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Historically, this system was designed to move the popular vote in the direction that states see fit. More precisely, it is “the strangest part of democracy – the American fold”, according to “CNN”, which goes so far as to claim that it is “a bewildering system that has a turbulent history and an ugly past.” But what is the “Electoral College”? In simple terms, suffice it to say that American voters do not directly elect their president. Instead, they vote for 538 voters, who meet in all their states and vote for president and vice president. They make up the “Electoral College”, and their votes are calculated by the President of the Senate during a joint session of Congress. This electoral system was established in the 18th century for many reasons, including the concern that the electorate would not make “informed” decisions, and this specifically referred to the states with the largest number of voters. In the words of The Atlantic, American elections have a long history of racial rights, as they do not grant a privilege to black Americans. More precisely, for the same magazine, American institutions strengthened the political power of whites in many ways, and the “Electoral College” was the oldest program of structural racism in the country. how that? The magazine explains that the inhabitants of the North and the South were approximately equal, but almost a third of those who lived in the South were enslaved, which means that given the large number of slaves who did not have the right to vote, that region would have fewer influence under the popular vote system. . At the time, some preferred that Congress elect the president, while there were suggestions that the popular vote be done at the national level. Then the “electoral college” idea became a compromise, through a method that could benefit from the three-fifths arrangement, by which they determined how to divide the seats. Congress. The “Three Fifths” was an agreement for a compromise between the delegates of the northern and southern states to the United States Constitutional Convention (1787). At that time, an investigation was conducted on how slaves were calculated from the total population of the state, to determine the number of seats it had in the House of Representatives and the amount of taxes it would pay. The deal resulted in counting three out of five slaves as people, giving the southern states a third more seats in Congress and a third of the electoral votes, more than if slaves were ignored, but less than if. the “freedmen” will be counted equally. If there is an explanation of what happened, it is enough to refer to what was mentioned by “El Atlántico”, that the “Electoral College” gave an incentive to the southern states (with republican tendencies), and was a reason to prefer the white vote over others, to this day.
Democrats called for the abolition of the “electoral college” since 2000
Technically, it was decided that the Electoral College would be made up of 538 voters, one for each member of the House of Representatives (435), and the same for each member of the Senate (100), in addition to three additional electors for people living in the District of Columbia. However, this raised many questions, the most important of which is how the “electoral college” votes were calculated, so the answer is that each state gets at least three voters. For example, California, the most populous state, has 53 members of Congress and two senators, garnering 55 electoral votes. As for Texas, the largest state with Republican tendencies, it has 36 members of Congress and two members of the Senate, so it gets 38 electoral votes, and if a Republican candidate wins 50.1% of his vote, he gets all the votes from the “state electoral college”. But seven states – Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming, along with Washington, DC – are very small in terms of population and each has only one member of Congress, which means they get the most percentage. low electoral votes. . For other Americans, such as those who live in Puerto Rico, they do not obtain electoral votes, although they can participate in the presidential primaries. Puerto Ricans can vote for president if they go to live in a state. On the other hand, the states are responsible for electing their voters, and there are several of them that do not require that their voters respect the results of the vote, which has led, on occasions, to the phenomenon known as “traitorous voter”.
According to some, the popular vote does not make any sense. But according to many experts, this is not entirely true, since most states (with the exception of Maine and Nebraska, which divide electoral college votes based on the percentage of votes each candidate gets) turn over all of their electoral votes to the person who wins the popular vote in that state, which is seen by others as a kind of injustice, considering that he ignores the rest of the votes, which was reflected during the elections of 2000 and 2016. From this point of view, calls from Democrats to cancel the “Electoral College” have increased since 2000. Even Donald Trump himself called this system a “disaster” in November 2012, after Barack Obama’s great victory in the popular vote and “the pool”. And he even asked for a “revolution” and “fight” with the aim of abolishing this system. However, he soon changed his tune, after winning in 2016 through the votes of the “electoral college”, calling the system itself “a genius.”
In addition to all of the above, a large number of experts believe that the issue will not be in favor of the Democrats for long, since Newsweek magazine decided the results of the “electoral college” in favor of the Republicans, considering that it is expected that this party obtains a large majority in all future presidential elections. Even in races in which he loses the popular vote. According to a recent study on which the magazine was based, Republican candidates can expect to win 65 percent of future presidential elections. In fact, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, who sought to analyze the cause of the “coups” in the figures between the popular vote and the Electoral “colloquium”, found that the approach based on the fact that the winner who wins the most popular vote in a state wins all Electoral College seats in that state tends to favor Republicans, pushing them to victories in 2000 and 2016. These researchers concluded that more and more “coups” will occur. status “in 2020 and beyond, unless the policy change leads to the complete dissolution of the” Electoral College “, rather than reform.
The study, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research last month, found that a third of presidential candidates who win the popular vote by less than two percentage points can lose the vote in the Electoral College. And in races determined by less than one percentage point, there is a 45 percent chance that the winner in the popular vote, the “Electoral College,” will lose. “What is essential for the electoral college is that coups are likely to occur if there are closed elections,” according to one of the study participants, Dean Seabers, who told the Huffington Post: “Now, in this historic moment, Republicans have. Preference. But that could change. “
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