from the electoral college forever. Counting (and worse, recounting) votes on a nationwide basis when the margin between two candidates is half a percent (as it was in 2000) would be even more unwieldy than the current system. "From a nonpartisan perspective, the case for reforming or abolishing it is pretty strong," he added. This is largely because it was the first time since 1888 that, in a two-major-candidate race, one candidate won the popular vote but lost the electoral tally. The Collegealsointended to give greater independence to the executive branch. Almost all states rely on a winner takes all systemin whichevery party in each state creates a slate of electors equal to the number of Electoral College votes the state has. Incorrect. This would grant the president "a broad and solid Base for him to stand upon." F. All of these examples are appropriate. Curiously, there have been only five occasions in which a closely divided popular vote for the presidency and the Electoral College vote have failed to point in the same direction. Or, shifting the metaphor, the Electoral College is bad sportsmanship. By contrast, the Electoral College is remarkably straightforward. Does It Need to Be Fixed? People are confused about it, because,It is confusing, saidGardner. This focuses on a trend across many funds rather than a specific fund, which would fail to universally address the prompt. This principle was expanded the next year in Wesberry v. Sanders, which countered inequalities in federal congressional districts, and again a few months later in Reynolds v. Sims, similarly countering deliberate inequalities in state-drawn legislative districts. Finally, some argue that the Electoral College is simply too cumbersome. Each arguments stimulus has been intentionally loaded with flaws or fallacies that you should acknowledge and discuss. The Electoral College, that unique American institution that chooses the president on a state-by-state basis, doesn't get a whole lot of attention; that is unless its winner loses the popular. Similarly, it is important to know the authors history with warts and toads. It is necessary then that the Executive Magistrate should be the guardian of the people, even of the lower classes, agst. To develop strong hypothetical examples, your examples must remain grounded in reality, meaning that they must still remain logical, plausible, and relevant to the prompt. When more than one judge dissents, often one will write the dissenting opinion and the other judge (s) will join their names to it. The temperature differences are presented as facts and not indicative of the authors thought process. The murderous hysteria over white patrimony is inseparable from the private capture of both economic opportunity and political authority. States could bypass Congress by having two-thirds of state legislatures call a convention, but efforts using the convention method have never been successful. According toJoe Gardner,associate professor of political science at Gonzaga,the Electoral College was a political compromisebetween the Founders. This produced spontaneity; it also produced stupidity. Yet five times in history, American presidents have won office while losing the popular vote, with two of those instances coming in the past 20 years -- George W. Bush in 2000 by a margin of around 500,000 votes and Donald Trump in 2016 by about 3 million. According to Joe Gardner, associate professor of political science at Gonzaga, the Electoral College was a political compromise between the Founders. Getty Images The US presidential election takes place 3 November. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections. C. While the prompt appears credible at first due to its citation of numerous studies, it is essential to remember that not all studies are equal. In this sense, the Electoral College is no more "undemocratic" than is the Senate or the Supreme Court. The candidate who has won the most congressional districts in that state is then awarded the two remaining Electoral College Votes. The purpose of the essay is for you to critique the reasoning in the argument. Numerous studies, meanwhile, confirm a direct link between temperature and thirst. The first occurred in 1824, when Andrew Jackson won a plurality of the popular vote over John Quincy Adams, William Crawford, and Henry Clay, but failed to win a majority in the Electoral College. New York, NY 10001 US Hence the chorus of denunciationthe Electoral College is undemocratic; the Electoral College is unnecessary; the Electoral College was invented to protect slaveryand the demand to push the institution down the memory hole. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. As Madison noted of Sherman, "An independence of the Executive [from] the supreme Legislature, was in his opinion the very essence of tyranny if there was any such thing." The Confederation Congress had repeated difficulties assembling a quorum just to do business; even the treaty of peace with Great Britain that ended the Revolutionary War nearly expired because an insufficient number of delegates showed up for its ratification.

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