United States of America Consists

¶ … United States of America consists of a Democracy governmental system which allows its citizens to elect their own leader, known as a President. During a Presidential election the people cast their votes for which ever candidate they believe will best represent their own beliefs and therefore will guide their country the way that they would see themselves running it. To put more order into what might seem like a system where too many people are involved and too many ideas are put forth, states have what is called an electoral-college, or an electoral system. Electoral rules are set laws that give every single state in the United States a designated number of electoral votes according to the number of its U.S. Senators plus the number of its U.S. Representatives. Currently, the Electoral College includes 538 electors, 535 for the total number of congressional members, and three who represent Washington, D.C., as allowed by the 23rd Amendment (Archives of U.S. Electoral College 2011). These electors are supposed to represent the people in each of their respective states, and that is how each state gets the designated number of electoral votes in an election. The more populous the state, the more electoral votes the state gets. For example, a state like Alaska that has a low population rate only and therefore only has 3 electoral votes vs. A state like New York, which although is smaller in land mass, has 31 electoral votes because more people live in it. In order for a candidate to win the Presidential election, they need to get 270 electoral votes (Archives of U.S. Electoral College 2011). There are a total of 568 electoral votes and these votes are a "winner takes all" type of system (Belenky 1310). Which ever candidate more citizens vote for in their state, gets all the electoral votes designated for that state. It is because of the way this system works, that it makes it difficult for third parties to emerge, that is, a party that is not Republican or Democratic (Abramson et al. 352).

Although third parties do exist and have already started emerging in the United States at the state and national levels, they do not enjoy the wide media attention that the Democrats and Republicans get, nor do they receive the financial and systematic support (Abramson et al. 359). These two main parties have been around for so long, that they have funding from decades to keep supporting their causes. Smaller and less known parties do not have this advantage and therefore do not have the resources to make themselves known to a wider public, although now with the revolution of the Internet, that has all begun to change. Parties that may have been overlooked due to lack of advertising, can now demonstrate to millions of people at a time what their party beliefs are, which at times can be radically different from the two main parties.

The third party proposal has been around for a very long time, but like with everything, change is met with resistance. The idea that a "debate" is in a sense a two person, or in this case, a two party ordeal is something that many people are still in agreement with. The idea that there is a right and a wrong, a yes or a no, makes it impossible for parties who offer compromises or ideas that incorporate a little bit of everything, to become a "main" party (Abramson et al. 365). Under the current electoral system in the United States, what matters is having more votes than any other candidates. A majority is not required to win and there is no proportional representation of runners-up, so a large part of the electorate views casting a vote for a third party as a wasted vote (Belenky 1319). Although some people might support the views of a third-party, they would instead go with one of the main parties that most represents what they agree with because they already know that one of the two parties will win. The vast financial and human investment in the status quo of the current political system includes big businesses and powerful social networks, all which rely on its continuity for their very existence. Running the system in a materially different way could directly challenge this status quo, therefore change is strongly discouraged.