However, there are inevitably some questions arising about the electoral college and whether it still works best for the US today. Some say it should be completely scrapped, with a more democratic direct election taking it's place; others day that it can be mended by reforming it, and the final argument is to defend it, and leave it as it is. One reason to end the electoral college system is because it is not democratic enough. The winner of the nationwide vote could in fact lose the election because of the way the electoral college works. Popular vote winners have been denied the presidency in 1824, 1876, 1888 and 2000.
Former Court Justice John Paul Stevens who served on the Supreme Court argues regarding amending the Constitution to promote democracy and rights (Posner, Slate.com). However, enacting new amendments to the Constitution is highly impossible today due to the rules established under Article V. Article V calls for an amendment to be proposed by two-thirds majority vote in the Senate and in the House or through a convention called in by the Congress after a request from the two-thirds votes by the states (Posner, Slate.com). This serves to be the first part of the amendment process if an amendment succeeds in the first stage it moves on to the second stage. Which requires three-quarters of votes from the 50 states in order to be enacted as an official amendment (Posner, Slate.com). The framers decided on the strict enforcement of Article V, as they believed in the ideology of stability, which would allow the government to function properly.
Due to the Electoral College today, it is hard to say for some whether or not the process of voting is fair and actually matters, or if your vote as a citizen of the United States does not count and is simply a waste of time. Today I am going to share my opinion on this controversial topic. The Election Process 3 Is The Election Process Fair? According to UEN.org, an election is the process by which citizens select thousands of men and women they want to run their government- at all levels. Some people believe that the current election process we use in the United States of America is not a fair one.
The case began as John Adams tried to appoint a court full of federalist judges as his term ended before he handed the presidency over to Democratic-Republican, Thomas Jefferson. All of the processes did not get completed before Jefferson took office and he had his party put a halt put on the proceedings. There was a court case saying that this was unconstitutional. But the question that remained was what power and authority the court had to rule on this case. This case ultimately decided whether the Supreme Court had the power to decide whether the decisions of the other branches were unconstitutional.
Three Branches of United States Government Our founding fathers created three separate branches for a powerful and fair national government. They wanted to prevent the government from abusing its power. They did not want the powers of the government to be controlled by one individual or organization. The delegates at the Constitutional Convention were afraid that if an individual or small group received too much power, the United States would wind up under the rule of another dictator. They refused for that to happen because that’s the reason why they began the new world journey, they wanted something different from Great Britain.
The principle was adopted by the Founding Fathers due to their fear of totalitarianism. Montesquieu argued for separation of powers in his book L’Esprit de Lois, where he stated that separation of powers will avoid tyranny ‘When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person…there can be no liberty.’ On the contrary to the US, the UK’s powers are fused; the Prime Minister is both the executive and part of the legislature. In the US system there is also a separation of personnel, this means that no person can be a member of more than one branch at the same time. When Senator Al Gore was elected vice-president in 1992, he had to resign from the Senate. Similarly, in 2008, Barack Obama too had to resign from the Senate.
Outline Although the founding of the Constitution was a revolutionary, positive turning-point in American history, the US Constitution has a few unconstitutional and democratic shortcomings. Introduction In order to understand the shortcomings of democracy of the US Constitution, is it is important to know the background of its’ founding and how each article serves our country. Federalist No. 10, written by James Madison, asserts the importance of having the image of a democracy without its real substance. There seems to have been a very strong opposition towards democracy at the Constitutional Convention, although the framers were in the midst of creating democratic principles to appeal to the majority of the country.
For example, we elect politicians at the local, county, state, and federal levels. We elect mayors, council members, congressmen, senators, and a president to represent us.A democratic republic is not the same as a direct democracy. In a direct democracy, all citizens, not just elected representatives, create and vote directly on each law. The Founding Fathers of the United States did not want, or trust, direct democracy. Click for Republic or Democracy?
The Electoral College is a voting system that was established by the framers in 1787, in which it was decided that presidential candidates would be voted on by each state's electors, whom would cast their ballots in retrospect to the victor in their state. Originally established to grant smaller states power and to unite what was an America wary of one another, this system has been in place for over two centuries, yet still retains these vital cornerstones. It is for these precise reasons, and in the interests of preserving our vital democracy, that the Electoral College must remain intact and without reform, as doing so would rob smaller states of voting influence, whilst also leaving our nation susceptible, in putting incapable and mediocre candidates into office. When the foundations of the Electoral College were originally laid down, almost instantly, the main
However on the other hand a separation of powers undermines the idea of political sovereignty, because even though they have gain legitimate power, they are not able to run the country as they wish in terms of financial and economic policies. Flexibility is big problem also as an uncodified constitution allows the government to change the constitution and allows them to amend it to suit the needs of the party instead of the party in office working within the framework of the constitution, this can lead to a dictatorship also and pretty much removes the importance of a constitution, as it does not limit the government, whereas a codified constitution would most likely entrench these laws, meaning they would only be changed in an extraordinary circumstance . Regardless of this it could be argued that due to the ever evolving philosophy, it