electoral college vs popular v

In the United States, the people do not elect the President or Vice President directly. The framers of the Constitution felt this was too great a responsibility for ordinary U.S. citizens. They believed that a group of select citizens, called electors, should pick the President. These electors make up what is known as the Electoral College. The candidate who received the most votes from the electors will become President. The candidate with the second highest votes will become the Vice President. This method of choosing the President and Vice President worked until 1800. That year, Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson received the exact same number of electoral votes. Jefferson ended up winning but the system had to change. Now, each elector votes for one person for President and one person for Vice President (Burdette, 2000).

· Different candidates won the Electoral College and the popular vote.

· The snowball effect of the dispute threatened to bring the electoral count in other states into play.

Adler, John. “Potential Parallels” Finding Precedent: Hayes vs. Tilden; The Electoral College Controversy of 1876-1877. 2000. http://elections.harpweek.com/controversy.html (May 3, 2002)

The other election in which a candidate lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote occurred in 1888. Benjamin Harrison obtained only 5,444,337 popular votes but gained 233 electoral votes. His opponent, Grover Cleveland, had 5,540,050 popular votes but just168 electoral votes (Kemler, 1999).

Schulman, Mark. “Why Was the Electoral College Created?” History Central. http://www.multied.com/elections/Electoralcollgewhy.html (May 12, 2002)

Some topics in this essay:
Electoral College, Grover Cleveland, President Burdette, Electoral Commission, Andrew Jackson, Vice President, Al Gore, Supreme Court, Electoral Party, Thomas Jefferson, electoral college, electoral votes, popular vote, vice president, 2000 election, popular votes, electoral vote, al gore, burdette 2000, history central, 2002 “2000 election, win popular vote, george bush won, 270 electoral votes, state’s electoral votes,