The Electoral College has been a fundamental part of the American political system since the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Although the Electoral College has been upheld for hundreds of years, many of the Constitution’s original compositions have been amended as society changes. It is time to improve the way elections are decided to make the interests of the people more effectively represented.
First off, a true democracy includes a government where each individual vote carries the same weight, fulfilling the principle of one person, one vote. Unfortunately, the Electoral College distributes each electoral vote based on the congressional delegation per state, not directly matching with the popular vote. In this case, the citizens’ voting power in the smaller states is more influential than the larger states per vote. In regards to the state size, in a strong democratic state like California, the republican voters may feel diluted because the majority of California’s electoral votes always lay on the blue side. Additionally, political candidates may base their campaigns primarily to win over the swing states making the majority of the country ignored. The interests of many Americans are not valued compared to the citizens of swing states.
Moreover, there is a lack of trust within the electoral system between who the people of each state want and who the representatives ultimately choose their electoral vote to support. There is always a chance, although it is rare, that there are faithless electors who voted against what their state said.
A solution to the debate of the Electoral College is to reflect democratic values by honoring the popular vote. There have been several elections, where the electoral vote did not match up with the popular vote and created a lot of chaos with the electoral process; this occurred in 1824, 1976, 1888, 2000, and most recently, Clinton vs. Trump in 2016 where Clinton won the popular vote but Trump won electors. The people of the United States would feel at ease that their vote is making an impact on the outcome of government elections if the popular vote dictated the election and the Electoral College was abolished.
