Oligarchy: A country that is controlled by a small group of people. The definition of democracy has been forgotten when it comes to the election process. Some people even sum up the election process as a way of oligarchy government would do it. This isn’t the way our government worked before and it shouldn’t work like that ever. We have been bought up from our forefathers as a country where everyone’s voices should be heard but apparently it isn’t how we imagined it to be today. We all remember In the year 2000, where George .
W. Bush won the presidential election despite the majority of the americans voting for Al Gore. In fact he received more than 500,000 votes than bush but the electoral college ignore the will of the citizens and determined bush as president. This wasn’t the first time the election process deceived the citizens, nope it was the fourth. The electoral process has been a long time turmoil and has no ending to its controversy among people. Therefore I will give you reasons why it isn’t fair.
The losing opponent still has a chance at winning like the winning opponent, the electoral college ( which sums up the votes of the citizens) distorts the one person one vote of democracy, the campaign finance has many people turning heads at the electoral process, the electoral college creates the possibility of a tie and lastly the 2016 presidential election we face today is most definitely “rigged”. First the losing opponent has the same chance at winning as the current winning nominee. Its no surprise that the electoral process distorts the popular vote.
This can be seen in many presidential races. The Obama vs McCain was second to worst of scenarios and here is how it was broken down. President Obama could have defeated Sen. John McCain in the Electoral College with as few as 24,781,169 popular votes despite McCain earning 59,479,469 votes. In other words, he could have won even while losing the popular vote by 69% to 29% (with 2% for other). There are many other scenarios like this where the president elected didn’t actually win the popular vote, remember how I said it happened about five times? , well here are some. In 1876, Rutherford B.
Hayes won the election (by a margin of one electoral vote), but he lost the popular vote by more than 250,000 ballots to Samuel J. Tilden. In 1888, Benjamin Harrison received 233 electoral votes to Grover Cleveland’s 168, winning the presidency. But Harrison lost the popular vote by more than 90,000 votes. There isn’t only two parties involved in the presidential race in fact the green part or any other party can tip the elections. Now normally the third part rarely won but that doesn’t mean that even while losing they can change the possibility of a running nominee to be voted for.
This happened in 2000, when Ralph Nader, running as the Green Party nominee, finished third in the popular vote with just 2. 74 percent, and received just 1. 6 percent in Florida, but those votes (plus a number of other weird factors about which some people are still arguing) probably shifted the state from Democratic nominee Al Gore to Republican George W. Bush. And, because of winner-take-all, that one state also tipped the outcome of the national election”. Says Eric Black, the author of the article 10 reasons why the electoral college is a problem.
In a pure popular vote system combined with the winner-takes-all slogan the electoral college runs by a minor party has the potential to change the outcome of the elections. In the end if the citizens opinion didn’t matter they should have made that clear so no one wastes their time on voting or expressing their position anyway. Secondly, the electoral college ( which sums up the votes of the citizens) distorts the one person one vote of democracy. In many cases the one person one vote policy is being used wrongly when compared with different states. distributes voters or potential voters in a grossly uneven way. ” We all known that the population of the state may consist of people who aren’t legal or aren’t citizens, people who aren’t registered to vote, and people who are too young and aren’t of age to vote.
Some states may have less of this or more so we can’t base the votes on such an uneven state.? We can highlight that urban districts tend to have a lower rate of eligible voters than rural ones. The one person equals one vote apparently does not refer to the mexican. What that would mean practically is that in parts of Texas where you have large numbers of noncitizens, let’s say Latino noncitizens, those districts would get diluted representation if we are looking at total population because we would be drawing districts based on numbers of voters,” said Richard Hasen, a professor at UC-Irvine School of Law who also runs the Election Law Blog.
“So some districts may end up having many more people in them because the people would include the non citizens. ” this is beyond unfair, why? ecause the one person equals one vote has been played on by so many politicians that in the end the meaning of such strong connotated words has been forgotten and dismantled in the presence of presidential elections. so in the end another person’s vote will have a greater role play when it comes the election than compared to mine. Everyone’s vote should count and it should be looked at the same way anyone else’s votes are being counted. The election process is heading to an unfair way of determining which president will win the presidency.
We can’t have a fair election and an uneven way of doing it, that is just not right. Thirdly the campaign finance has many people turning heads at the electoral process. Campaign finance refers to all funds raised in order to promote candidates, political parties, or policies in elections, referendums, initiatives, party activities, and party organizations. The funds could also detract from the opponents of the above. Dismantling campaign finance laws can create more incentive for candidates to bend their will to the people who write the biggest checks.
