“The electoral college should be replaced by a national popular vote.” Discuss (45) The Electoral College is an institution that was established by the founding Fathers to elect the President of the United States indirectly. The Electoral College is a system that should be abolished and replaced by direct election through a national popular vote. Supporters of the national popular vote make convincing arguments that it is the best system to decide the Presidential election in a society as vast as the United States. However, there are arguments that suggest the Electoral College should not be replaced by a national popular vote. When evaluating the arguments raised on both sides it I believe that the Electoral College should be replaced by a national popular vote.
Illinois has a population of 12 million people and 22 electoral votes. This means have one vote per every 550,000 voters. This is a very unbalanced form of voting, not capturing the popular vote at all. Durbin also points out that we use a direct popular election system for Senators, Governors, Congressmen, and mayors, but not for our President. The Founding Fathers knew during their time that people running for congress lived closer to the people voting for them, so at that time, the people voted directly for them but only for them.
Marcel Lambert English 15 Section 4 February 1, 2013 The Presidential Nomination Process Both major political parties in the United States select their presidential candidates through a process of primary elections. However, voters do not directly select presidential nominees in these primaries. Instead, they choose delegates from their respective states who will attend a national party convention to nominate a presidential candidate for their party. Democratic Party Nomination Process Convention Delegates includes a total number of delegates divided into two sections, pledged and unpledged. Pledged Delegates, The fifty states and the District of Columbia are awarded a number of delegates equal to fifteen percent of their number of base delegates to be filled by party leaders and elected officials.
Kiely said around 78% of outside spending in 2012 – $365m of the total $465m – could be attributed to the “Citizens United effect”. The 2010 ruling by the supreme court in the case of Citizens United vs Federal Election Commission allowed corporations and unions to spend unlimited money on campaigning, enabling Super Pacs to spend unlimited amounts as long as they had no coordination with the candidates they support. In reality, those running Super PACs have often have close ties to political parties. Former George W Bush advisor Karl Rove runs the conservative American Crossroads Super Pac, while Restore Our Future, a pro-Mitt Romney Super Pac, was founded by former Romney aides. The money spent by Super Pacs, unions, corporations and non-profit groups is more than double what those groups spent in 2010, the first campaign in which the supreme court judgment had taken effect.
Since World War II no other election has ever involved 65% or more registered voters. Elections for state and local elections are even lower. As we may all know the United States of America is a Democracy. In other words, the people will decide who will lead the country and what the country will do. Why do people still don’t vote and then later whine about who gets elected?
At the polls, citizens are actually voting for a state of electors who are committed to supporting a particular presidential candidate but are not required to. The candidate with the highest number of popular votes in a state wins all of its electoral votes. In December they conduct a meeting with the Electoral College and the electors vote to determine the next President. Although, this meeting is only a formality for the results of this vote are known immediately after the popular votes are tallied a month earlier. Finally, inauguration day is here.
2. Election of 1800 • Democratic Republican Thomas Jefferson and Aaron VS. Federalist President John Adams and Charles Pinckney • No separate ballots for President and Vice President a) All candidates ran for presidency; second highest vote would be VP • Thomas Jefferson won the state of New York because of Aaron Burr’s influence a) Burr and Jefferson received the same amount of votes(73 electoral votes) b) Under the constitution, the tie could only be broken by the House of Representatives, which was filled with Federalists at the time(preferred Burr over Jefferson) c) After a long deadlock, Alexander Hamilton and John Adams persuaded a few House members to change their votes, thus helped secure the presidency for Jefferson • Also known as the revolution of 1800 a) Transfer of power from one party to another through elections and all the parties has to accept. Jeffersonian Democracy 1. What is it? • An ideal form of government by Thomas
Are 1 percent of voters affected, 10 percent, or more? The studies that have been done range from showing no effects to showing more than 10 percent of voters potentially affected. Obviously, these cannot all be right, or they may be looking at different elections with different characteristics. An importantissue is the perceived closeness of the election before the election occurredand the peceived closeness of the election based on exit poll results. Jackson (1983), whose paper we discuss in greater detail below, points out very sensibly that the only time the exit polls can have an effect is when they change voters' perceptions about the closeness of the race.
David Greenburg argues that, "presidents are never able to meet" the expectations of transformative change (Canon 221). These expectations are created during campaigns in order for a candidate to win over voters, however many always disappoint. Greenburg believes the expectations and promises made by presidents in our time are far too complicated to reach and to summarize it: no president, from now on, will ever have the chance to be transformational. On the contrary, Richard Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru view Obama as transformational, but in a negative way. They say, "Obama is the first president to explicitly reject the notion of American exceptionalism--the idea that the United States is historically unique and has always differed from other democracies (Canon 222)."
If a party gains a majority it will be offered the chance to form government by the Queen. The MP is then responsible for representing all constituents, even those who didn’t elect the member. For example in 2005 George Galloway received only 18.4% of his constituents but was still elected MP for Bethnal Green and Bow. [1] This high proportion of constituents who didn’t vote for Galloway is not a unique anomaly, during the 2005 election only three MPs secured more than 40% of their constituents votes. It may be argued that voter apathy has a large influence on this