Nkolo Nyada Chapter 12 Paper Should the Electoral College Be Abolished? Richard J. Durbin argues that the Electoral College should be abolished. He believes that a president should be elected through the majority vote. He does not like the idea that if the difference between states votes are 5%, that all the electoral votes should be given to the winner. A “winner take all” sort of thing.
Barack Obama’s ability to garner many voters from the Republican Party, particularly conservatives, caused his landslide win in the presidential election and reflects the current shifting of party loyalties in the American political landscape. Some conservatives, who usually vote for the Republican Party, voted for Obama because they did not want another 4 years of a Republican White House. Other conservatives
For example the three mid-terms where this happened were 1934, when Roosevelt won 9 more seats, 1998, when Clinton won 5 more seats and 2002, when George W. Bush won 8 more seats. This helps to show that the President’s performance is judged massively and it’s almost certain that if the electorate feel that the President’s performance has been unsatisfactory then the President’s party will do poorly in the midterms. This really emphasis’s the fact that midterms act as almost a voice for the electorate, which can let the President know exactly what they think about what type of job he or she is doing so far, by simply voting for the other party in the election. Therefore commentators have argued that midterms are a referendum on the performance of the president because the President almost always seems to lose seats in the House of Representatives, which can act as almost a ‘wake up call’ for the President, letting him or her know that they need to improve the job their doing in office so far. However other commentators have argued that mid-term elections are not merely a referendum on the performance of the President because the turnout is almost always low.
Clearly, some awry events occurred that prevented the election of the true President of the United States, Al Gore. President Bush should not have been elected President, confusing ballots, voting error were only some causes that skewed the outcome of the 2000 election. George Bush and Al Gore were pitted against each other with the general campaign focusing on domestic issues such as health care, social security and medicare, but foreign policy also played a major part in the campaign where Bush wanted better utilization of troops. Gore on the other
The idea that voters could choose presidential candidates was new because normally only a select number of people would be able to do so. Teddy Roosevelt, in one of his many speeches, supported the idea of direct nominations by the people. Roosevelt did not however just support the direct presidential primary; he also supported the direct election of senators. He believed that the past experiences of elections led way to the idea “that senators should be elected by direct vote of the people” (doc D). The support of the progressive reformers and the president led to an eventual amendment to the constitution.
People vote for electors, and those electors elect the president. The problem with this is that someone can win the presidency without winning the popular vote. Majority of Americans could have voted for President X, but President Y could still win. One recent example of this occurring is in the 2000 election, Bush v. Gore. “In 2000, Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote in the election, with 50,992,335 votes to 50,455,156 votes for George W. Bush.” (http://www.deseretnews.com/top/1093/9/2000-George-W-Bush-vs-Al-Gore-10-of-theclosest-presidential-elections-in-United-States-history.html) Al Gore had about half of a million more votes than George Bush.
Among the many analyses about the 2004 Republican National Convention, one offered by the eminent conservative columnist George F. Will caught my eye. "Barry is back," he wrote, referring to Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, who won the Republican presidential nomination forty years ago but was then crushed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in the general election, receiving only 38.5 percent of the popular vote and carrying just six states. Notwithstanding his resounding defeat in the fall of 1964, wrote Will, Goldwater's nomination sealed "the ascendancy of conservatism in the [Republican] party." Goldwater's brand of conservatism, Will explained, included a "muscular foreign policy," economic policies of low taxation and light regulation, and a "libertarian inclination" regarding cultural questions. While not "fully ascendant" in the GOP, suggested Will, Goldwaterism made a comeback at the 2004 convention, as evidenced in the "rapturous reception" of former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, known for their unyielding opposition to terrorism and their tolerant views regarding abortion and gay rights.
The Electoral College is the main part of the government that elects the president. Article II section I of the constitution establishes that each state is set up to have as many electors equal to their number of senators and representative in congress (Patterson A-10). When the presidential election time comes around these electors cast their votes and decide the president based of what their district wanted. The reason this system was set up was because the framers were afraid that a direct vote would link executive power to popular majorities (Patterson
One idea was to have him selected by the congress, this idea was thrown out because people thought that it would be used to serve the congresses purpose. The second option was to have the state legislatures decide who became president this idea was thrown out for the same reason. Eventually they decided that the president would be chosen by a popular vote. The archaic nature of this comes from the similarities to the primitive roman system (which quincedently is the same
"In 1974, Clinton entered his first political race. He felt that Republican Congressman John Paul Hammerschmidt, a strong supporter of President Nixon, was vulnerable in his reelection bid, and therefore decided to run against him. Clinton lost a surprisingly close race, holding Hammerschmidt to only 52 percent of the vote." "Clinton married Hillary Rodham in 1975. A year later he was elected Arkansas's attorney general.