How The U.S. Electoral College System Works

The Electoral College is not a college in the sense that the word is generally used. Instead, it is the important and often controversial process by which the United States selects the President of the United States every four years. The Founding Fathers created the Electoral College system as a compromise between having the president elected by Congress and having the president elected by the popular vote of qualified citizens. Every fourth November, after almost two years of campaign hype and fundraising, more than 100 million Americans cast their votes for the presidential candidates. Then, in the middle of December, the president and vice president of the United States are actually elected. This is when the votes of only 538 citizens—the electors of the Electoral College System—are counted.   How It Works When you vote for a presidential candidate, you are in fact voting to instruct the electors from your state to cast their votes for the same candidate. For example, if you vote for the Republican candidate in the November election, you are really just picking an elector who will be pledged to vote for the Republican candidate when the Electoral College votes in December. The candidate who wins the popular vote in a state wins all the pledged votes of the states electors, in the 48 winner take all states and District of Columbia. Nebraska and Maine award electors proportionally. The National Archives explains: Maine has four Electoral votes and two Congressional districts. It awards one Electoral vote per Congressional district and two by the statewide, at-large vote. Nebraska has five Electoral College votes, three awarded to the district winners, and two awarded to the statewide popular vote-getter. Overseas territories of the United States, such as Puerto Rico, have no say in presidential elections, even though their residents are U.S. citizens. The Electoral College system was established in Article II of the Constitution and was amended by the 12th Amendment in 1804. How Electors Are Awarded Each state gets a number of electors equal to its number of members in the U.S. House of Representatives plus one for each of its two U.S. senators. The District of Columbia gets three electors. State laws determine how electors are chosen, but they are generally selected by the political party committees within the states. Each elector gets one vote. Thus, a state with eight electors would cast eight votes. There are currently 538 electors, and the votes of a majority of them—270 votes—are required to be elected. Because Electoral College representation is based on congressional representation, states with larger populations get more Electoral College votes. Should none of the candidates win 270 electoral votes, the 12th Amendment mandates the election be decided by the House of Representatives. The combined representatives of each state get one vote and a simple majority of states is required to win. This has only happened twice: Presidents Thomas Jefferson in 1801 and John Quincy Adams in 1825 were elected by the House of Representatives. Faithless Electors While the state electors are pledged to vote for the candidate of the party that chose them, nothing in the Constitution requires them to do so. In rare instances, an elector will defect and not vote for their partys candidate. Such faithless votes rarely change the outcome of the election, and laws of some states prohibit electors from casting them. However, no state has ever prosecuted someone for not voting the way they were pledged. The 2016 election saw the most ever faithless electors, as seven were cast; the previous record was six electors who changed their votes, in 1808. When the College Meets The public casts their votes on the first Tuesday after Nov. 1, and before the sun sets in California at least one of the TV networks likely will have declared a winner. By midnight, one of the candidates will have probably claim victory and others will concede defeat. But not until the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, when the electors of the Electoral College meet in their state capitals to cast their votes, will there really be a new president- and vice president-elect. Why is there such a delay between the general election and the Electoral College meetings? In the 1800s, it took that long to count the popular votes and for all the electors to travel to the state capitals. Today, the time is more likely to be used for settling any protests due to election code violations and for vote recounts. Criticisms of the System Critics of the Electoral College system point out that the system allows the possibility of a candidate actually losing the nationwide popular vote but being elected president by the electoral vote. A look at the  electoral votes from each state  and a little math will show you how. In fact, it is possible for a candidate to not get a single persons vote in 39 states or the District of Columbia, yet be elected president by  winning  the popular vote in just 11 of these 12 states (The number of electoral votes is in parentheses): California (55)New York (29)Texas (38)Florida (29)Pennsylvania (20)Illinois (20)Ohio (18)Michigan (16)New