Yet money on its own clearly isn’t enough to win a presidential race but yet that sentence itself is contradicting. Having enough money and unlimited amount of resources doesn’t make you and shouldn’t make you any more valuable and more prone to win than the next opponent and running nominee. Now supporting the nominee you side with is not a problem and being a donor isn’t the main issue either but only counting the votes of those private donors when it comes to the election and a few other compared to the other states is unreasonable.
This is reasons why they should regulate the amount of money the candidate receives from one particular source and even out the voters importance based on the individuals per state. Not how much money that person, group or committee donated. This will create division between the american citizens where we would be drawing a line or barrier between the poor and the rich. Instead what we should be doing is connecting the presidential nominees and making the difference show only in their political point of view rather than the amount of money they hold or people are able to donate to running candidates.
An equally important point is that the electoral college creates the possibility of a tie. Since 1964 when the electoral college gave the district of columbia three extra votes, there have been a 538 total electoral vote in the college. This means for the last 48 years there has been a possibility of a 269-269 tie vote. When such process occurs the house have decided who will be the president. In 1880 the same thing happened between thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. If no presidential candidate receives the majority of electoral vote, then the senate decides from the top two finishers , with each senator getting one vote.
Because democrats control the majority of of the state delegates and republics have the house. We can be looking at a presidential and vice president from different political parties for the first time since the passing of the 12th amendment in 1804. This amendment states that when such event happens the house of representatives must decide from the candidates with the top three electoral votes counts. There is one thing or the right thing congress can do which is giving the vote to the winning nominee that won the popular vote, but in our country this isn’t the way to go.
This itself proves that the electoral college act in an undemocratic and archaic way. Lastly the 2016 election shows the unfairness of the electoral college today. We all know who was running for president this election. Now almost president, trump and running senator hillary clinton. We’ve been with these two people since last year and watched every presidential debate so far. Now the moment of truth came on November 8th and the whole world sat, stood or slept their way through the elections. It was a moment of horror, suspense, and tearful event for most americans.
But when almost president trump won Wisconsin,Ohio. and Pennsylvania, things went turmoil and confusion was written on our faces. I know me and my friends stood with flabbergasted expressions and “ I can’t believe this is happening” has being repeated over and over again in a record timing. The last remaining states were democratic majority states. Hillary clinton had so much confidence in the winning of those states that she didn’t even bother to spend that much time on campaigning and airing commercials for that state. In the end Trump won those states.
Even the minnesota state came as a shocker where the voters split to a almost 50-50% of the votes going for each candidate. Trump secured his win with a 290 electoral college vote compared to hillarys 228 but the popular vote said otherwise. Hillary clinton had 60,467,601 votes, a razor thin lead over Trump’s 60,072,551. “Secretary Clinton won the popular vote and should be President,” petition organizers said. “Hillary won the popular vote. The only reason Trump ‘won’ is because of the Electoral College. But the Electoral College can actually give the White House to either candidate.
So why not use this most undemocratic of our institutions to ensure a democratic result” this is highly unlikely. Now this is the fifth event and the most recent that the presidential election was won by a not so favorable candidate according to the people. If our election process has gone by the choice of the citizens trump wouldn’t be president and instead hillary would have went with the win. Now all subjective views aside. If the tables were turned I still believe that president trump won with a fair game but reality says it’s not.
How much more can the citizens of the united states be ignored. How much more can we be looked over by the electoral college. Yes in this case trump supporters were heard but it is just because of coincidence. Yes some may argue that our voices are being heard but this is just according to the popular votes and if that isn’t looked at then how else are we heard. Even though there are better alternatives than the electoral college and if we leave the fact that every other country uses the simple way of popular vote or a vote followed by a runoff.
Yes there are some points that we can give thanks to the electoral college. For example the electoral college ensures regional balance is mathematically impossible for a candidate with an overwhelming support from one region to be elected. Even a popular vote doesn’t determine the winner with just one regional vote. The electoral college also protects those that come from rural and small elite countries where their voices won’t be heard under a national popular vote system.
Gary Gregg of the University of Louisville wrote in 2012 that eliminating the Electoral College would lead to “dire consequences. ” Specifically, he feared that elections would “strongly tilt” in favor of “candidates who can win huge electoral margins in the country’s major metropolitan areas. ” Beside these few points the electoral college is still not favorable and will be reconsidered if voted against. In conclusion I believe the election process of today is unfair and should be modified.
Reasons being are, it allows losing candidates to win based only on electoral votes, it does not correlate accurately with the one person equals one vote policy, it does not regulate the campaign funding evenly,the electoral college creates the possibility of a tie and the 2016 presidential elections has been a main highlight to prove the election process is wrong. In the end we don’t drive or wait in the long line of voters just so we can fill in a ballot that won’t matter at all in the choosing of the next president. We want to be heard, we want to be seen and we want to be counted as a citizen of the united states fairly.