Report on Winner-Take-All :: Winner-Take-All Elections Politics Essays

Report on Winner-Take- altogether Winner-take-all is a term used to describe single member district and at large election systems that award seats to the highest vote getters without ensuring fair histrionics for minority groups. In the United States, these are typically single-member district schemes or at-large, block-voting systems. Under winner-take-all rules, a slim majority of voters can control hundred% of seats, leaving everyone else effectively without representation. Theres something else troubling about the path we elect presidents--something beyond the personal attacks, the derelict voters and the influence of big money. It is the point that so many an(prenominal) of those who do vote dont have their votes counted.Florida is a good example of what Im lecture about--not because that state turned out to make the decisive difference in this weeks election, but because more than 2 million voters--nearly as many as will go to the winning candidate--had no say in the outc ome. All of Floridas 25 electoral votes will go to the other guy.Thats the unavoidable end of the winner-take-all system that prevails in all the states. At the end, of course, any contest for a single office is a winner-take-all affair. But why should it be that mien in the states? Why should more than a million-and-a-half California supporters of George W. bush crack all 54 of the states electoral votes go to Al dialog box? In short, what is wrong with apportioning each states electoral votes in accordance with the way the states electorate voted? A better question, no doubt, is why not ditch the electoral college system altogether and go to direct elections?Politicians as different as Franklin D. Roosevelt and Richard Nixon backed a constitutional amendment to have all the states go to a proportional system. Obviously, nothing came of the proposals. Its probably because the political party that would be advance in a winner-take-all state is usually the party that runs the st ate. The party with the military unit to change the system has no incentive for doing so. It is not the sole fact that votes get wasted that bothers me. There is much more to it. Bush exactly campaigned at all in New York--and for the same reason that Gore neglected Idaho, Wyoming and Alaska His opponent had the states locked up, along with 100 percent of their electoral votes. Indeed, Bush was criticized by some GOP strategists for wasting time and resources campaigning in California.