Electoral college contributes to the cohesiveness of the country by requiring a distribution of popular support to be elected president. The number of electoral votes each state has is determined by the number of its senators plus the number of its representatives. This is fair because the number varies state to state mostly based upon population. “The House of Representatives was designed to represent the states according to the size of their population. Unlike the Senate, which was designed to represent each state equally, regardless of its population or size.” Relatively, the country has been flexible with the electoral college. In fact, in 1824 John Quincy Adams became president despite Andrew Jackson receiving the majority of electoral votes.
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The electoral college enhances the status of minority interests without letting minorities opinions take over the country. A decent example would be back in 1836 when the developing Whig party had three candidates run for president in separate parts of the country. Their thought was to have Whig majority in electoral votes, which they plotted out regionally, relative to the number of electoral votes in each state. This plan obviously failed and resulted in the majority of electoral votes in Martin Van Buren’s favor. Everyone deserves to be heard and the electoral college helps with that, forcing candidates to reach out to smaller states whose overall vote could go either way, this is called a swing state.
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Contributes to the political stability of the nation by encouraging a two-party system. Two large political parties are far easier to deal with than many small political parties, whose ideas are often way more extreme and radical. The two-party systems forces everyone to compromise their radical ideas into something more simple and take one side or the other. This way extremist views are absorbed and usually quieted down. The electoral college requires the candidate to have a sufficient popular vote (which is not always the majority vote in close elections) and obtain widespread distribution of votes across the nation to allow him to govern properly.
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Maintains a federal system of government and representation. Plus, voting has been done this with the electoral college for years so it’s basically a tradition. The electoral college is said to have performed its function for more than 50 elections; that’s over 200 years. Why change something that has been effective for so long? Our founding fathers made this system to ensure distribution of votes across the nation. They decided that state viewpoints are most important. Who are we to argue considering their decision was discussed and debated quite thoroughly.
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Written and Edited by: Sabrina Hoffman and Lexi Hunsberger