Though Al Gore won the popular vote by 48.4% Bush won the votes of the Electoral College which resulted in him winning the Presidential election. Another example that presents Electoral Colleges distorted nature is the 1996 election in which Bill Clinton achieved 49% of the popular vote and went on to achieve 70% of the Electoral College vote. However, this is a weak argument as prior to this election it never occurred that a running candidate had more Electoral College votes without gaining the majority of votes in the national popular vote. A national popular vote would allow democracy to function in its most pure form by selecting the President based on the national popular
Although different in nature, congress and the President of the United States both hold positions of upmost power and unequivocally important decision-making for the American people. However, the argument always stands: who has more power? The power problem as it stands “...is the need to grant government enough power to effectively address the problems that people expect government to solve, while also limiting power so that it can be held accountable” (Katznelson, Kesselman, Draper, p.42). Far from perfect, the political system in place attempts to grant both Congress and The President exclusive and shared responsibilities to provide an equal spread of power. Upon founding of the United States government, not all three branches were to share the same amount of power.
For a party to form an executive (government), the party needs a majority of 1 seat over the other party’s in the legislature (parliament). The British electoral system has come under scrutiny because a majority of seats allows a party to form an executive not the overall majority of public votes. In 1945 Labour won a landslide victory in the elections and gained a 180 seat majority over the Conservative party, and a 148 seat majority overall. For each seat Labour won they had polled 30,522 votes. However in the 1951 elections Labour had polled 231,067 more votes from the general public than the Conservative party, however the Conservative party gained 26 more seats and squeezed into power.
In the statue of the constituency of Representatives, non-citizens and illegal aliens are granted electoral representation (Martin). In 2008, we are already seeing the effects of Hispanic voters. At the Pew Research Center, a study was conducted that proved 66 percent of Hispanics favor Senator Barack Obama and only 23 percent favor Senator John McCain (Lumetta). The Hispanic population is set to double to 30 percent by 2042 and given that the majority of that population votes Democratic, they will become the deciding factor in future elections that will most likely to favor Democrats. But backtrack four years ago during the 2004 election when President George W. Bush received only 35 more electoral votes than Senator John Kerry, at 286.
As a result, the deeper biases reflected in sensationalism often leave citizens confused about issues which forces them to deconstruct this alternately managed and frenzied news in order to make sound judgements about their society and government. Without question, money necessitates an effective campaign and election, and a lot of it. The amount of money that can be raised and spent dominates and facilitates campaigns and elections. Affirmative advantages of possessing an abundance of money can enable an otherwise unknown candidate heard and seen. Money buys name recognition and organizational support, hence the reason that so much money is spent by candidates and their parties on media related campaigning.
In other words, elections are usually dependent on what the people see and not what they hear. For instance, in Source C, it states, “Our national politics has become a competition for images or between images, rather than between ideals.” This quote explains that politics is more based on a candidate’s image rather then what they support. Pursuing this further, Theodore H. White in Source C says, “Nixon’s---light-colored suit, wrong makeup, bad posture--- was ‘fuzzed’.” This is a direct example of how an election can depend on a person’s characteristics. Nixon, having a bad representation of him-self, caused people to favor him less whether or not he had strong ideals that they agree with. To sum up, television causes people to approve the candidate’s that give more pleasure to the eye than those that give better
Process of electing President and Congress a. President is voted on every 4 years by electoral college and whoever has the most votes wins i. The president often has to go on fundraising tours and their elections seem so much more important because it is nationwide and not singularly in one state. ii. President is the executive branch and holds much power in one election b.
2009 Free Response Questions 1. In The Federalist paper number 10, James Madison expressed concern over the possibility that both majority and minority factions would have too much power over government, and he presented ways of minimizing that danger. The United States Constitution established a democratic government but also contained several provisions that limited majority rule. Throughout the next two centuries, the role of majority rule in the United States government and politics continued to change. a.
Ethnic minorities are using this right to an extent since voting turnout rates increased between 2004-2008. For example, black turnout rate increased from 60% to 65% and Hispanic's increased from 47& to 49%. Political representation amongst ethnic group is also at its highest ever. Barack Obama, the USA's first minority president, was elected in 2008. Minorities are also more represented in congress than ever before with black representation increasing from 42 to 44 and Hispanic representation increasing from 28
Have we ever had a middle class or poor president? It turns out we have, and some that have even gone bankrupt. After adjusting for inflation, the two wealthiest presidents in American history where George Washington and John F. Kennedy. Washington was worth over a half a billion dollars in today`s money. And his presidential salary was much higher than later presidents, totaling 2 percent of the U.S. budget for 1789.