All right.
Here's something we've all heard
about and like to think we know about,
but do we? I'm of course talking about
the electoral college. For starters,
the electoral college is a process and
not a place and no one is getting a
degree from the electoral college. Now,
this process consists of three steps,
the selection of the electors,
the meeting of electors,
where they cast the votes for
president, vice president,
and the counting of
said votes by Congress.
There are 538 electors in the electoral
college and a candidate needs 270
electoral votes needed
to become the president.
So why should you vote if these electors
are ultimately casting the vote for
president? Well, when you cast your vote,
you're actually voting for your
candidates preferred electors.
Most States have a winner take all
system and all electoral votes go to the
candidate who wins the state's popular
vote made in Nebraska like to be a little
bit different though,
and have their own versions of
proportional representation.
So all of their electoral votes may
not actually go to one candidate.
The meeting of electors where they
formerly cast their votes isn't until the
first Monday, after the
second Wednesday in December,
more than a full month after we
hold the general election. But wait,
there's more.
Each state's votes are counted in a
joint session of Congress on January 6th
just two weeks before the presidential
inauguration on January 20th so why do we
have the electoral college? You might ask,
wouldn't it be easier for the president
to be elected at a direct election like
other elected officials? Well,
yeah, of course it would,
but most of our founding fathers
were actually scared of democracy.
James Madison warned of what would be
dubbed the tyranny of the majority.
Like if a faction of people with
malicious intent grew to over 50% of the
population and Alexander Hamilton
wrote in the Federalist papers that the
purpose of the electoral colleges to
preserve these sense of the people now it
is possible to win the popular vote and
still not win the presidency. However,
this isn't so much a flaw
with the electoral college,
but instead with the way that certain
States apportion their electors recently,
the debate has been heating up again for
the electoral college to be abolished.
One side of the debate believes that the
popular vote should in fact elect the
president.
The other side argues that doing so
would render the votes from rural States
irrelevant and the president would be
elected solely by the population of major
cities. What do you think? Let us
know in the comments down below,
do we need the electoral college
or is it a thing? In the past.
