Porter 1

Jake Porter

Dr. James McQuiston

CCP American Politics

14 April 2017

Evolution of the Electoral College

Everything changes over time, as humans, everything we use must evolve and

adapt with the times. This does not exclude the Electoral College, which has been

around since the U.S. was founded. To come up with the Electoral College was a

difficult task given to the founding fathers of the United States of America, a task they

needed to solve in order for our democracy to thrive. The Electoral College has

changed since it was first created, however it still has the same principle of ideas behind

it. We as a United States are one of the few, if not the onlyc country to use an Electoral

College to choose our nexxt chief executive. The Electoral College was created to give

minorities a say in the election, to provide a clear cut winner, and allow our democracy

to succeed.

In the beginning, the founding fathers had many ideas of how to select our

leader, the President of the United States of America. One idea was to have the

Congress choose the president. This idea was rejected, however, because some felt

that making such a choice would be too divisive an issue and leave too many hard

feelings in the Congress (Kimberling 2). This would also take away the basis of what

America is based off of, democracy. While citizens vote for their congressmen, their

opinions may differ from the citizens whom did not vote them in, leaving them without a
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say in the Presidential election. Which as the founding fathers saw, this would be a

problem for Americas democracy. A second idea was to have the State legislatures

select the president (Kimberling 2). This idea was also rejected in fear of a tyrannical

leader having the power to sway state legislatures into letting them stay in office.

Another idea, the third idea, was to have Presidents to be elected by direct popular

vote. This idea was also turned down in fear of people not having sufficent evidence

about candidates, people would only vote for their favorite son a candidate from their

state or region. This would also bring a problem of disreguarding minority opinions. The

smaller states votes would not have much of an opinion if a Presidential candidate were

to run from a larger state. Also, there would never be one clear cut majority winner of

50% plus one. The final idea, is a simpler version of what we have now. Back when it

was first created, it was called the Committee of Eleven which proposed an indirect

elections through electors in a college. This was the start of the now called, Electoral

College.

Not many people know all about the electoral college, some just know that it is

the system how the U.S. chooses their President. However some do not know anything

at all about the electoral college. The electoral college is not a place, however it is a

process. A process on how the President of the United States is elected. This process

includes five-hundred thirty-eight electors, divided up into all fifty states. In order for a

President to be selected, one of the candidates must reach the magic number of

two-hundred and seventy electoral votes (Government 2017). Along with all fifty states

getting electoral votes, the District of Columbia also gets a say in the election of all
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elections. Under the 23rd amendment, D.C. gets three electoral votes. Most states are

winner take all, meaning which ever candidate gains the most votes within the state,

get all of the states electoral votes. However, Maine and Nebraska each have a

variation of proportional representation (Government 2017). The votes in the electoral

college are divided by the two houses in congress. The House of Representatives and

the Senate. There are one-hundred members of the House, and each state gets two in

order to represent them in the electoral college. Meaning the rest of the five-hundred

and thirty-eight electoral college members, four-hundred and thirty-eight, belong to the

Senate. The Senate is divided to the states based off of population, and each state gets

at least one Senate representative along with two members of the House.

The Electoral College has had to change over the years to keep up with the

times, in order to stay around. The first major hiccup in the College was in the election

of 1800, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, both Republicans, recieved an equal

number of electoral votes. This tie prompted the creation of the twelvth amendment,

which prevented this from happening again. The Amendment changed the guidelines

of the Electoral College so that electors now cast separate votes for President and Vice

President. In the event of a tie, the House would choose the President and the Senate

would chooses the V.P. (Brancaccio 2017). This is one of the ways the electoral

college has had to change, since this event happened and the amendment was created,

it has not happened again. Now the electoral votes go soley to the Presidential

candidate, as the candidate picks a running-mate to be his Vice President. Another

major event of the electoral college happened in the year 2000 with the George Bush
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and Albert Gore Jr. election. During this election Bush received fewer votes based off of

the popular vote, however Bush had a total of two hundred and seventy-one of the

electoral votes (Brancaccio 2017). This shows why the electoral college is a

controversial way to elect the next President of the United States, but is important to

give minorities a voice.

