scholarly journals Missing the Popular Vote: Pitfalls in US Democracy and Reform Proposals

2021 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 237-242
Author(s):  
Friedrich L. Sell ◽  
Jürgen Stiefl
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Electoral College ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Popular Vote ◽  
The Us ◽  
Election System ◽  
Widespread Belief ◽  
Established Democracies

AbstractOnly a few years ago, it was a widespread belief that globalisation would trigger processes of democratisation worldwide. However, even old and established democracies such as the United States have recently revealed serious weaknesses. This article shows that the US election system is heavily distorted and recommends profound and transparent Electoral College reforms in the election of US presidents. Furthermore, the article highlights the implications the challenges facing American democracy have for Europe.

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Willmetts
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American History ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Architectural Feature ◽  
National Archives ◽  
The Us ◽  
Office Of Strategic Services ◽  
The Sacrifice

If official secrecy had a devastating impact on American history, its impact on Americans’ understanding of that history was a collateral disaster.1 Richard Gid Powers, introduction to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Secrecy: The American Experience 13 Rue Madeleine, a 1947 semi-documentary that commemorates the sacrifice and courage of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA’s) wartime predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), opens with a shot of the US National Archives Building on Pennsylvania Avenue. The building’s location, at the heart of the nation’s capital on the Washington Mall, amidst so many iconic monuments to American democracy, is no accident. Like the Washington or Lincoln Memorial, it is a depository of historical experience that binds up the nation. In its inner-sanctum, as audiences then and now would know, the United States of America’s founding documents, including the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, are housed. After the establishing shot the camera slowly tilts from top to bottom, surveying the archive’s columnar neo-classical facade – a common architectural feature of America’s monuments that evokes a sense of both history and authority. Finally, it comes to rest on a statue in the forecourt of the archive called Future. On Future’s plinth, the inscription reads: ‘What is Past is Prologue’. At this point we hear the booming voice of an omniscient narrator – an oratory style borrowed from the newsreels of the time that was also a defining feature of the semi-documentary format:...

scholarly journals El colegio electoral y su historia: de los debates constitucionales a las elecciones de 2016 = The Electoral College and its History: From the Constitutional Debates to the 2016 Elections

2018 ◽  
pp. 123
Author(s):  
Pedro Francisco Ramos Josa
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Political System ◽  
Historical Review ◽  
The United States ◽  
Electoral College ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
El Sistema ◽  
The Relationship

El presente artículo tiene por objeto analizar la finalidad y utilidad de la institución del Colegio Electoral en el sistema político de Estados Unidos. Para dicho propósito haré un repaso histórico de los orígenes constitucionales del Colegio Electoral, seguido de una descripción de su evolución a lo largo de más de 200 años de existencia, finalizando con un análisis de su influencia en el resultado de las últimas elecciones presidenciales del pasado 8 de noviembre de 2016. Por último, y teniendo en cuenta todo lo anterior, valoraré la relación entre el Colegio Electoral y la democracia estadounidense.It is the object of the present article to analyze the purpose and usefulness of the institution of the Electoral College in the United States political system. For that purpose I will make a historical review of the Electoral College constitutional origins, followed by a description of its evolution throughout more than 200 years of existence, to conclude with a review of the main arguments for and against the Electoral College. Finally, and bearing in mind the aforementioned, I will assess the relationship between the Electoral College and the American democracy.

The Effect of Electoral Inversions on Democratic Legitimacy: Evidence from the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
John M. Carey ◽  
Gretchen Helmke ◽  
Brendan Nyhan ◽  
Mitchell Sanders ◽  
Susan C. Stokes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
The United States ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Popular Vote ◽  
The Us

Abstract When a party or candidate loses the popular vote but still wins the election, do voters view the winner as legitimate? This scenario, known as an electoral inversion, describes the winners of two of the last six presidential elections in the United States. We report results from two experiments testing the effect of inversions on democratic legitimacy in the US context. Our results indicate that inversions significantly decrease the perceived legitimacy of winning candidates. Strikingly, this effect does not vary with the margin by which the winner loses the popular vote, nor by whether the candidate benefiting from the inversion is a co-partisan. The effect is driven by Democrats, who punish inversions regardless of candidate partisanship; few effects are observed among Republicans. These results suggest that the experience of inversions increases sensitivity to such outcomes among supporters of the losing party.

scholarly journals THE DIVERSITY CHALLENGE

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-266
Author(s):  
Lawrence D. Bobo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Electoral College ◽  
Popular Vote ◽  
American President ◽  
Economic Collapse

To characterize U.S. politics today as polarized is to state the obvious. Nevertheless, Barack Obama's election as the forty-fourth and first African American president of the United States in 2008 had an air of inevitability to it. The presidency of George W. Bush was at that point widely regarded as a profound failure. His administration had mishandled two on-going wars, brought us the nationally humbling debacle of hurricane Katrina, and took us to the brink of economic collapse. And thus the Democratic party nominee for president, who happened to be Black, was handily elected with 53% of the popular vote, carrying twenty-eight states and with some 365 electoral college votes.

