BY ZACHARY PERROTTA
We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their creator, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Unfortunately for our Founding Fathers, a particular system which they conceived, the electoral college, has not only failed to accomplish its goals, but has disenfranchised voters in certain regions of the nation. That’s right, the old and archaic system known as the Electoral College should be retired.
The Electoral College is the group of people that elects the president and the vice president of the United States. Essentially, when people voted for the presidential candidates they did not directly select them. Instead, they elected specific people, known as “electors” to the college. Each state gets a certain number of electoral votes based on its population. The electors are appointed by the political parties in each state, so if you voted for Donald J. Trump, and Mr. Trump won the popular vote in your state, then electors chosen by the Republican Party will cast votes for him in their state capital on December 19th.
“The Electoral College was created for two reasons,” explained Marc Schulman of History Central. “The first purpose was to create a buffer between population and the selection of a President. The second as part of the structure of the government that gave extra power to the smaller states.
The first reason that America’s founders created the Electoral College is hard to understand today. The Founding Fathers were afraid of direct election to the Presidency. They feared a tyrant could manipulate public opinion and come to power.
However, instead of beginning with a rebuke of the fear of a ‘tyranny of the majority,’ it is logical to proceed by analyzing the harms resulting from the bolstering of small states power.
See, there is an inherent issue with valuing small states over large states or, to be frank, any state above any state: it values the people in one state less than people in another state. In Wyoming, for instance, there is one elector for every 135,000 voters. California, by contrast, has one elector for every 411,000 voters. Therefore, by the merit of you living in a specific location, your vote could hold different value.
On the note of your votes value, it is not only marginalized or emphasized by the state in which you live, but probably completely obsolete. The Electoral College, by merit of giving, for the most part, all electors to the winner of the state’s popular vote creates swing states: states where the vote could flip towards either political party. The issue is that, as a result of their existence, candidates generally focus on these swing states and concede states that lean heavily to the other party because it would take too much effort to win over far left or right leaning areas.
Sounds complex, right? Well stay with it for this part, because the two impacts generated from it are crucial. First and foremost, candidates campaign in areas that they feel they can sway, not in areas that they can’t. As a direct result, people in solid Democrat and Republican states don’t get to hear from potential presidents and, more broadly, lack a comparatively high degree of civic engagement.
The votes of people in the Republican party, for instance, in a Democratic bastion state such as California are essentially thrown in the trash because they are simply outnumbered on the state level. In fact, as the Fair Vote Organization reports, approximately 80% of those who vote are not actually having an impact on the result of the presidential election.
There are, subsequently, two large issues that the system faces in the status quo. For one, the electors in 24 states can vote for whomever they wish. In fact, electors have voted for unintended candidates around 80 times in U.S. history. Most importantly, the election of the United States’s Commander in Chief can be won without winning the popular vote. In fact, this occurred not only in 2000 with Bush vs. Gore, but just days ago with Trump vs. Clinton.
So the system is terrible; it doesn’t value all votes to be of the same worth, it doesn’t give some votes any worth, the people who we vote to represent us often don’t, and states are casually valued above the people who reside within them.
Yet, it is reasonable to ask if the institution of an alternative proposal such as the national popular vote is even logistically possible. After all, as proponents of the Electoral College are fond of stating, it is explicitly created and solidified through the Constitution. Following that erroneous logic, it would require a constitutional amendment to accomplish this goal, but that is heavily misleading.
In fact, Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution gives each state legislature the power to determine how it chooses its electors. Right now Arkansas, California, Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey, North Carolina, Maryland, and Hawaii have signed a compact to pledge their electors to the winner of the national popular vote; it is possible to take a different path.
In the midst of a complicated issue there is one simple take away: your vote is being stifled by an outdated system, but it shouldn’t be. The political class have so convoluted the intent of our founders that the votes of large sections of the populous, as well as the will of our predecessors has been largely subverted. It is your right as a citizen to voice your opinion, so do it, and abolish this relic.
