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Pros And Cons Of The United States Voting System

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The problems of our voting system and why we need to fix them The collective ability of a population to vote for how they want their society to be run, is basically the definition of a “democracy”. However the principle that everyone should have an equal vote in United States hasn’t exactly been held up by the US’s voting system. For good part of the United States history everyone who lived in the country couldn’t vote! Women haven't even had the right to vote the last hundred years (only 96 years). There are some American citizens who still lack the right to vote just because of where they live. We historically have had the problem of low voter turnout. According to data from Professor Michael McDonald’s United States Elections Project, …show more content…

As long as a candidate gets just over 50% of the popular vote in a state they win all of that state's electoral votes. In other words winning by a million citizens votes is no different than winning by one vote. This is why candidates spend more time on states that have close races, otherwise, known as swing states. Another failing of the electoral college is how it gives out votes to the states. All states get three votes to start and the rest are given based on population. This gives states who should technically only have one or two votes based on population more voting power. How? Remember there are only 538 electoral votes so they have come from another state. In other words the Electoral College pretends fewer People live where they do, and less people live where they don't. Many people will argue this system is to make sure candidates pay attention to states with smaller populations. However this just isn’t true. The electoral College forces them to go to states with close races in order to win. There’s no point for a candidate to visit a state where they’re way behind or comfortably ahead due to the electoral college. The system of the Electoral college is problematic, as it can lead to elections where most of the country votes for one candidate, but the other one wins by electoral votes, a situation that has occurred Four times in the last 58 elections. That basically means that, on average, every 56 years, we can expect the loser to become president, which last happened this past

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