A common misconception among Americans is that when they vote they elect the President. The truth is not nearly this simple. What in fact happens when a person votes is that their vote goes for an Elector. This Elector (who is selected by the respective state in which a vote is cast) casts ballots for two individuals, the President and the Vice-President. Each state has the same number of electors as there are Senate and House of Representative members for that State. When the voting has stopped the candidate who receives the majority of the Electoral votes for a state receives all the electoral votes for that state. All the votes are transmitted to Washington, D.C. for tallying, and the candidate with the majority of the electoral votes wins the presidency. If no candidate receives a majority of the vote, the responsibility of selecting the next President falls upon the House of Representatives. This elaborate system of Presidential selection is thought by many to be an 18th century anachronism (Hoxie p. 717), what it is in fact is the product of a 200 year old debate over who should select the President and why.

In 1787, the Framers in their infinite wisdom, saw the need to respec

(a) 6/b(4) | (a)6/b(6) Candidate a: 18 | Candidate b: 22

Yet, despite the current upward spike in public outrage at the Electoral College, an amendment to do away with it faces an uphill fight. The Electoral College has been assailed more often than any other item in the Constitution. More than a hundred attempts have been made to change it. Yet, it endures. One big reason is politics, another, the media.

Richie's organization favors direct elections. But he suggested another compromise; states could award electoral votes the way political parties choose their delegates, which is by the proportion of the actual vote each candidate has won in each state. That would eliminate the objections of any party that might feel cheated by redistricting maps. Another advantage to proportional representation is that it does not have to wait for Congress.(Hoar 25). Each state

Indeed they could, because even when one ticket wins "big" in certain states, narrow wins by the opposition in other states, under our winner-take-all system, could allow the party with the lesser popular vote to prevail in the Electoral College.

posses. The reason that this information is limited is because of the media. Media makes the choice everyday what they do and do not want the public to know. The power to make the choice of our knowledge rests in their hands. Without the information they pass on from day to day, we, as voters know nothing about the happenings of our government. Yet on more than one occasion the media has held back information that could be crucial to decisions we make about our democracy. A prime example occurred during the Gulf War.

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Approximate Word count = 3542
Approximate Pages = 14 (250 words per page double spaced)