by Paul Oranika

Created on: May 24, 2007   Last Updated: March 19, 2008

The Electoral College Should be abolished

At first the State Legislators selected members of the Electoral College in majority of the States, and would often divide the Electoral College representatives among two or more candidates. But the evolution of political parties in the 1830's altered such process in some ways. Since the rise of political parties, States began to use an at-large process known as "winner-take-all" system in apportioning its Electoral College representatives. Such system simply means that any candidate winning the majority of the Presidential votes cast in the state will automatically win all the Electoral candidates of such state. The party in minority gets none of the states electors, even if such party wins 49% of the popular vote cast in a State's presidential election.

Today in the United States, all States use the "winner-take-all" at large system with the exception of Maine and Nebraska. Through the party system the electoral candidates have to basically rubber stamp their party's electoral candidates. However, in 29 states electors can still vote against their party without being replaced, but such electors may face fines as punishment. Other states may instigate criminal charges varying from a misdemeanor to a 4th degree felony. Since the founding of the Electoral College, only 156 members have failed to cast their votes in line with their party affiliation. The Electoral College has been controversial from its founding, such controversies were recently involved in the U.S. elections between Bush, {Republican} and Gore {Democrat}, while AL Gore won the majority of the popular vote, George Bush won the majority of the electors. It took the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court to decide who won the election, and as we all know, the decision was in favor of Bush. Based on some of these controversies, many political analysts now belied that the U.S. Electoral College should be abolished, because the institution has outlived its usefulness.

Controversy over the Electoral College

For over 200 years, the system of the Electoral College has been used in electing the President of the United States. Through the provision of the US Constitution, each state will have a number of electors equal to the total number of senators and representatives of such state in the Congress. Such process has produced disparities in the ratio of the number of electors to the number of inhabitants represented. For instance, California has 52 Representatives in the

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