There have been five times in our nation’s history when an American presidential candidate has won the electoral college, and thus the election, but not the popular vote. This has happened twice in the twenty-first century. The Electoral College is doing an injustice to the American people and it needs to change.
Since 1787, the Electoral College has been our nation’s way of electing the president, and it is written into our nation’s Constitution. The system was originally put in place to ensure that the nation has a system of electing a president that represents the whole nation and not just urban areas. Every state in the nation has a certain number of electoral votes that are determined by the amount of representatives and senators each state has in Congress. This ensures that states with a smaller population still have a say in government. Many find the system confusing and outdated. This includes Ms. Johnson, a teacher at Albuquerque Academy, who feels that there is “very little understood” about the electoral college, and even as a well-educated member of our nation, she still finds the system confusing.
In addition to being outdated and confusing, the Electoral College can also prevent the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote from winning the election. It seems unfair for the American people to have a president in office who is not the preferred candidate for over half of the nation. Having a candidate in office that more of the country seemingly dislikes than likes is unfair to the American people. As Leo ‘28, a student who will be eligible to vote in the next election, said, “It [would] make me feel powerless because my vote wouldn’t matter.” If the candidate in office wasn’t even wanted by over half the nation, then is it even worth voting?
Another problem with the Electoral College is that it does not give people a particularly fair say, depending on where they live. For example, if you vote for a Democrat in Texas, your vote almost certainly will not “count” because of the state’s political lean. This situation occurs because, due to the way that the Electoral College currently works, the candidate who wins the popular vote in that state wins all of that state’s electoral votes. So, if someone votes for the candidate that does not have the majority in the state, the vote seemingly does not count. This occurrence is a huge problem in states such as California, Texas, and even New Mexico.
Despite these obvious shortcomings of the Electoral College, there are also parts of the system that work very effectively. One positive of the Electoral College is that it does a good job of making sure that states with smaller populations still get a say in the election. This is one major problem with having the election be just a straight popular vote. Under a popular vote system, states with a large population, such as California, with a population of nearly 40 million, would have a huge say in the election, whereas states such as Kansas and Iowa, both with a population of near 3 million, would have next to no say in the election. A turn away from the Electoral College would be detrimental for our politics and society, since states like Kansas and Iowa are very important and make up a great deal of the country’s farmers and agriculture. For them not to have a say in the election, because they are outnumbered by the populous states, would mean not getting the input of a whole group of American citizens.
Now, it would be difficult to completely shift away from the Electoral College because it has been in place for so long. This concern was expressed by Creedence ‘28, a potential voter in the next election, when he said, “It has been stable for so long and to change it could hurt our democracy.” I agree that this is a concern, but that is why the best solution to replace our current system is to change to a system that is already familiar to our nation.
In the Electoral College system, if a candidate wins the popular vote in a state then the candidate wins all of the votes for that state. That is true for 48 of the states and Washington, D.C., but there are two states where this is not the case. In the states of Nebraska and Maine, instead of the candidate that wins the popular vote in the state getting all of the electoral votes, the “House’s share” of the electoral votes are awarded based on the results in each respective congressional district, and then an additional two votes, symbolizing the statewide seats of senators, are given to the candidate that is the overall winner of the popular vote in the state.
The country should adopt a system similar to this, but with a few changes. Instead of having two votes given to the overall winner, the nation should just divide all of the state’s votes based on the percentage of the popular vote that the presidential candidates won in each state. Using this system, if a candidate won the popular vote of a state with three electoral votes, such as Wyoming, 60% to 40%, then two electoral votes would go to the presidential candidate with a popular vote share of 60%, and the remaining electoral vote would go to the candidate with a vote share of 40%.
If all of the states did this, it would guarantee that everyone’s vote, no matter what state you live in, counts, but it would also maintain what the current Electoral College does so well, which is to make sure that states with a smaller population still get a say. But most importantly, this system would ensure that a presidential candidate would almost certainly never again lose the popular vote, and win the election – a change that would lead to a promising future for the United States.
