FREE ESSAY ON ELECTORAL COLLEGE

ELECTORAL COLLEGE

Who is really voting, the people or the selected few. The recent election involving Bush
and Gore has heated up a fifty year old debate. The debate is about whether the Electoral
College is still an effective system considering the circumstances the United States now
faces compared to when it was created by the founding fathers. The Electoral College is
an outdated system of election that misrepresents the people of the United States today.
The college was created in a time where communication was limited. Treason, tyranny, and
oppression from foreign countries were still a serious threat. In order to protect the
people and the institution of America, the government created an election system that
allowed the final vote to rest in the hands of a trusted and respected few. These
selected few could disregard the popular vote because there was and still is "no
Constitutional provision or federal law requiring electors to vote in accordance with the
popular vote in their states (National Archives and Records Administration)." For about
one hundred and fifty years the United States has used a system that does not coincide
with the most popular opinion, but yet, it has been the prevailing system that has not
substantially changed with the evolution of American society. By the definition given by
The New Lexicon Webster's Dictionary Encyclopedic Edition, Democracy is a "Government by
the people, usually through elected representatives." People elect representatives to
represent them in the in the overall government. For example, if the people of the state
of Florida vote in the election between the two candidates Bush and Gore, and the
majority of the people vote for Gore and the representatives, meaning the twenty-five
electors of the state, vote for Bush, then there has been a misrepresentation. How is
this country a Democracy when such a flaw would destroy the sole purpose of a democracy,
which is to represent the majority of the people? According to William C. Kimblerling,
Deputy Director FEC Office of Election Administration, the founders created a system that
has performed its function for over 200 years and any alternatives to it appear more
problematic than is the College itself. This system has performed its function of
electing a President and does fully represent the selected few who get to actually vote,
but the nation of citizens who think they are voting are being mislead. When the founders
created this system of election, they accounted for the many problems faced by a new
nation with new citizens. Because of the pristine age of the country, the founders knew
they faced different problems of creating a system compared to the older powers of the
world. The influence from other world powers was a foreseeable problem, so the founders
had to limit the public vote in order to protect the new nation. The Electoral College
was a brilliant 18th century device to solve the problem of electing a president with
states ranging in size. The problems faced by the founders were the difficulty of travel
and the absence of political parties during the 18th century. Because traveling and
communication from one state to another took days and sometimes months, it was almost
impossible for any normal farmer or shop owner to make an educated guess with lack of up
to date information. Also, considering there were no political parties at the time, no
person could chose a candidate with common beliefs of their own unless they had some form
of information that would be distributed to every citizen. The founders agreed that the
best way to select a president would be to elect responsible trusted people of the
government to become apart of the Electoral College. Each state is allowed a vote for the
"total number of senators and representatives it sends to the U.S. Congress (National
Archives and Records Administration)." With this system in place, each state would have
fair representation. The system would hopefully have trusted and educated Electors who
would be unaffected by partisan politics. The problems faced were more numerous than just
travel and communication during the 18th century, William C. Kimberling explains why the
Electoral College was created. William C. Kimberling wrote an essay pertaining to the
creation and effectiveness of the Electoral College. The first problem was the fact that
the Union "was composed of thirteen large and small states jealous of their own rights
and powers and suspicious of any central national government (Kimberling)." In a sense
all states are still competing but are no longer suspicious of any central government
because of the fact that the United States has had standing central government of its own
for about two and a quarter centuries now and no militant state such as Montana could
over throw the government. The threat of an oppressive leader is not obsolete, but
nowhere near as apparent as it was in 1776. The second problem the founders faced was
that the United States "contained only 4,000,000 people spread up and down a thousand
miles of Atlantic seaboard barely connected by transportation or communication (so that
national campaigns were impractical even if they had been thought desirable)
(Kimberling)." A thought to remember for future consideration would be that the country
is no longer inaccessible, meaning candidates do stage national campaigns and have been
for the last hundred and seventy years. This simple fact would allow people to make a
good conscious choice now that a candidate is fully accessible to all. A third problem
facing the founders was how to elect a president in a nation that "believed , under the
influence of such British political thinkers are Henry St John Bolingbroke, that
political parties were mischievous if not downright evil, and felt that gentlemen should
not campaign for public office (The saying was "The office should seek the man, the man
should not seek the office.") (Kimberling)." This is completely true in a sense of what
Americans believe in, but what people believe in is not necessarily what people do.
People are inherently power hungry and selfish to some degree, so the idea that people
should not seek the most powerful position in the world is a flaw in the founders
thinking. Also, in order to come to power, there must be support from others, and people
only support what they believe in. If people unite for common beliefs, a group is formed.
