Electoral College
...rticle in that it is pointing out flaws in textbooks fighting for the Electoral College. The article primarily stressed that since the textbooks they examined lacked a few facts individually, they were therefore unreliable. For example, “one text failed even to discuss how the votes were allocated; three texts do not even mention the Maine and Nebraska exceptions (Adkinson and Elliot 78).” I have found that no matter how thorough a paper is, all of the facts cannot possibly fit into a brief summary of the Electoral College such as that in a textbook. So the truth that some facts are not stated in many textbooks is irrelevant to the whole argument of Adkinson and Elliott in the first place. Also, I noticed that this article is strikingly similar to that of another article written by Brenner and Arlington, and this article also quotes many of the facts Brenner and Arlington has in their article. So after reading this article and then Brenner and Arlingtons’, I felt a sense of that I had already read the same argument, which negatively impacted Adkinson and Elliots’ argument. Coincidently one of my other sources happened to be the article by Brenner and Arlington that was so dutifully quoted by Adkinson and Elliot. This article is more like a debate, rather than a regular article like the other sources I have. Brenner and Arlington put up a very strong and unified argument that is very hard to counter argue. But as with all of these arguments there are some weaknesses. “The Electoral College winner-take- McLeod 3 all system greatly exaggerates the attention paid to some states and causes candidates to ignore other states completely (Brenner and Arlington 240).” Face it; some states are going to always be one party exactly like how Texas is always going to be Republican. Wouldn’t it be better for George Bush to be campaigning in Iowa to fight for every vote rather than wasting his time in Texas or any other red state to just make everyone happy? I would want President Bush to be out fighting for votes in battleground states rather than going to one party states just to make a showing. The next article by Carleton Sterling contends basically the same concept of fighting for the unfortunate states that do not ever get to see the presidential canadite because of its limited Electoral votes, or past history of strict one party election. “Rhode Island, for example, has only had 4 presidential canadites visit their state for a formal campaign since 1910 (Sterling 163).” I am not sure how many electoral votes Rhode Island has, but I’m sure it can not be more than two. It only makes sense for George Bush to only campaign in Electoral vote rich states and battleground states rather than waste half a day fighting for Rhode Islands’ two votes in an already primarily liberal state. Yes it would be better if the candidates could go to every state and spend a few hours there campaigning and such, but in this day and age of limited time together with fifty states it is just not a feasible option, and therefore the candidate has to narrow his sample space of states to campaign in. In Matthew M. Hoffmans’ article “The Illegitimate President: Minority Vote Dilution and the Electoral College” Hoffman is not totally against the Electoral College per say, but he does wish to change the Electoral College to make it more ‘fair’. The McLeod 4 main focus of the article is upon the voice of minorities in America and whether their voice makes a difference in the election outcome. “Since the beginning of the southerns’ state inclusion into America, they have been dominated by the overwhelming white majority. And also in this day and age the favored Caucasian canadite for the southern states has always won (Hoffman 1013).” I do not believe this is even remotely the correct cause for why the Republican canadite usually captures Texas and other southern states mai...