Electoral Congress

Have you ever wondered how the government adds up the votes and determinds who the president is after the election? the Electoral College is a process made in the Constitution, a compromise between the election by Congress and the election by citizens. Most would say that the Electoral College is reguarded as an anachronism, a non-democratic way of selecting a president. Like every other thing in the world, people form their own opinions. There are pros and cons to everything, even the Electoral College.

To begin with, the Electoral College is exactly what it sounds like. It is a group of highly educated people that come together every year during the presidental election and choose wisely who the want to become president and vice president. Once everyone is complete choosing who they select, they add them up and seperate them by each state. Keep in mind, each state only gets a certain number of electors, depending on how big the state is. For example, Florida, the state that I live in, gets 29 electoral votes, as to Hawii, which only gets four votes.

Next, the Electoral College has its pros and cons. One con of the College is they have more of an impact on the choosing of the president than the actual citizens have. You would think that the people, including both sides of the political parties, would have more of a say on whome becomes the president for the next four to eight years. For instance, multiple people and groups such as Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Bob Dole, the U.S. Chamber of Commence, And the AFL-CIO have said and agreed on, "Abolishing the electoral college!".

Lastly, we have many reasons why we keep the Electoral College. One reason is certainty of outcome, a president can have more citizen votes than the other, but the losing candidate can still win because of the electoral votes. Another reason this happens is because most states have a winner-take-all basis, meaning that the state chooses and the winning person with the most votes gets a state vote, even if you personally didn't vote for that person. Another reason why is because the U.S. has many larger states and the Electoral College balances it out for them.

So as you see, the Electoral College is debatable on whether or not it is a good or bad thing. They have pros and cons like everything else in the world.