4.08 Electoral College Essay, By Cristian Popa
The Electoral College is a very conversational system that the
United States uses to elect its president. Many people argue that the
Electoral College is fair and just worthy, while others demand the
system be repealed for not truly representing america. Both sides
have good points, but digging a bit deeper, it is clear to see that the
Electoral College impedes democracy and should be replaced.
The Founding Fathers build the United States government on
popular sovereignty, meaning it gets its power from the people.
Logically, It's safe to assume that the candidate that gets the most
votes across the country should be elected, right? However, since the
founding of the nation, there have been 5 times where the candidate
with the popular vote lost the election, and even as recent as 2016.
How is this possible? Well, the Electoral College is a system where
instead of the nationwide popular vote being used, the popular votes
of each specific state is used, in addition to having a winner take all
system. This means, for example, that a candidate that one only won
51% of the vote in Florida, takes all of Florida’s 27 electoral votes. It's
plain to see why the system is impeding democracy. The opposing
candidate that won 49% of the vote doesn't get any votes from the
electoral college. This also means that states that are heavily one
sided politically are almost guaranteed to go one way. Political
analysts call these states safe states. For example, the state of
Wyoming is a very safe republican state, meaning in every election, it
is very likely the state will vote republican every single time. The
electoral college creates a system that makes it so only a handful of
states are targeted by candidates, only because they're competitive,
meaning that basically 80% of the country is thrown out and is not
even consequential to determining the president. This is how America
has had 5 elections where the losing candidate got fewer votes than
the opposition party. There is no way in hiding that the Electoral
College is the opposite of democratic, and should definitely be
repealed.
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In addition, the Electoral College also has underlying effects
towards democracy and the will of the people. As previously
mentioned, the majority of the states in America can be categorized as
safely democratic or republican. Because of this notion, many voters
in these states that have the opposing view on their states leading
party, will often feel unmotivated to vote, thinking their vote doesn't
count. For example, someone who was a strong Democrat, but lived
in Wyoming, probably stayed home, thinking their vote was useless.
This is a huge problem that is caused by the Electoral College. If a
popular vote system was put into place, everyone's vote, no matter
what stated they lived, across the entire country, everyone's vote
would matter equally, and nobody's vote would be “useless”. After all,
in the Constitution, it is clearly written that all men and women are
equal. This should mean that my power to vote should be the exact
same amount of power as your vote. It just makes sense. This system
of the Electoral College is fundamentally changing this guaranteed
equality, and should absolutely be removed.
Numerous Critics Argue in favor of the Electoral College, saying
that the system helps the small states with fewer populations from
being ignored by candidates. They say that a candidate without the
system could just appeal only to the big cities, and win the election
that way. While these claims have substance on the surface, diving a
bit deeper, we can start to see why this claim becomes invalid. During
the 2016 election, both party candidates Hillary clinton and Donald
Trump did not visit 26 states a single time. 95% of all campaign
money and appearances were at battleground swing states, such as
Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. If the electoral college is supposed to
make every state equal, then why do candidates only focus on these
states? Both Candidates knew that spending money to campaign in a
safe state like Wyoming would have no benefit, so over 700,000
people were ignored just from that one state. It's easy to see just how
much the system is skewed. The electoral college doesn't provide
equal representation on a state level, nor on a citizen level. It favors
certain states over others and thus candidates focus on certain groups
and people over others. This is the most basic form of being
undemocratic.
In conclusion, the Electoral College system is an archaic form of
electing our president. The system is outdated, one sided, and
certainly impedes our important democracy. Popular sovereignty
should instead lead our country in elections, and there shouldn't be
any instance where the popular candidate is not elected. Although
critics of the system have some objections, digging deeper, it's true to
see the right side of this issue. It's important that everyone is on the
same side of this debate, as abolishing this system is a step in the
right direction for our precious democracy.