In the United States of America, along with many other countries around the

world, we have a democratic government. Democracy is defined as, a government in

which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or

indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free

elections (Merriam 2017). This means that the people have the ability to run their own

government, whether it be through writing to their local congressmen, their state

congressmen, or participating through voting. Participation through voting is a major

right used to express citizens freedoms and powers in a democracy. When citizens

vote, that is when a democracy truly succeeds. The heart of democratic government

lies in the electoral process (Janda 186). Without an electoral process to choose the

President, members of the house or senate, there would be no democracy. As of 2013

there is around one hundred and twenty-three democratic countries over the world

(Ziomek 1). This means that the United States is not the only country that chooses their

chief executive leader through elections.

In the world there are about one hundred and ninety-two countries in the world

(Zimek 1). If there are one hundred and twenty-three democratic countries, this means

that the rest has another type of government, whether it be a communistic nation,
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oligarchy, monarchy, dictatorship, or some other type of government. Since these

countries do not have a democracy, this means that the people have very little to no

power when it comes to choosing their next leader by voting in an election. In non

democratic countries, there are many ways that a new leader is able to be elected. One

of the most common ways for a new leader to be selected is through political

revolutions. Some notable communist leaders who seized power by force are Vladimir

Putin of Russia and Mao Zedong of China (Reference 2017). In the communist

manifesto, written by Karl Marx, it is written to exemplify that the working class should

overthrow the upper class. This is why many of the new leaders are not neccessarily

chosen, rather they seize power through force during political revolutions for the working

class.

The Electoral College is an important living part of the United States of America,

as it is always evolving and adapting while allowing the United States to chose its chief

executive. The electoral college is so important because it allows minorities and smaller

states to also have a say in the election to chose the President. An example as to why

that is important is comparing the amount of citizens in California compared to a smaller

state, based off of population, like Montana. California has upwards of 39,000,000

citizens according to the July first 2016 cencus estimates (California QuickFacts from

the US Census Bureau 2015). If the Presidential election were to be based off of the

popular vote, California would account for approxximately thirteen percent of the votes.

This compared to a smaller state is unfair to all people of the U.S. as citizens of smaller

states would be under represented. That is why the electoral college, even though some
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may argue it is outdated, is needed in the United States for our democracy to fully

thrive. All citizens of the United States have an opinion that needs to be voiced through

the election of the President. This is a special right to have, as some countries who are

not democratic do not have a vote or say in how their next chief executive is selected. In

some countries like China or Russia, their leaders take power by force, without any say

in the matter from the people, which is not good for the majority of the citizens of that

particular country.
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Works Cited

Brancaccio, David. "The Evolution of the Electoral College." PBS. Public Broadcasting

Service, n.d. Web. 12 May 2017.

Government. "What Is the Electoral College?" National Archives and Records

Administration. National Archives and Records Administration, n.d. Web. 12 May

2017.

Janda, Kenneth, Jeffery M. Berry, Jerry Goldman, and Deborah Schildkraut.

"Participation and Voting." The Challenge of Democracy. 13th ed. N.p.: Cengage

Learning, 2014. 179-86. Print.

Kimberling, William C. "The Electoral College." FEC (1992): 1-20. Print.

"How Are Communist Leaders Chosen?" Reference. IAC Publishing, 2017. Web. 12

May 2017.

Merriam, George, Charles Merriam, and Noah Webster. "Democracy." Def. 1. B.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary. 2017. Merriam-Webster. Web. 12 May 2017.

"Population Estimates, July 1, 2015, (V2015)." California QuickFacts from the US

Census Bureau. U.S. Department of Commerce, 1 July 2015. Web. 12 May

2017.

Ziomek, Kelsey. "How Many Democratic Nations Are There?" Borgen Magazine 29

Sept. 2013: 1-2. Print.