The Electoral College Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

The Electoral College - Essay Example This research will begin with the definition of the Electoral College as a system of indirect voting applied for the presidential elections in the USA. The Electoral College concept can be interpreted as an opposite voting mechanism to the majority system which counts directly the citizens’ votes and whoever candidate gets the majority of votes becomes president of the state. If the majority system had been applied to the Presidential elections in 2000, for instance, Al Gore would have been the winner since he received the majority of popular votes. When the Electoral College cast their votes the winner in that elections turned out to be his opponent: G.W. Bush. I will refer to the case as one of the four exceptions of the general rule according to which if a candidate wins the public vote he presumably wins the Electoral college vote too. During the times of the state legislation formation a group of framers, The Founding Fathers, known as the   "Committee of Eleven" in the Constitutional Convention, proposed an indirect election of president through a College of Electors: The function of the College of Electors in choosing the president can be likened to that in the Roman Catholic Church of the College of Cardinals selecting the Pope. The structure of the Electoral College can be traced to the Centurial Assembly system of the Roman Republic. Under that system, the adult male citizens of Rome were divided, according to their wealth, into groups of 100 (called Centuries).... citizens go to local voting booths to elect the next president and vice president of the country. Their votes are recorded and counted, then winners are declared. But the results of the popular vote are not guaranteed to stand because the Electoral College has not cast its vote. The size of the Electoral college has been set at 538 since the election of 1964. Each state is allocated as many electors as it has Representatives and Senators in the United States Congress. The number of electors is equal to the total membership of both houses of Congress (100 Senators and 435 Representatives) plus the 3 electors allocated to the District of Columbia, totalling 538 electors. How different is the process in different states - For 48 states it's known as the "winner-take-all system." The "district system," is observed in both Maine and Nebraska. In these states, two electors' votes are made based on the candidate who received the most votes statewide. The remaining electoral votes go by congressional districts, awarding the vote to the candidate who received the most votes in each district. How the electors are chosen in each state - All depends on the state legislature. According to Howstuffworks web site there are two common ways of selection: The elector is nominated by his or her state party committee (perhaps to reward many years of service to the party). The elector "campaigns" for a spot and the decision is made during a vote held at the state's party convention. (Howstuffworks) According to the Constitution there are no real educational or racial restrictions in order to classify for elector. In fact, electors are usually people devoted to politics, active political party members or political