The to the centurial assembly system of the

The term Election is defined by Merriam-Webster as “ an act or process of electing” or “ the fact of being elected.”  Presidential Elections take place every four years, and is the act of electing someone to fill the seat of the president and the vice president.

The first presidential election took place in 1789. Since then there have been five presidential elections where the outcome of the elected president was problematic or unusual: problematic due to the outcome being based off the electoral college, meaning they won the greatest number of electoral votes, winning the presidency, but did not win the popular vote; unusual because the outcome was unexpected or considered rare by voters. Cases of problematic elections throughout history have shown that the Electoral College has more of an effect on choosing the President, but this does not accurately represent the people’s voice.

Dictionary. com states, The Electoral College is defined as a body of electors chosen by the voters in each state to elect the president and vice president of the U. S. It was founded in 1787 during the constitutional convention.

The structure of the Electoral College can be traced to the Centurial Assembly system of the Roman Republic (Kimberling). The purpose of the foundation for the Electoral college was to balance the interests of high-population and low-population states and to give Americans a form of representation. Today the Electoral College consist of 538 Electors. In order for a candidate to win, the candidate must get a majority of the electoral votes. The majority of electoral votes are 270 votes. The Electoral College has performed its function for over 200 years, meeting every 6th of January2.   Proponents further argue that due to its function the Electoral College contributes to the political stability of the nation by encouraging a two-party system (Kimberling). Although the Electoral College has functioned for over 200 years, there have been some cases of controversial and anomalous results.

In fact, there have been a total of five cases where results were unusual. The first took place in 1824. The candidates were John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson.

John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson were both Democratic-Republicans. In this election only 183 electoral votes were received, which is only 27% of the of the electorate that bothered to vote. No candidate gained the secure majority of the electoral votes. This made the election notable due to being an election where no one candidate gained majority of the electoral votes since the passing of the Twelfth Amendment (1824 Presidential Election). Jackson received 38, 000 more popular votes than Adams, and beat him in the electoral vote 99 to 84. Despite his victories, Jackson didn’t reach the majority 131 votes needed in the Electoral College to be declared president.

In fact, neither candidate did. The decision went to the House of Representatives, which voted Adams into the White House (Gore). This was the 1st election where popular vote retained for history; eventual winner Adams received only about 32% (1824 Presidential Election).

In fact many argue that Jackson got denied presidency due to a ” corrupt bargain ” put into action by Adams. It is also often said to be the first election in which the president did not win the popular vote, although the popular vote was not measured nationwide. At that time, several states did not conduct a popular vote, allowing their state legislature to choose their electors (1824 Presidential Election). The second took place in 1876.

The candidates were Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden.

Rutherford B. Hayes was the Republican candidate and Samuel J. Tilden was the Democratic candidate.  Rutherford B.

Hayes won the election (by a margin of one electoral vote), but he lost the popular vote by more than 250, 000 ballots to Samuel J. Tilden (Gore). Due to so much uncertainty and a fraud outcome, recounts were done in each of the four states. The four states including Louisiana, Florida, South Carolina, and Oregon.

With no precedent to guide them, Congress was faced with a dilemma of determining which returns to accept from each of the four states with two sets of returns (Surrency). The final count resulted in Hayes being elected by one vote in the Electoral College with 185 electoral votes awarded to Hayes and 184 electoral votes awarded to Tilden. Tilden had received 51 percent of the popular vote (Surrency). The election of 1876 became known as scandalous for the conflicted resolution that followed a victory, not so much for the strategies involved. The third took place in 1888. Only twelve years after the problematic and disputed election of 1876. The election of 1888 was the first in which both parties’ candidates campaigned via written-out position papers arguing the merits of the issues (Goldleaf).

The candidates were Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland.  In this election, the tariff was the main issue (1888 Presidential Election). At the time of the election, import taxes were high on many products. The defining issue of the 1888 presidential campaign was effectively set by Grover Cleveland in his State of the Union address the previous year (Pallardy). Grover Cleveland advocated to aim for lower and decreased tariffs, due to believing high tariffs were wrong. Tariff reform gave Cleveland a monumental amount of support in the Southern states, but the South alone was not enough to win the election.

Benjamin Harrison received 233 electoral votes to Grover Cleveland’s 168, winning the presidency. But Harrison lost the popular vote by more than 90, 000 votes (Gore). The fourth seen in United States history took place in 2000. The candidates were George W. Bush and Al Gore. Winning the popular vote Al Gore was in the lead but when the results were complete, voters found results shocking and very rare. Seeing that George W. Bush was the winner.

County officials tried to discern voter intent through a cloud of “ hanging chads” (incompletely punched paper ballots) and “ pregnant chads” (paper ballots that were dimpled, but not pierced, during the voting process), as well as “ overvotes” (ballots that recorded multiple votes for the same office) and “ undervotes” (ballots that recorded no vote for a given office) (Levy). Also at issue was the so-called butterfly ballot design used in Palm Beach county, which caused confusion among some Gore voters—prompting them to inadvertently cast their votes for third-party candidate Pat Buchanan, who received some 3, 400 (some 20 percent of his total votes statewide) (Levy). These Two issues led to a manual statewide recount that was decided by the Supreme Court. With winning Florida in the recount, George W.

Bush was declared the winner of the general election and became the 43rd president, but he didn’t win the popular vote either. Al Gore holds that distinction, garnering about 540, 000 more votes than Bush. However, Bush won the electoral vote, 271 to 266 (Gore).

This had been yet another inversion of the electoral and popular vote since 1888. The fifth and most recent took place in last years election in 2016. The candidates were Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton was the Democratic candidate and Donald Trump was the Republican candidate.

Hillary Clinton was the first woman to ever be a nominee for a major party, creating history. Republican Donald Trump lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton by more than 2. 8 million votes but won 30 states and the decisive electoral college with 304 electoral votes to Clinton’s 227 and thus became the 45th president of the United States (Beckwith).

Trump overturned Democratic stronghold states including: Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. These states have been Democratic strongholds since the 1990s.  Trump won the day by portraying himself as a change agent, prevailing by 83–14 percent among the two-fifths of voters who said that ability to “ bring needed change” was the most important quality they were seeking (Beckwith). Trump will be the fifth person in U.

S. history to become president despite losing the nationwide popular vote (2016 Presidential Election). Overall, the two candidates were the least popular candidates in recent history, with personal disapproval ratings on election day of 54 percent for Clinton and 61 percent for Trump (Beckwith).

To conclude, there are several examples in United States history that show that the Electoral College influenced the presidential election more than the popular vote of the people. Many citizens disagree with this instrumental part of the presidential elections, as is demonstrated by the upset surrounding the 2016 election, because it is thought that the people’s popular opinion is not being heard. To remove the Electoral College vote would decrease representation of states that have a lower population, but would help to eliminate the two party system. The elimination of this system would ensure the people’s true voice is being represented in the Presidential seat.