In the United States, the president is elected through a secret ballot by the citizens, and then finally decided by the Electoral College. After voting has been done, the candidates have to win by a popular vote in every state, and then the Electoral College votes determine who wins the presidency. The Electoral College is a body that verifies and determines the winner of the US presidency. It was established in March 1794 by the founding fathers and has been included in Article II section I of the U.S. constitution which states that, a president has to be chosen by a group of electors from all the states. This body was created because, the founding fathers feared that a tyrant group may manipulate the publics’ opinion and take power through direct election (Rakove 112). Moreover, it was also formed to appease the small states so that their votes could count. Even though the president is elected by the people, they do not do it directly; they do it through the state electors who they elected to the Electoral College.
The Electoral College body functions by having all states allocate a number of electors equal to the number of its U.S. Senators alongside with the number of its U.S. Representatives. It has 538 electors from all states, one elector representing each of the 438 members in the house, one for each of the 100 senators and 3 electors who represent the District of Columbia. The state electors are pledged to vote for candidates of their parties who chose them. Subsequently, after all their debates, caucuses and primaries, both parties are allowed to nominate their candidates who are to run for president and vice president. Afterwards, the citizens from every state are allowed to vote for a party’s slate of electors who are to represent them in the Electoral College. Whichever party line up acquires the most popular votes becomes the slate of electors for that state. Next, the electors convene in their individual state’s capital after the elections in order to cast their votes to determine the president and the vice president.
Lastly, the presidential candidate with the most electoral votes casted is declared president and this statute also applies to the vice president position. If a situation arises whereby none of the candidates for president garners a majority of the electoral votes, then the election is handed over to the U.S. House of Representatives to decide the president from the top three candidates with each state only getting one vote. The candidate who gets the total majority of votes is the declared president. If none of the candidates for vice president receives a majority of the electoral votes, then the U.S. Senate chooses the vice president from the top two nominees with each state getting only one vote. The candidate with the total majority of votes is elected vice president
A candidate can win the most popular vote and yet not win the presidential election in the United States because, the president is chosen by the Electoral College and not the national popular vote. A candidate may win all electoral votes and just have a few popular votes and be declared president because it’s only the electoral votes that really matter and not the nationwide popular votes. The Electoral College system was created in a way that a presidential candidate has to win 270 votes out of the total 538 votes regardless of having or having not got the nationwide popular vote (Bickel 57). According to the U.S constitution, the candidate with the popular vote cannot claim presidency, rather the candidate with the most electoral votes becomes president. A presidential candidate can win the most popular votes and fail to win the majority electoral votes. This is simply because; the final result of who becomes the president of the United States is determined by the members of the Electoral College and not the popular vote. The state electors vow to vote for candidates from their parties and since they are not obliged by the constitution to do so, they sometimes vote otherwise. This is the reason why you can find that a candidate got a popular vote but does not end up becoming the president since the state senators decided to favor and vote for another candidate. If a presidential candidate fails to get the majority of the electoral votes and has most the majority of individual votes, they cannot become president since the popular vote does not count. If only the US citizens can be allowed to vote directly for their presidential candidates, then the issues of an individual not becoming president even after winning the most popular vote can be forgotten.
Many people are not in favor of the Electoral College system. Many are advocating for the system to be reformed. In order to reform the United States’ electoral system, the government should abolish the Electoral College and allow the citizens to vote directly for the president of their choice. This is because “other than the Twelfth Amendment and the Twenty-Third Amendment which were enacted, no Constitutional amendment proposal changing the way Electoral College works” has made it and gone through both houses of congress and considered by states (Longley, 127). This will make the system more democratic (Singh 92). The Electoral College system is not democratic because the U.S. citizens are not direct electors of their president because the elites of the two parties, the democrats and the republicans are the ones who decide who becomes president. If the system remains and is not abolished, then there is no reason of voting because the people’s vote do not count. The citizens can vote for a candidate of their choice to be president but when the decision of the electoral college is made, a different candidate may end up winning the presidency just because the state electors favored a different candidate. Albert Gore did not win the 2000 elections even after getting the nationwide popular vote because the popular votes do not count; only the vote in the Electoral College decides who becomes president and George W. Bush was declared the winner by the Electoral College (Brams 87). This can be avoided if the system is abolished and replaced with the people’s votes.
Furthermore, if the system remains, the low voter turnout will continue and there will be no voter efficiency as citizens are discouraged to vote since they feel that their votes do not count since still, the electoral votes still determines who wins. The popular vote system should be encouraged because, the people will have a chance to vote directly for the president and they will be confident because their vote counts and determines who wins. If the popular vote system is adopted, the voter turnout rate will increase because the voters will realize that their vote is truly represented in the elections. They will be more than happy to exercise their voting rights.
The US electoral system should be reformed because it allows the probability of a candidate losing the nationwide popular vote and ending up being elected president by the electoral vote. Additionally, it violates the “one person, one vote rule” which is the proper rule of modern democracy. A one electorate system should be created in the United States so as to replace the outdated Electoral College system which was being used the time when only a specific group of people were allowed to vote (Longley 126).
In conclusion, voting and elections are essential in all nations for an effective democracy. The process of carrying out elections in the US is complex because a candidate can win the most popular vote and yet not win the presidential election in the United States because, the president is chosen by the Electoral College and not the national popular vote. The Electoral College is a body that was formed to determine the winner of the US presidency. The citizens elect state representatives into the Electoral College who later cast the final votes after the voting process to decide who wins the elections. A presidential candidate can win the nationwide popular vote but when the Electoral College determines the winner of the elections by the electoral vote, he/she might end up losing since they make the final decisions and the electoral voters might decide to favor a certain candidate by voting in his/her favor. Therefore, there is need for reforms in the US electoral system so as to allow the citizens to vote directly for the president of their choice. Advocating for a one electorate system through the popular vote system will make the electoral system more democratic because, the people will vote directly for the candidate of their choice and there will be no other body to determine the winner. The Electoral College system violates the “one person, one vote rule” because the citizens’ votes do not really count.
Works Cited
Rakove, Jack, N. Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. Print.
Brams, Steven J. Mathematics and Democracy: Designing Better Voting and Fair-Division
Procedures, Princeton University Press, 2008. Print.
Singh, Robert S. Governing America: the politics of a divided democracy. Oxford: Oxford
Longley, Lawrence D. The Politics of Electoral College Reform. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1972. Print.
Bickel, Alexander M. Reform and Continuity. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. Print.
