Structure and Functions
The Electoral College is a system of electors in the US formed after every four years to vote for their respected candidates on the voting day. There are 538 electors in America who represent 435 Representatives, 100Senators, and three electors in the District of Columbia. The creation of the Electoral College was through several assumptions of the framers’ constitution, basically for reflecting the sense of people but not the dictates of faction. The original idea was crafted during the Constitutional Convention in 1787.
The Electoral College ensures the President does not have too much power in the office and gives the smaller states voice in elections. The other idea behind the Electoral College creation was to eliminate popularity voting as the determinant of the presidency. The delegates and the Founders who crafted the Electoral College were James Wilson, James Madison, Butler, Morris, and Mason. It grants power to smaller states in the United States s far as the presidential elections are concerned. The electoral college requirements obligate the presidential candidates to have a range of votes from across the nation, living up to the balances and checks of the US constitution. In the absence of the electoral college, the squander rural voters and large metropolitan regions might choose the presidential candidates.
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Electoral College versus Popular Votes
The Electoral College provides the mechanisms of selecting the presidents and vice presidents in the United States. The electoral votes in 48 states are apportioned according to winner-take-all strategy, while in Nebraska and Maine, the electoral votes are allocated by congressional district and two extra ballots assigned to the statewide winner. In the instance, in the Electoral College, where no candidate receives majority votes, the elections are sent to the House of Representatives to vote (Kelly, 2016). Each state conducts pivotal voting for one aspirant among the presidential candidates, and the one with the majority vote wins the presidency. There is a possibility for a hypothetical tie in the presidential election exercise because the number of electors is even (538). In this case, the House of Representatives contains the power of determining the presidential winner in the US.
Most of the United States residents had not understood the Electoral College’s intensity until the 2000 elections. After the ratification of the American constitution, candidates who won by popular votes could not be elected as President because they did not have enough Electoral College votes (Kelly, 2019). The Electoral College humiliated the candidates who won the highest number of votes. For instance, in the 2000 elections, Al Gore won the popular vote by virtually a half-million votes, but generally, George W. Bush defeated him and attained the presidency. Bush got merely 47.9% of votes while Gore won with 48.4% of the votes. However, despite losing the popular vote, Bush managed to win the presidency because he won 271 electoral votes compared to 266 electoral votes won by Gore. Equally, in the 2016 elections, Hillary Clinton won the popular votes by about 3 million votes, but she was defeated by Donald Trump, who won 304 to 227 in the Electoral College.
Value of the citizen’s vote.
The value of an individual citizen’s vote is based only on its ability to influence the majority votes for a state, under the electoral college. The majority vote of the citizen is capable of determining which one among the candidates is in a position of receiving all the electoral votes from the state. On the other hand, if someone is living in a safe country and votes against the state’s standard party lines, then the ballot is fundamentally valueless. On the other hand, if a person lives in a swing state, the vote is slightly more significant than that of an individual living in a safe. The US government employs the Electoral College system today as the cornerstone of Federalism in America. The voting rights of the smaller states are protected, and they can choose their way of selecting their electors without federal involvement. The Electoral College ensures that the United States presidency is determined through the constitutional majority (Price, 2012). Typically, the Electoral College grants legitimacy to those who win by magnifying the victory margin. The citizens are assured of localization of state-level problems because the political parties are unable to carry out large-scale fraud to influence the state’s elections. Additionally, the President’s administration is balanced by the laws enacted by Congress through state influence, which the Electoral College should merely follow. Therefore, the representation of states in Congress is indirectly proportional to the respective population.
References
Kelly, K. (2016). “The Function of the Electoral College: What did the US founders say about it, and what can the states do?” Odyssey.
Kelly, M. (2019). “Purposes and Effects of Electoral College.” ThoughtCo. California
Price, K. (2012). “Why we still need the Electoral College.” CNSNews: Washington
