What Are The Pros And Cons Of The Electoral College

I. The Electoral College is an unnecessary institution that undermines democracy by not ensuring the victory of the presidential candidate who wins the plurality of the popular vote, by creating a system in which not all votes are equal, and by incentivizing politicians to focus on the needs of specific states while ignoring others.
II. A. The Electoral College is a body of people that represent each state within the United States and formally cast votes for their state in the election of the president. Votes are distributed among the states based on relative population. California has the maximum number of votes at 55; the minimum number of votes per state is 3.
B. A hanging chad occurs when a punch card based voting card is not completely

In 1824, Andrew Jackson lost the presidential election to John Quincy Adams despite winning the largest percentage of the popular vote in what is now known as the corrupt bargain. The voting was sent to the House of Representatives after none of the 4 candidates in the race won enough votes to secure a majority in the electoral college. In the house, John Quincy Adams compromised with speaker, Henry Clay, who arranged for Adams to win in exchange for the position of Secretary of State. The man that the largest percentage of Americans wanted to be their president lost.
b. In 1876, Samuel Tilden won the United States popular vote but 20 votes in the Electoral College were disputed. Through the Compromise of 1877, the 20 votes went to Rutherford B. Hayes who won the presidency and in return for the votes, ended reconstruction. Again, the man that won the majority of votes did not win in the Electoral College.
c. In 1888, Grover Cleveland won the popular vote by 100,000 votes. However, he lost the Electoral College by 65 votes. No compromise or bargain was used to settle the election, revealing that even without under the table deals, the winner of a popular presidential vote could fail to win the Electoral

In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by slightly under 3 million votes. However, she lost the Electoral College by 77 votes. For the 5th time, the person who won the largest portion of the popular vote lost in the Electoral College. Thus, the Electoral College inhibits democracy by preventing the candidates who the American people want to win an election from actually winning said election.
IV. The Electoral College undermines democracy by creating a system in which not all votes are equal.
a. Under the Electoral College system, votes in small states are worth more than votes in large states. For example, the state with the largest number of electors, California, has 1 elector for every 680,000 people while the smallest state, Wyoming, has 1 elector for every 190,000 people. This gives a vote from Wyoming more importance in the Electoral College than a vote from California, undermining the one person, one vote basis of democracy.
b. If there is a tie in the Electoral College, the vote goes to the house where every state receives 1 vote. If a state is gridlocked, meaning that it has an equal number of electors voting for each candidate, it doesn’t receive a vote. This facet of the electoral college undermines democracy by giving each state a maximum of one vote, regardless of the number of people in the state. This further limits a one person, one vote system of