Document Type
Poster Session
Department
Sociology
Faculty Mentor
Jono Anzalone
Keywords
Electoral College
Abstract
This project will look at whether taking away the Electoral College would strengthen democracy in the United States by ensuring that the candidate who receives the most votes across the country wins the election. My central question is: How would replacing the Electoral College with a national popular vote affect representation and political equality in the United States? I can show that taking away the Electoral College would strengthen democracy by balancing election outcomes with the majority of voters and reducing inequalities within the structure of political representation. This poster uses some key concepts from political sociology, including political power, legitimacy, representation, and political participation. It shows that the Electoral College gives out electoral power unevenly across the states and gives voters in smaller states much greater power than voters in states that are more populated. This structure can cause situations where a candidate wins the election without winning the national popular vote. This has happened in several elections, most recently in the 2016 United States presidential election. These outcomes raise questions about democratic legitimacy and whether political institutions are an accurate reflection of what the people in the United States are voting for. The democratic significance of this topic is in terms of how it affects equality and trust in our institutions. When election winners do not match the results of the popular vote, people can feel their participation doesn’t matter or mean anything, which is not good for the political engagement of the people in our country. Changing or taking the Electoral College away completely, could help make it so that every vote is equal and that presidential candidates have to campaign across the whole country and not just focus on the competitive states. This project connects to applied course experiences by using concepts in political sociology that we talked about in class and using them with this real life change. By looking at how electoral structures shape political power and representation in our democratic systems.
Included in
Do We Need The Electoral College?
This project will look at whether taking away the Electoral College would strengthen democracy in the United States by ensuring that the candidate who receives the most votes across the country wins the election. My central question is: How would replacing the Electoral College with a national popular vote affect representation and political equality in the United States? I can show that taking away the Electoral College would strengthen democracy by balancing election outcomes with the majority of voters and reducing inequalities within the structure of political representation. This poster uses some key concepts from political sociology, including political power, legitimacy, representation, and political participation. It shows that the Electoral College gives out electoral power unevenly across the states and gives voters in smaller states much greater power than voters in states that are more populated. This structure can cause situations where a candidate wins the election without winning the national popular vote. This has happened in several elections, most recently in the 2016 United States presidential election. These outcomes raise questions about democratic legitimacy and whether political institutions are an accurate reflection of what the people in the United States are voting for. The democratic significance of this topic is in terms of how it affects equality and trust in our institutions. When election winners do not match the results of the popular vote, people can feel their participation doesn’t matter or mean anything, which is not good for the political engagement of the people in our country. Changing or taking the Electoral College away completely, could help make it so that every vote is equal and that presidential candidates have to campaign across the whole country and not just focus on the competitive states. This project connects to applied course experiences by using concepts in political sociology that we talked about in class and using them with this real life change. By looking at how electoral structures shape political power and representation in our democratic systems.
