The Electoral Process

The United States Electoral College is a body of electors established by the United States Constitution, composed every four years for the main purpose of electing the president and vice president of the United States. The Electoral College was formed because the founding fathers were afraid of direct election to the Presidency. They feared a tyrant could manipulate public opinion and come to power. The Electoral College originally provided the Constitutional Convention with a compromise between the popular election of the President and congress selection.

The twelfth amendment changed the former process, allowing there to be separate ballots for determining the President and the Vice President.

The United States Electoral College is still used today, currently 270 electoral votes are required in order to win the presidential election. The Electoral College is important today because it ensures that the President of the United states is selected by the constitutional majority. The Electoral College should be scrapped altogether because there are so many cons to it. For instance, the reasons that the Founding Fathers created it are no longer relevant.

Another reason is the Electoral College gives way too much power to swing the states and allows the presidential election to be decided by only a few states. The main con is that the Electoral College ignores the will of the people, there are over 300 million people living in the United States, but only around 538 people actually decide who wins. For example in 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, but still lost the election because of electoral votes. Recently elected President Donald Trump even believes that the votes should be by popular vote, after the election in 2016 Trump said, "I would rather see it where you went with simple votes. You know, you get 100 million votes and somebody else gets 90 million votes and you win." The Electoral College may have been a benefit back in the 1800s, but today there is no need for it.

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