Example Of The US Electoral College Essay

In the United States, the president and his or her running mate are not voted for directly through the popular vote. Instead, there is a system referred to as the Electoral College. An electoral college is a slate of electors in every state who promise to vote for the presidential candidate chosen by the popular vote in that, when a presidential gets for example 51 percent of the votes in a state like Texas, following the winner-take-all system, that candidate is sure of the electoral college votes of that state provided that he or she has obtained the threshold of a slight majority of the popular vote. The Electoral College electors are mainly the congressmen; that is; senators and representatives. For instance, in California, the Electoral College consists of two senators and 53 representatives. So whoever wins a simple majority gets all the 55 Electoral College votes for this state. However, there are two states where this does not apply. These are in Nebraska and in Maine.
Therefore, the president is the one who gets to win a simple majority of the Electoral College votes. In the event that there is a tie in the Electoral College votes, then the states engage in a tie breaker. In this situation, all states account for one vote despite the size or population of the state. This is with the exception of the district of Colombia. They have no senators or representatives, but they get 3 Electoral College votes when it comes to deciding the president.
This system has major distortions in that a candidate can get a large majority of the popular vote but still lose in the elections. This is because the states that they win in might have a huge population yet have few Electoral College votes. This leads to the opposition taking the presidency due to the winner-take-all system despite the fact that the other candidate has a majority in the popular vote.