If the beliefs of a group deal with politics, a political party has formed. This is
another flaw the founders made because again they based their thinking on that which
people believed in and not with what a people would actually do. Kimberling goes on to
explain that "The Electoral College was designed to represent each state's choice for the
presidency (with the number of each State's electoral votes being the number of its
Senators plus the number of its Representatives). To abolish the Electoral College in
favor of a nationwide popular election for president would strike at the very heart of
the federal structure laid out in out Constitution and would lead to the nationalization
of our central government - to the detriment of the states." Kinberling agrees that the
states have adopted a method of appointing Electors by a popular vote through out a
state. Meaning that when Electors are elected to the College they usually pledge their
vote to the party that they received their support from. Again, this means that if the
popular vote for the presidency in Florida was for Gore, and the majority of the Electors
in Florida were pledged to the Republican Party who was backing Bush, all of the elector
votes would go to Bush even though the majority of the population of Florida voted for
Gore. Although this could happen, it most likely won't. With the media today, the nation
would be in an uproar if this situation occurred. Whether it could or could not happen,
it is still a flaw or loophole that could create serious problems during the election
process. There are many flaws in the Electoral system that backers of the system refuse
to acknowledge. If they do acknowledge the flaws, they answer them by saying that the
current system is better than any others out there. But there are better systems out
there that could be used. This is where the major flaw in the Electoral College is: the
mere fact that the elected are not required to represent the people that they work for.
Kimberling's response to this flaw is that "Proponents of the Electoral College point out
that it was never intended to reflect the national popular will." In other words,
representatives were never intended to represent. An example would be found in the
Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland race for the presidency in 1888. Microsoft Encarta
Online Encyclopedia, states that the "defeated candidate (Grover Cleveland), polled
5,540,050 popular votes to 5,444,337 for Benjamin Harrison; however, Cleveland received
only 168 electoral votes to Harrison's 233." The reason given for this upset by
Kimberling is that "Democrat Grover Cleveland, ran up huge popular majorities in several
of the 18 States which supported him while the Republican challenger, Benjamin Harrison,
won only slender majorities in some of the larger of the 20 States which supported him
(most notably in Cleveland's home State of New York)." Cleveland's majority of the
popular vote throughout the population of the nation did not matter to four hundred and
one electors who decided that Harrison should win. Because of cases such as Cleveland vs.
Harrison, the country has tried to fix and even abolish the Electoral system. One idea to
abolish the Electoral system came from Steven Hill, a writer from the Christian Science
Monitor. He believes that the U.S. should incorporate the use of an "instant runoff"
system. This system is used in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Ireland. "An instant
runoff allows voters to rank their top, second, and third choices on the same ballot." By
doing this, a voter has allowed the government to use their second and third choices as
votes if the party candidates do not meet a required majority for presidency. At the same
time you could eliminate the Electoral College and let the people vote directly for the
presidency. Another fix the critics of the Electoral College would push for would be the
elimination of the "winner-take-all" system of the Electoral College. This system of
which presidential candidate that wins the most popular votes within a state wins all of
that States Electors ( Kimberling, 6). In Microsoft Encarta, an article that describes
the overall view of the Electoral College, the critics of the "electoral method contend
that the true sentiments of the voters are distorted by the winner-take-all system, as
well as by the fact that population and voter turnout are not accurately reflected."
Critics agree that this system is unfair and should be replaced with a direct popular
election and thus eliminating the winner-take-all system is a step in that direction.
After considering all of the pro's and con's, I still believe that the Electoral College
is an outdated system. All of the backers of the system are still paranoid of
presidential take over from extreme parties because they believe the public is not
educated enough to make the proper choice. Maybe it is true, many people do not know the
first thing about politics. Personally, I believe I am to inexperienced in the field of
politics to be voting for candidates that would put them in the most powerful seat in the
world, but whether I am experienced or not, I believe the selected few should not decide
the future of the whole. Because many people like myself are inexperienced, does not mean
the entire United States is inexperienced. There are many politically inspired and
educated people besides the elected 538 that should decide the future of this nation. The
future should be left to the open mind of the entire population, and not to the limited
mind of the few. 
Bibliography 
Bibliography: Work Cited "A Procedural Guide To The Electoral College." National Archives
and Records Administration prepared by The Office of the Federal Register. Access Date: 6
Nov. 2000. http://www.nara.gov/fedreg/elctcoll/proced.html "Democracy." The New Lexicon
Webster's Dictionary of the English Language. Encyclopedia Edition. 1989. "Electoral
College," Microsoft Encarta. Online Encyclopedia 2000. http://encarta.msn.com. Access
Date: 9 Nov. 2000. Hill, Steven. "The Perils of the Electoral College." Christian Science
Moniter, 2 Feb. 2000, Volume. 92 Issue 239, 11. Access Date: 6 Nov. 2000. EBSCOHost.
Kimberling, William C. "The Electoral College." Access Date: 6 Nov. 2000