Understanding The Electoral College
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Understanding The Electoral College

Why do we have it? Is it an outdated establishment?

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Understanding The Electoral College
Toledo Blade

The Electoral College is a group of “electors” chosen by citizens of each state to represent their vote in the Presidential and Vice Presidential election. Every four years people ask the same question… “Why not just do a popular vote?” This question was and still is being asked in record numbers by Democrats who still believe Hillary has a shot at the throne.

The answer to this question is actually very simple if you understand a few basic principles. The founding fathers specifically Alexander Hamilton did not trust the population to always make the correct decision for the country. One of the most important pieces of information to understand is that the Electoral College does not have to vote based on the popular vote in 21 of our 50 states. To clarify this means that all of those “electors” are technically free to cast their vote for whichever candidate they choose. This relates directly back to the fact that the founding fathers did not trust the population to always make the right decision… Think of it as a check and balance. They feared a tyrant’s ability to manipulate the population into electing them President. i.e. Hitler

The other major reason for implementing the Electoral College is to give every voter an equal vote in the election. Further, “Under the system of the Electoral College each state had the same number of electoral votes as they have representative in Congress, thus no state could have less then 3. The result of this system is that in this election the state of Wyoming cast about 210,000 votes, and thus each elector represented 70,000 votes, while in California approximately 9,700,000 votes were cast for 54 votes, thus representing 179,000 votes per electorate. Obviously this creates an unfair advantage to voters in the small states whose votes actually count more then those people living in medium and large states.”

Hopefully this clarifies why we have the Electoral College. Although it has its flaws, it will take ¾ of the states to dismantle this establishment and frankly there are plenty of completely uninformed voters in this country… so this invisible hand could one day save us from our own demise.

Citation: http://www.historycentral.com/elections/Electoralc...

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