Electoral College Weaknesses

The American presidential electoral system consists of five different stages, the main two being the primaries and the Electoral College. Although the Electoral College has been used since the founding fathers wrote the constitution, meaning there are many strengths in the system, the weaknesses of the system outweigh substantially the strengths. Some of these being, the candidate without the popular vote can be elected as president. For example in the 2000 presidential elections, George Bush won against Al Gore with no popular vote. This is just one of the many reasons as to why the weaknesses outweigh the strengths.

The Electoral College is the system used in the US to vote on a candidate for the presidency. Voters from each state cast their votes for presidential electors who are representatives for the actual
This means that no matter what percentage of the vote the winner gets, whether it is 50.1% or 98% they will both be elected as president. This is seen as undemocratic as the other candidate may only have 0.2% of the popular vote less than them meaning that there is almost equal support for both candidates. This means that half the population of the US will be under represented and will not agree with the policies of the currently elected president. This also means that they cannot express their view easily and most of the population is not made happy by the decisions of the president. A major example of this is in the presidential election of 2000; George Bush stole Al Gore of the presidency. Al gore won 48.4% of the vote to Bush’s 48%, however Bush got 271 Electoral college votes to Al Gores’s 266 meaning that he was announced president without the popular vote. This is massively undemocratic, as the true winner, in this case Al Gore, did not win the election. Thus this weakness adding to the amount they outweigh the strengths in the presidential election