The Electoral College is the system in which the president and vice president are elected. The Electoral College consists of 538 electors, where a majority of 270 electors wins the election. How each state gets its electoral votes is proportional to the population, but also by how many representatives that state has plus 2 for the senators. The purpose of the electoral college is so that the larger states do not overpower the smaller states, creating a balance between the two. Throughout the history of the United States, the Electoral College has failed us on 5 occasions, two of which being in this century: 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, 2016. This, in my opinion, is 5 times too many. Hypothetically, everyone’s vote should be counted as equal, however, depending on the state you live in, your vote could count more or less than what it seems. This greatly diminishes the democratic process of the people’s opinion, who should be the sole decider of the Presidential position. This also changes how candidates campaign around the country, focusing more on the big and swing states, and, more or less, leaves the smaller states to the waste side because those won’t win the election due to their electoral count. It also encourages their public policy to be slightly more skewed to be attractive to the swing states as well, even though the purpose of the president is to create policy that benefits the entire country as a whole. We call ourselves a democracy, but the way we vote for the president completely undermines the democratic process of being for the people, by the people. Instead, it is an attempt to win states, rather than the people living in those states. In a video by CGP Gray, he displays how a candidate can win the election by only having 21.91% of the population by winning states and electoral votes, rather than the people. These reasons not only expose the flawed system in which we chose our leader, but also why we need to have a popular vote system, where everyone’s vote counts as one, like a true democracy.
