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Pros And Cons Of Abolishing The Electoral College

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Watching this year’s election was shocking. Against all predictions, against every analysis, Donald Trump became the president-elect of the United States. But were those predictions really off? As the LA Times put it,” Hillary Clinton got roughly the same number of votes that President Obama received four years ago en route to his reelection, but she nonetheless lost the presidency to Donald Trump, who came in at least 2.8 million votes behind her.” This is, of course, because of the electoral college. Should we really put the decision of an archaic system over the voice of us, the people? No, we should not. The electoral college is outdated and undemocratic. The electoral college was created at the birth of the United States for two reasons. …show more content…

In states that are heavily democratic or heavily republican (the “safe states”), a part of the population’s vote is simply ignored. A democrat living in Alabama is ignored. A republican living in New York is ignored. Their votes might as well be thrown away. Is this democratic? It certainly discourages voting on both sides. Another imbalance comes from the number of a state’s electors versus its population. The number of electors is based on a state’s presence in congress, with one elector per senator and representative. This means that each state has a different number of votes per elector. By dividing the population by the number of electors, we can figure out that Wisconsin has one elector for roughly each 575,000 people. Compare this to Wyoming, which has an elector per roughly 200,000 votes. A vote in Wyoming is therefore three times as powerful as one in Wisconsin. This is not fair, and this is not democratic. Each person should get one vote, which is equal to every other vote. Even if the imbalances were fixed, electors aren’t even required to vote for who they pledge for. A few have already decided to abandon Trump. According to the Huffington post, twenty nine states have laws in place to punish these faithless electors, but not a single one has been successfully prosecuted. In the third largest nation in the world, the final decision rests on the shoulders of a few

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Walter E. Williams discuss how Hillary Clinton blamed the electoral college for her losing the presidential election. Williams stated that many individuals believed that the electoral college is dangerous when it comes to American politics. Individuals also claims that there are three electoral votes, or one electoral vote per 200,000 people in the state of Wyoming which was another factor that weight in the presidential election. In California, one electoral vote equals 715,000 people. Williams also stated that there a lot of individual who complain about using the electoral college since they believe that it’s undemocratic.

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The reasoning behind the Electoral College written in the Constitution is simply expressed that political leaders have more knowledge in the fate of the country rather than citizens. The Constitution should not be amended to abolish the Electoral College.

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It was November 8th, 2017, also known as, Election Day in the U.S. At exactly 2:00 it had been announced that Hillary Clinton had won the popular vote, but the election was not over yet. 2:30. It had been announced that Trump had won the presidential election to the shock of many, prompting the question, is the electoral college was really the best way to decide elections? Yes.

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For example Puerto Rico has an estimated population of 4.4 million, but since Puerto Rico has no constitutional amendment to recognize them they are not allowed to vote even though, Puerto Rico is part of the United States territory and the people of Puerto Rico have US citizenships. If US citizens move to a foreign they are still allowed to vote by sending a post card with their vote to the last state they resigned from even US astronauts are allowed to vote from all the way from space making the US territories the only places that are not allowed to vote. Another argument would be that all votes aren't equal because the “electoral college makes some votes more equal than others” which gives the small states and states with low population more electoral votes then they should have.(Grey) If the population were divided by the number of electoral college votes every 574,000 people would be represent by one electoral vote, but since the electoral votes are distributed by state not people there are consequences that arise. Some of the larger states are ripped from their votes while the smaller states are given more votes do to the minimum 3 vote rule. With that being said the electoral college “pretend that few people live were they do and more people live where they don’t” giving states like California and Texas less votes then they deserve.

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” We should be realistic that the “game” is not going to change anytime, as a few people seem to agree with on nerdwallet.com. However, I feel that this is a good example of us humans always wanting “more” then what we already having and not learning to satisfy with what we have. We must be aware that as stated on uselectionatlas.org, “although there were a few anomalies in its early history, none have occurred in the past century. Proposals to abolish the Electoral College, though frequently put forward, have failed largely because the alternatives to it appear more problematic than is the College itself.”

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For example disproportionate state votes, tie votes, and unbound electors are hindering democracy. The first and foremost issue is voting. Each state is provided one electoral vote for each member of its delegation, However, depending on a state 's population the amount of electoral votes varies. For example, "an individual in Wyoming has more than triple the weight in electoral votes compared to a citizen in California.

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At first glance this doesn’t seem like a bad thing, everyone gets an equal say, right? Wrong! This means that Wyoming which has a population of about 500,000 voters will have an the exact same say in presidency as California which has a population of 35 million voters. Essentially, highly populated states will find that their individual votes count proportionality less.

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As an encouragement to vote most of us have probably been told, “every vote counts” at some point in our lives. In reality, this is not true in presidential elections due to the Electoral College and what it does. The Electoral College has flaws in it that can prohibit the outcome of the election from accurately reflecting whom a majority the people of the country cast their vote for. Not only will he abolishment of the electoral college change the outcome of elections, it can change the whole campaign process and the way some people in less represented states feel about voting increasing voter turnout.

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