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iris [78.8K]
2 years ago
11

What is the most compelling advantage of the Electoral College?

History
1 answer:
Setler79 [48]2 years ago
8 0

Answer:

hope this help

Pro 1

The Founding Fathers enshrined the Electoral College in the US Constitution because they thought it was the best method to choose the president.

Using electors instead of the popular vote was intended to safeguard against uninformed or uneducated voters by putting the final decision in the hands of electors most likely to possess the information necessary to make the best decision; to prevent states with larger populations from having undue influence; and to compromise between electing the president by popular vote and letting Congress choose the president. [7] [8] [9]

According to Alexander Hamilton, the Electoral College is if “not perfect, it is at least excellent,” because it ensured “that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” [7]

The Founders wanted to balance the will of the populace against the risk of “tyranny of the majority,” in which the voices of the masses can drown out minority interests. [10]

Pro 2

The Electoral College ensures that all parts of the country are involved in selecting the President of the United States.

If the election depended solely on the popular vote, then candidates could limit campaigning to heavily-populated areas or specific regions. To win the election, presidential candidates need electoral votes from multiple regions and therefore they build campaign platforms with a national focus, meaning that the winner will actually be serving the needs of the entire country.

Without the electoral college, groups such as Iowa farmers and Ohio factory workers would be ignored in favor of pandering to metropolitan areas with higher population densities, leaving rural areas and small towns marginalized. [11] [12] [13]

Con 1

The reasons the Founding Fathers created the Electoral College are no longer relevant.

Modern technology and political parties allows voters to get necessary information to make informed decisions in a way that could not have been foreseen by the Founding Fathers. [23]

While Alexander Hamilton in 1788 saw the electors as being “free from any sinister bias,” members of the Electoral College are now selected by the political parties and they are expected to vote along party lines regardless of their own opinions about the candidates. [7] [4] [16]

Just as several voting laws that limited direct democracy in the Constitution have been modified or discarded throughout history, so should the Electoral College. As a result of Constitutional amendments, women and former slaves were given the right to vote, and Senators, once appointed by state legislatures, are now elected directly by popular vote. [15] The vice presidency was once awarded to the runner up in electoral votes, but the procedure was changed over time to reflect the reality of elections. [17]

Con 2

The Electoral College gives too much power to "swing states" and allows the presidential election to be decided by a handful of states.

The two main political parties can count on winning the electoral votes in certain states, such as California for the Democratic Party and Indiana for the Republican Party, without worrying about the actual popular vote totals. Because of the Electoral College, presidential candidates only need to pay attention to a limited number of states that can swing one way or the other. [18]

A Nov. 6, 2016 episode of PBS NewsHour revealed that “Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have made more than 90% of their campaign stops in just 11 so-called battleground states. Of those visits, nearly two-thirds took place in the four battlegrounds with the most electoral votes — Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and North Carolina.” [19]

Explanation:

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