When designing the Electoral College, what were the Framers trying to achieve? What event exposed problems in the original design? What was done to solve these problems? Do any other problems remain?
What will be an ideal response?
Answer: An ideal response will:
1. Explain how the Electoral College was the result of a political compromise over whether the president should be selected by Congress or by popular vote.
2. Explain how the original design was constructed to work without political parties, cover both a nomination and election phase, and produce a nonpartisan and nondivisive president.
3. Discuss that the main problem came from the rise of political parties, and that it put the candidates for president and vice president in the same pool and created the possibility of a tie, as in the election of 1800.
4. Explain how the Twelfth Amendment addressed this problem by creating separate elections for each office.
5. Explain how there are other problems that still exist, specifically the possibility for the popular vote winner to lose the Electoral College.
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a. Editors make quick judgments about what their audiences and employers want. b. Owners decide what the most important news stories are relative to the national interest. c. Investigative reporters make the calls on what to print as they are most highly paid. d. Art departments choose to publish the stories with the most visuals.
A party convention involves a gathering of __________ who nominate the party's presidential candidate
a. voters b. delegates c. politicians d. office holders