e president. In every state except for two, the candidate who wins the popular vote receives all the states electoral votes no matter how close the popular vote in that state. On the Monday following the second Wednesday of December each State’s electors meet in their respective state capitals and cast their electoral votes. The electoral votes for each State are then sealed and sent to the President of the Senate who reads the results in front of both houses of the Congress. The candidate with the most electoral votes provided that it is an absolute majority, is declared president. If no candidate receives a majority then the decision falls upon the House of Representatives. In that event each State gets one vote for the president and once again an absolute majority is required to elect. This system has some problems that need to be overcome (“How “).A problem that some fear and has come to the nations attention because of the presidential election of 2000; the ability for candidate to win the popular vote but still not be elected president. This can occur because of the winner take all system. No matter how slim the victory is in a state the winner receives every electoral vote for that state. There have been a few proposals to revamp this winner take all system but none have gained enough support to pass as legislation (Grolier).The first fix for the problem is to have a direct popular vote for president. The problem with this idea as a fix is the difficulty in getting 38 states to ratify it as an amendment to the Constitution. The smaller states still favor the Electoral College. The reasoning for this is part of the original plan of the forefathers to increase the influence the smaller states have on an election. Also a small percentage of a popular vote could elect a president (Grolier).The next proposal would be to split a state’s electoral votes into districts. Each district would have at l...
