On the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December of a leap year, five hundred and thirty eight electors travel to their state capitol buildings to decide who is the next president of the United States of America. They take an oath, and cast the official ballots for the presidential election. The problem is that this system is not fair. So, which way of electoral college reform is the best? In this essay, some options for electoral college reform are introduced, and the best one is chosen. Before one chooses which one is the best, one must find out what is wrong about the winner-takes-all electoral college. A reason that the electoral college was created was because the framers of the Constitution were worried that the people do …show more content…
Some people argue that there are no swing states because every vote counts the same. This is not true. There are only five swing states under the popular vote, and these have the major cities of the country. If a candidate wins these states, they win the election. According to diffen.com, “Another advantage is that the impact of any state-level problems, such as fraud, is localized. No political party can commit large-scale fraud in any one state to dramatically influence an election.” This means that the electoral college stops people from rigging the election, it only stays at a state level. If anyone frauds the election with the popular vote, it will show at a national level. Also, the less populous states would not have any say in the elections. What say would Wyoming’s 585,501 have against California’s 39.25 million? Further, people in California are abandoning popular vote systems for electoral college like ones because the more populous parts were shutting out the less populous parts. If the presidential elections would be like that, then we would have the same issue. Therefore, the popular vote system is not a good option for the US presidential elections.
The popular vote isn’t the only reform option, though. Maine and Nebraska use the congressional district method, and it is another way of electoral college reform. The congressional district method is an electoral college system that is not winner-take-all. It uses the same process of the electoral college, but the difference comes when counting votes. The winner of the popular vote in the state gets two electoral college votes, and the winner of each congressional district, or the district in which a representative in the House represents, gets one vote. This can create a split of electoral votes in a