Electoral Reform
Last year's election involving Bush and Gore heated up a fifty year old debate: 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 drafted into the constitution and has been used to elect the President of the United States since the beginning of our independence. In the two hundred some odd years of its history, there have been instances when the college did not work and has stirred up a considerable amount of debate. When our founding fathers 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. Two of the main problems faced by the founders were the difficulty of travel and the absence of political parties during the 18th century. In 1776 the United States contained only four million people spread up and down a thousand miles o
After considering all of the pros and cons, I believe that the Electoral College is an outdated system.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 too 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 five hundred and thirty eight that should help 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. 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. In effect, the President would not be elected by popular vote, but by the votes of the electorates. The electorates are representative of each state. There are a number of electorates per state equal to the amount of persons in both the House of Representatives, and the Senate. The District of Columbia although not a state, also has three votes to cast. The Electoral College was a brilliant 18th century device to solve the problem of electing a president with states ranging in size. The electoral system is not completely bad. There are several pluses to its use. One of those pluses is the declaration of a clear winner. Whichever candi
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Approximate Word count = 1206
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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