How would you react if you learned that the Presidential candidate you had cast your vote for, had actually received more of the popular vote than his competition, but was not elected the next President of the United States? Every four years in November over 90 million Americans vote for the presidential candidates, then in the middle of December the president and vice president of the United States are actually elected by the votes of only 538 citizens. Wouldn't you think there was an obvious flaw in the system? I would be willing to bet that the majority of you would, but in the case of the Electoral College apparently the majority doesn't count.

The Electoral College was established in Article II of the Constitution and amended …show more content…

In a Condorcet election the voter ranks the list of candidates in order of preference. So, for example, the voter gives a "1" to their first preference, a "2" to their second preference, and so on. The count is conducted by pitting every candidate against every other candidate in a series of imaginary one on one contests. The winner of each pairing is the candidate preferred by a majority of all voters when all possible pairings of candidates have been considered. If one candidate beats every other candidate in these contests then they are declared the Condorcet winner.

Another example of alternative voting is the Approval voting system in which each voter can vote for as many or as few candidates as desired. It is typically used for single winner elections but can be extended to multiple winner elections. A third type of voting is Instant Runoff Voting. This is a system used for single winner elections in which voters have one vote, but can rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority of first choices, the candidate with the fewest number of votes is eliminated and ballots cast for that candidate are redistributed to the surviving candidates according to the voters indicated preference. This process is repeated until one candidate obtains a