FREE ESSAY ON ELECTORAL AND POPULAR VOTE

ELECTORAL AND POPULAR VOTE

Tracy Reid
CIS 217
Test 3
Electoral and Popular Vote
The Electoral College system works like this today. Every ten years the census figures
adjusts how many representatives, each state has. This number plus two, representing the
two senators, equals how many electors each state has. In addition, DC has three
electors. Then each state has the right to decide how to select these electors.
Forty-eight states use the general ticket system, two, Maine and Nebraska, use the
district system. The general ticket system is supposed to operate as follows. There is a
direct vote election held in each state and the winner of the vote is supposed to get all
of those states electoral votes. In 24 states, the electors are required to vote as
pledged. In Maine and Nebraska there is an election held in each congressional district.
The winner of every district gets one electoral vote, and the candidate with the most
electoral votes gets the remaining two electoral votes. Then all of the votes are
counted, and if a candidate gets more than half the votes, he/she becomes the new
president. If there is no majority then the election gets thrown into the House of
Representatives. There each state is given one vote and they vote on the top three
candidates. If a candidate gets a majority vote, then he/she becomes president. If not
they continue voting until a majority is reached and the speaker of the house becomes a
temporary president until a majority is reached (Glennon 45). 
The constitution clearly states that the choice of electors is to be made by the states.
And court cases have named it constitutional for the states to require electors to vote
one way or another according to their pledge (Glennon 137). Thus, an easier, but just as
effective, method of change is called Allocating the Electoral Vote. In this method, the
states hold a poplar election and the electoral votes are allocated by percentage. Thus
if a state had ten electoral votes, and candidate A received 70% of the popular vote, and
candidate B received 18% of the vote, and candidate C received 12% of the vote, then
candidate A would receive seven electoral votes, B would get two electoral votes, and C
would get one vote. In a worse case scenario, a president could be elected with a minimum
of 42% of the popular vote. While this is not as accurate as a real direct vote, it is
much more accurate than the current general ticket system. The reason this system does
not require a constitutional amendment is because it can be imposed on an individual
state basis. In order for this system to work properly, it must also be part of state
legislation to require the electors to vote on what they have pledged to vote.