U.S. Electoral College Controversies Essay

1455 Words 6 Pages
Democracy means rule by the people for the people, but does the government really do what the people want? Are the people even well informed to make proper decisions? To ask this question you have to go back to where democracy started, in Greece. The first democracy in the world was not even a democracy, to vote in Greece you had to be a land-owning male citizen. Thousands of years later when the United States was just a fledgling democracy based upon Jefferson ideas of all men were created equal not much had changed. You still had to be a land-owning male citizen. It took the United States almost 200 years to give all its citizens the right to vote. Even now in modern times, we still have such archaic institutions as the Electoral College …show more content…
Despite these discrepancies, the electoral process has stayed relatively intact through our country's fifty-four presidential elections. It is an American institution that has stood the test of time through controversies and constitutional changes, despite the fact that more amendments have been proposed to change or even disband the Electoral College.

The history of the Electoral College is complicated. After the Revolutionary War ended in 1783, our founding fathers had to deal with the matter of creating a constitution for our booming country. On May 25, 1787, fifty-five delegates form twelve states excluding Rhode Island met to revise the Articles of the Confederation. This meeting soon changed course, and became a constitutional convention to write a new constitution for the newly United States. On August 31, 1787, a committee of eleven was commissioned to study various possible methods for the election of the president and to work out a plan, which the delegates could agree upon (Longley). The delegates deliberated for months over how to elect the chief executive. Over these months they considered and voted down the proposition of election by congress at least four times and direct election by the people twice (Best). Delegates who favored strong legislatures and weaker executive entity such as Charles Pinckney (South Carolina) and William C. Houston (New Jersey) advocated the direct election process.

Related Documents