On the Importance of Getting Things Done

2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (01) ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Mansbridge
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
The West ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
The Us ◽  
External Causes

Trend plus inaction equals drift. When a trend has external causes and no one can act to intervene, that inaction leads to drift—the unimpeded trajectory of change. Drift in the United States produces the domination of American democracy by business interests. Drift in international decisions produces global warming. Specific institutional designs for government, such as the US separation of powers, can cause the inaction that facilitates drift. More fundamentally, ingrained patterns of thinking can cause inaction. Here I argue that the long and multifacetedresistance traditionin the West contributes to inaction by focusing on stopping, rather than using, coercion.

scholarly journals CICERO AND THE US POLITICAL CULTURE OF THE 18TH–19TH CENTURIES

2018 ◽  
pp. 62-65
Author(s):  
A. Protsiuk
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Private Property ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Marcus Tullius Cicero ◽  
General Importance ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Impact

This article covers the role of Ancient Roman statesman and intellectual Marcus Tullius Cicero in the culture of the United States of America during the 18th and 19th centuries, particularly his influence on the formation of democracy in the US. While the recent decades have witnessed the increasing scholarly attention to the impact of Cicero on the early political culture of the US, the body of historical research, especially the Ukrainian one, lacks general analyses of Cicero’s role in the American political system during the emergence of the American state and its existence on the early stages of its history. After a general overview of the historical context of Cicero’s biography and legacy, this article pays a particular attention to his impact on the creation of United States democracy. A significant number of Cicero’s ideas, more or less, had been reflected in the concepts which defined the newly created American democracy. The most important concepts in this regard are the ideas of a republic government, private property, just laws, and forms of state structure. Apart from the general importance of Cicero’s ideas for the early American democracy, Marcus Tullius Cicero himself was a notable example for some Founding Fathers of the US, especially for the 2nd President John Adams. During the 19th century, Cicero continued to play a significant role in the American society, specially in the fields of education and public speaking.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 169-178
Author(s):  
Edward B. Foley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Civic Culture ◽  
Electoral College ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Winner Take All ◽  
Take All

Election College reform should be considered in the context of overall concerns about American democracy. Civic culture is essential, as is strengthening democratic institutions. While the United States must address other institutional weaknesses, including gerrymandering, the power of the presidency requires urgent attention to the current deficiency of the Electoral College. The problem is that plurality winner-take-all permits the kind of accident that occurred in 1844, where the winner is not the candidate preferred by a majority of voters in enough states for an Electoral College majority. Insofar as this kind of accident may have happened again in 2016, recognizing this institutional problem requires a different analysis and solution than if a majority of Americans want to elect a president with anti-democratic tendencies. Currently, there is a mismatch between America’s expectation of two-party competition and the multicandidate reality of contemporary presidential elections. Majority rule is necessary to realign reality and expectations.

The Dark Double

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrei P. Tsygankov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Politics ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Media Presentation ◽  
The Us ◽  
Interstate Conflicts ◽  
Media Narratives

This book studies the role of US media in presenting American values as principally different from and superior to those of Russia. The analysis focuses on the media’s narratives, frames, and nature of criticism of the Russian side and is based on texts of editorials of selected mainstream newspapers in the United States and other media sources. The book identifies five media narratives of Russia—“transition to democracy” (1991–1995), “chaos” (1995–2005), “neo-Soviet autocracy” (2005–2013), “foreign enemy” (since 2014), and “collusion” (since 2016)—each emerging in a particular context and supported by distinct frames. The increasingly negative presentation of Russia in the US media is explained by the countries’ cultural differences, interstate competition, and polarizing domestic politics. Interstate conflicts served to consolidate the media’s presentation of Russia as “autocratic,” adversarial, and involved in “collusion” with Donald Trump to undermine American democracy. Russia’s centralization of power and anti-American attitudes also contributed to the US media presentation of Russia as a hostile Other. These internal developments did not initially challenge US values and interests and were secondary in their impact on the formation of Russia image in America. The United States’ domestic partisan divide further exacerbated perception of Russia as a threat to American democracy. Russia’s interference in the US elections deepened the existing divide, with Russia becoming a convenient target for media attacks. Future value conflicts in world politics are likely to develop in the areas where states lack internal confidence and where their preferences over the international system conflict.

scholarly journals The Impact of the Electoral College on the US Presidential Elections

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (02) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadia Dhia Shkara
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Elections ◽  
The United States ◽  
Electoral College ◽  
American People ◽  
White House ◽  
Unique System ◽  
The Us ◽  
Election System ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact

This research uses scientific analysis to look at the idea of ​​the "Electoral College" system, the key word in deciding the battle for the American Presidential Elections, in determining the identity of the winner of the presidency of the United States, as it is a unique system of its kind in the world.   The American presidential elections are based on the indirect election system that includes the existence of a circle. An intermediary between the voter and the candidate is that the voters in the American states choose the fifty delegates who make up the electoral college members, and they are the ones who directly elect the president and his deputy on their behalf, and thus the electoral college is the one who decides who will enter the White House and not the American people. The number of members is 538, which is the total number of members of the US Parliament, which brings together the Senate and the House of Representatives.

The United States and the Iranian Nuclear Programme

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Hurst
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nixon Administration ◽  
Comprehensive Plan ◽  
The Us ◽  
Nuclear Issue ◽  
The Relationship

The United States, Iran and the Bomb provides the first comprehensive analysis of the US-Iranian nuclear relationship from its origins through to the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015. Starting with the Nixon administration in the 1970s, it analyses the policies of successive US administrations toward the Iranian nuclear programme. Emphasizing the centrality of domestic politics to decision-making on both sides, it offers both an explanation of the evolution of the relationship and a critique of successive US administrations' efforts to halt the Iranian nuclear programme, with neither coercive measures nor inducements effectively applied. The book further argues that factional politics inside Iran played a crucial role in Iranian nuclear decision-making and that American policy tended to reinforce the position of Iranian hardliners and undermine that of those who were prepared to compromise on the nuclear issue. In the final chapter it demonstrates how President Obama's alterations to American strategy, accompanied by shifts in Iranian domestic politics, finally brought about the signing of the JCPOA in 2015.

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