Jersey (14)North Carolina (15)Georgia (16)Virginia (13) Because 11 of the 12 states listed above account for exactly 270 votes, a candidate could win these states, lose the other 39, and still be elected. Of course, a candidate popular enough to win California or  New York  will almost certainly win some smaller states. When It Happened Five times in Americas history presidential candidates have lost the nationwide popular vote, but been elected president  in  the Electoral College: In 1824, 261 electoral votes were available, with 131 needed to be elected president. In the election between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson—both Democratic-Republicans—neither candidate won the necessary 131 electoral votes. While Jackson won more electoral and popular votes than Adams, the House of Representatives, acting under the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, selected John Quincy Adams as the sixth President of the United States. Bitter over the process, Jackson and his supporters proclaimed the election of Adams a â€Å"corrupt bargain.†In 1876,  369 electoral votes were available, with 185 needed to win.  Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, with 4,036,298 popular votes, won 185 electoral votes. His main opponent,  Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, won the popular vote with 4,300,590  votes but won only 184 electoral votes. Hayes was elected president.In 1888, 401 electoral votes were available, with 201 needed to win. Republican Benjamin Harrison, with 5,439,853 popular votes, won 233 electoral votes. His main opponent,  Democrat Grover Cleveland, won the popular vote with 5,540,309  votes but won only 168 electoral votes. Harrison was elected president.In 2000,  538 electoral votes were available, with 270 needed to win.  Republican George W. Bush, with 50,456,002 popular votes, won 271 electoral votes. His Democratic opponent,  Al Gore, won the popular vote with 50,999,897  votes but won only 266 electoral votes. Bush was elected president.In 2016, a total of 538 electoral votes were again available, with 270 needed to be elected. Republican candidate Donald Trump was elected president, winning 304 electoral votes, compared to 227 won by Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. However, Clinton received about 2.9 million more popular votes nationwide than Trump, a margin of 2.1 percent of the total vote. Trump’s Electoral College victory was sealed by popular vote wins in the perennial swing states of Florid a, Iowa, and Ohio, as well as in the so-called â€Å"blue wall† states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, all Democratic strongholds in presidential elections since the 1990s. With most media sources predicting an easy victory for Clinton, Trump’s election brought the Electoral College system under intense public scrutiny. Trump detractors tried to protest his election and petitioned electors to cast faithless elector votes. Only two listened. Why the Electoral College? Most voters would be unhappy to see their candidate win the most votes but lose the election. Why would the  Founding Fathers  create a constitutional process that would allow this to happen? The framers of the Constitution wanted to make sure the people were given direct input in choosing their leaders and saw two ways to accomplish this: The people of the entire nation would vote for and elect the president and vice president based on popular votes alone. A direct popular election.The people of each state would elect their members of the  U.S. Congress  by direct popular election. The members of Congress would then express the wishes of the people by electing the president and vice president themselves. An election by Congress. The Founding Fathers feared the direct popular election option. There were no organized  national political parties  yet, no structure from which to choose and limit the number of candidates. Also, travel and communication were slow and difficult at that time. A very  good candidate  could be popular regionally but remain unknown to the rest of the country. A large number of regionally popular candidates would thus divide the vote and not indicate the wishes of the nation as a whole. On the other hand, election by Congress would require the members to both accurately assess the desires of the people of their states and to actually vote accordingly. This could have led to elections that better reflected the opinions and political agendas of the members of Congress than the actual will of the people. As a compromise, the Electoral College system was developed. Considering that only five times in the nations history has a candidate lost the  popular national vote  but been elected by electoral vote, the system has worked well. Yet the Founding Fathers concerns with direct popular elections have mostly vanished. The national political parties have been around for years. Travel and communication are no longer problems. The public has access to every word spoken by every candidate every day. These changes have led to calls for reforms to the system, for example, so that more states have a proportional allocation of electoral votes to more accurately reflect the popular vote.

