Writing@CSU Home Page | Writing Gallery | Talking Back | Volume 5, Issue 1
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The Electoral College has alienated American voters because the system fails to comply with our nation's ideal of a democracy.

States of America for the next four years. With the Electoral College still present in the formation of America's government, the votes of the American people are irrelevant. Due to the horrific results of the 2000 and 2004 elections, the American voters are finally asking their government officials how the Electoral College is democratic. Ultimately, a reformation of the Electoral College is desperately needed in order to salvage any faith left in the nation's political system and government.


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vident in the 2000 presidential election, the Electoral College has alienated American voters because the system fails to comply with our nation's ideal of a democracy. Numerous factors have plagued our election process. First off, the Electoral College was a compromise established to limit the voting power and rights of the individual by granting overall voting control to state governments. The system's weighted votes inaccurately represent the American people; and finally, in the Electoral College's the winner-take-all system, the candidate to win the popular vote is not guaranteed to win the majority of the constitutional electoral votes. First of all, the Electoral College is a system in which popular vote does not correspond with electoral votes or the condition of being elected president of the United States. With the presence of such a system, how can we, as voters, have faith in a method such as that of the Electoral College when the result of the presidential


Brittany Geiser is a freshman at Colorado State University. She is majoring in Business Administration with a minor in Spanish. After graduation, she plans to attend Law School.

election does not reflect the choices of the people?


The issue of how to select the nation's leader was a plight for our Founding Fathers. Originated in the drafting of the Constitution, the Electoral College was ultimately a compromise to appease the Southern Confederates and was configured during a time when our young nation had recently declared independence from England. Former House Representative, John B. Anderson, states that while James Madison, James Wilson, and Gouveneur Morris favored the method of popular vote, majority of our Founding Fathers wished to unify the young America. By following the request of the Confederates, the southern states were given a weighted advantage due to the condition that each slave would count as two-fifths of a vote. The compromise also enabled states' governments to possess overall voting control by thwarting the voting power and rights of the individual residing in that state. The compromise provided measures that would prevent the potential for a dictatorship to arise by limiting the power of the individual elected to office as well.


While the Electoral College compromise may have aided in the appeasement of southern Confederates as well as prevent the possibility of a dictatorship, today, the system falters. Due to its destruction of the democratic policy of "one person, one vote," the components of the Electoral College oppose the democratic standards that this nation was founded upon and shames the principle of "for the people, by the people." Ultimately, the voices of American voters are silenced by a system


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