Is the Electoral College a good way to elect the US President?

Answer 1

It was, once upon a time. Unfortunately, with the locking of the House of Representatives at 435, that means the electoral college is also locked (at 538 electors) and smaller states are disproportionately favored. The system is no longer functioning as originally intended.

Answer 2

I don't thinks so. Its purpose was wholly elitist and in any event its purpose has long since disappeared. The electoral college was created to avoid a pure popular vote election of the president. The Framers really did not trust the unpropertied citizens to vote responsibly. Responsibly meant to protect private property. Theirs. That is why the popular vote is to elect electors, not presidents. Take a look at your printed ballot before you vote and it should tell you who you are actually voting for. That person gets to cast an electoral vote for a candidate, but he is not legally obligated to vote for the person you elected him to vote for. There is no justification for this insulation between the masses and the President by means of a group of people with connections in high places.

Answer 3

No. The electoral college is not a good way to elect the President because it doesn't cast votes straight to the desired candidate. Also, the electoral college counts votes, but submits them as a percentage of that state.

Answer 4

Both the electoral college and the popular vote methods have pros and cons. The electoral college method of voting can be done in a shorter amount of time yet it does not always favor the wishes of the people. The popular vote allows all voters to have say in who they want to fill a position yet it can be slower to get a final tally and not all districts will be counted fairly.

The electoral college gives slightly more weight to those living in small states to protect them from those living in urban areas having sole control of who becomes president.

Answer 5

The Founding Fathers had seen the dangers of placing ultimate power into a single set of human hands. Accordingly, they feared that placing unlimited power to elect the president into the politically naive hands of the people could lead to a "tyranny of the majority." In response, they created the Electoral College system as a process to insulate the selection of the president from the whims of the public.

Answer 6

Some believe it is.

Most notably the two major political parties who have come to base their election strategies on "swing" states and "battleground" states. It has become less of an advantage to smaller states as time goes on.

Some believe it is not.

When the country was days or weeks across instead of hours, and when there was no reliable communication from coast to coast, a method of 'transporting' the vote was necessary, and the electoral college was a reasonable solution. Today it is a cumbersome and unnecessary piece of arcana that creates many more problems than it potentially solves, and has a huge potential for subverting the will of the people. How can we have a system wherein people in one state have more say than people from another state? Not to mention the fact that Puerto Rico (which would be the 27th largest state) gets no say in the federal government.

Answer 7

I think so. The method they use now is the result of the 12th amendment and seems to have worked for over 200 years. Some people question the need for the electoral college, but I have not heard of any objections about their method of voting.

Answer 8

No, because the electoral college doesn't cast your vote straight to the candidate you desire. It is well organized but should be banned out of the country.

Answer 9

In the US, the president is officially elected by the electoral college which is made up of the electors chosen from each state and DC.

Answer 10

It is the way the Constitution dictates because the Founding Fathers, establishing a federal system of government in which the states have a strong role, wanted to protect the smaller states from being dominated by the larger states. For example, Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election by almost 3 million votes, but that difference was accounted for entirely by her winning California by over 3 million votes and New York by 1.5 million votes. Without the electoral college system, all candidates would campaign only in the larger states which would then become dominant in the federal government.