Government As An Institution Of Social Control - 991 Words

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Analyzation of Emily Dickinson’s Poetry Free Essays

Succeeding in life, or achieving one’s own goals, seems to be the central theme in everyone’s life as is in Emily Dickinson’s poetry. Dickinson expresses the lessons learned in life throughout her poems. There can be many hardships and obstacles preventing one from their own succession. We will write a custom essay sample on Analyzation of Emily Dickinson’s Poetry or any similar topic only for you Order Now The prevailing of these obstacles leads to one’s success is life. In the poem â€Å"’Hope’ is the thing with feathers†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Dickinson uses a bird metaphorically as hope. The feathers as she tells are the hope in a person. The feathers create the wing and let the bird fly so in a sense it’s as if hope is lost in one place and can be found in another, as if flying to a new hope. In another sense somebody’s wings, or hopes, can be broken down by life’s hardships which can lead to a sense of hopelessness. Hope perches in the soul which Dickinson uses as the home of the bird, perch, and the soul metaphorically. The bird lives from support of its perch; one’s hope is within one’s soul. Without the support of the perch the bird’s nest will fall. Without the soul, one loses hope in everything that means something to them. And sings the tune without the words; and never stops-at all†. Dickinson continues to use a bird as a metaphor for hope, but in this stanza she speaks of the bird’s singing. The bird’s song is also used for hope. The bird â€Å"never stops-at all† is referring to the song and one’s never ending hope. â€Å"And sore must be the storm†¦Ã¢â‚¬  is used to refer to the guilt and pain somebody or something that crushes the hope that others will feel. â€Å"I’ve heard it on the chillest land; And on the strangest Sea; yet, never, in extremity; it asked a crumb of me† (Dickinson 9-12). Rad also  We grow accustomed to the darkIn the last stanzas of the poem, Dickinson, refers to hope as being able to be found everywhere, or in the chillest land or on the strangest sea. Hope will be there for you and won’t ask anything from you. There should be hope in everyone who has a soul. This hope that is felt is for the continuance of one’s life because without hope, one does not succeed in what is to be accomplished; life. Success is the goal and key to life. Success can differ from person to person based on what they want to achieve. â€Å"Success is counted sweetest; by those who ne’er succeed†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Dickinson 1-4). This can also be made as a reference to envy.People want what they do not have. To feel success at its sweetest, â€Å"to comprehend a nectar† one must feel the â€Å"sorest need† or great hardship either through failure or with obstacles. Overcoming these obstacles will lead to one’s success and to some, success is the sweetest to those who cherish the opportunity. The â€Å"Purple Host† who took the enemy flag does not know victory better than the defeated enemies. â€Å"As he defeated-dying; on whose forbidden ear; the distant strains †¦Ã¢â‚¬  Dickinson explains in the last stanzas of her poem that the defeated army understands the success of victory better than the victors. The reasoning behind this is that in order to understand the feeling of succeeding one must feel failure first to truly understand triumph. The victors do not know failure, which in this case is death, which Dickinson states will prevent them from understanding triumph or success. Succeeding in life to some is to become recognized and to be known by the public or achieving fame. â€Å"I’m nobody! Who are you,† Dickinson was not known by the public through her lifetime and she dreaded her infamous life. â€Å"Don’t tell!They’d banish us-you know† refers to not being accepted by society and being out cast for being different than others. â€Å"How dreary-to be-Somebody; how public-like a frog; to tell your name-the livelong day; to an admiring bog! † (Dickinson 5-8) is a reference implying that her private secretive life is of her preference. Being secluded is better than being in the mess of things. â€Å"How public like a frog to tell your name the livelong day†, so she’d rather not have to worry about keeping a good name if it’s going to be a nuisance to her, â€Å"To an admiring bog†, which she refers to as the judging public.The success she wishes to achieve is for her and not for anybody else. Achieving life’s goals should be for one’s own satisfaction. Emily Dickinson’s poetry can be referenced to many things in life. Succeeding in life, to one’s preference, seems to be the central theme in her poetry. Whether it’s hope in succeeding, failing to learn to succeed, or achieving fame from your success, everyone has goals to achieve. These goals will lead the succession in life. How to cite Analyzation of Emily Dickinson’s Poetry, Papers