Our system of electing a president now needs to be reformed, but not necessarily abolished.
reasons:
1. A candidate can recieve a majority of the poular vote but lose the presidency.
Evidence: this has happened in the 1876 election and the 2000 election
This can happen because the winner-take all system of distributing votes and the possiblity of faithless electors do not acurately reflect the popular vote.
2.The winner -take -all system does not show if a popular vote in the state is close.
evidence: the voting may be very close but all the electoral votes go to the candidate with the majority even if that candidate got the majority vote by only a slight margin. 48 states have this system(maine and Nebraska are the two that don't). since two states divide their votes to better reflect the popular vote we know that that new method can work. This can be done using proportions of the popular vote or by giving the electoral vote of each congressional district to the cndidate that recieves the most popular vote in that district.Two possible problems with this are taht proportions of the votes may not work out to whole numbers of votes and the second method might encourage gerrymandering. The winner take all system also encourages candidates to focus on campaigning mostly in the states with more electoral votes and ignore the smaller states.
3. another problem with the system we have now is that the elector in each state does not neccessarily have to vote the same way as the majority vote in that state. when they don't vote like the popular vote, they are called faithless voters and they can distort the voting in an election. This has happend before like in the 2000 election one elector voted for John Edwards when the popular voting in his state said he should vote for John Kerry. Some staes try to discourage this by imposing fines or forcing resignation as elector or counting being a faithless voter as a fourth degree felony as in North Carolina and New Mexico.
4. We could consider going to a direct popular vote system, but that could cause many problems with uncertainty of who sould be president if there is a really close vote. Also recounts would be extemely difficult. So It could take a very long time to decide who won the election which would be bad for our country to not have any leader for a while. another thing to consider about direct popular vote is that it makes it easier for a third party or other more local candidates to recieve more votes which may or may not be a good thing, I do't know how that would affect future elections. so I think some reforms to our curent system of electing presidents is the best choice.
Conclusion: I would consider reforming the electoral process so that each congressional district is counted separatly with one vote that would go to the candidate that recieves the most poular votes in that district.
this would reflect the popular vote better and make candidates consider all the congressional districts not just the ones in states with more total electoral votes and it would make it impossible for the elector to vote differently than the popular vote. recounts if needed would be easier than in a direct popular vote system. But there are possible problems with this because there may be more gerrymandering and there may be many local candidates who receive electoral votes but who would not get enough electoral votes to be elected president.
3 comments:
Very well done. You define your reasons and evidence successfully. Make sure your sources are credible.
Step 4: Disagreement
Though well presented, I disagree with the following:
1.) The winner-take-all system is effective
2.) Recounts would be easier with a popular vote system
3.) You mention third parties, and I do not think these can help the political process
Step 5: Disagreement Explained
1.) I understand how the winner-take-all system can seem wrong when it comes to accurately showing votes. The reason the system proves effective time after time lies in the fact that it takes good political campaigning to win a swing state. If a candidate campaigns strong enough to win a state he/she deserves all the votes. I must quote, Judith Best, a fellow advocate for keeping the Electoral College intact: “The right winner of the World Series is the team that wins the most games, not the team that scored the most runs over all. The win-games principle is the best test of the two teams' abilities. In presidential elections, the win-states principle is the best test of the candidates' abilities to govern.”
2.) Recounts would not be easier with a popular vote system. You said it yourself; they would be “extremely difficult.” I can only debate this by using the example of the Florida district in the 2000 election. This vote was decided by a mere 537 votes. If we had used a popular vote system, the recount would have been nationwide, much longer, and much more tedious.
3.) This is not a major point to your argument, I understand, but the fact that you mention third parties and the popular vote system that allows them to gain a stronger input in politics strikes me. I disagree with the principle of a third party. Most of my disagreement has to do with the policy changes involved during the new tenure of a president. Think, if a Green party member were elected to president, what would he change, better yet what wouldn’t he change? I agree with many of the Green party’s agenda and disagree with much of the current agenda, but many changes in a short period of time causes uproar. Forcing third parties to side with one of the current major political parties keeps political policy from altering too much per president. Having a popular vote opens the gate and allows this uproar, and I do not think that is beneficial for the country.
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