What Is The Electoral College Flawed

Robert Montgomery

Mr. Bowers

Comp I

November

A Failed System In America, where we idealize democracy and the voice of the people, we have a system in place to elect our highest official that not only suppresses millions of voters but also flies blatantly in the face of democracy. The Electoral College is the institution that has decided on the outcome of dozens of presidential elections. It is a system that was flawed when it was implemented just over 200 years ago, and in the modern era, it has outrightly failed. Under the College, the states do not have equal pull in the election due to many factors. In the case of a tie, the representation is even less fair. In addition to this, in certain cases, we could be left entirely without a President

The Electoral College is intended to work by equally distributing the electoral votes amongst the states, based on the state’s percentage of the total population. However, by law, each state will get at least three electoral votes regardless of population. Roughly, each electoral vote should speak for about five hundred and seventy thousand voters (“5 Reasons”). Many times, however, this is not the case. Megan Winkler, a historian and political writer used the state of Ohio as an example: “...the state of Ohio — with a population of 11,500,000 — should have 20 electoral votes. But, because each state has to have at least three, Ohio only has 18 votes” (“5 Reasons”). Ohio is far from the exception to the rule in this case. The Electoral College fails to represent the elections of the states. This is due, in part, to how the decision is made on how many electors to assign each state. Electoral votes are assigned based on the state’s representation in Congress. Each state receives an electoral vote for each Senator, and one for each House representative. It is due to this that each state is guaranteed at least three electoral votes, despite the possibility of three-vote states having populations that can differ by tens of thousands of citizens. House of Representative seats are assigned based on the national census. However, between censuses, state representatives will be

One reason that people believe the college should remain is the presence of swing states. In a time where many pay little to no attention to politics, it is believed citizens of swing states are more encouraged to pay attention to the election. The idea is that, by being in a swing state, the citizen will know that their state could potentially shift the outcome of an election. Knowing this, the citizen may pay closer attention to the political landscape and be more politically active. However, this idea of swing states being a good thing is wrong for two reasons. Firstly, the flip side to this is that citizens in “safe states” may feel even less inclined to care about the election. For example, a Republican voter will often feel that their vote has little to no meaning if they reside in California, a state that is practically guaranteed to the Democratic candidate. The opposite is true in the strongly Republican state of Texas. This system encourages all but ignoring quite a few states, as they are not swing states. Some also argue that the Electoral College helps to protect the voices of the small states. They argue that, by forcing each state to have some say in the election process, it will also force each candidate to give each state at least some attention. This system, however, gives the big states just