I firmly believe the electoral college should be abolished and has been actively negating elections for decades now. On paper the idea looks very unappealing to the modern American but my initial gripe with it is due to the outcome of the year 2000 Presidential Election. That year’s presidential race was between Al Gore and George W. Bush. The race was very close and while Gore won the popular vote, Bush became president due to the electoral college’s ruling. Florida’s down-to-the-wire race that election went down in infamy due to the multiple fiascos and situations that saw many Americans demanding a recount when the verdict ended up favoring Bush. This led to the first post- 20th century instance of an Electoral College ruling not concurring with the result of the popular vote. This issue returned in 2016, where Trump was elected president over Clinton even though she received a larger quantity of votes to win. The electoral college’s base intentions of giving less populated states a ‘voice’ ends up making other states feel worthless. This simply ends up leading to Americans feeling as if their votes are nullified when voting in states that will largely favor one candidate over another when their votes would really stand for something if the president was elected based on popular votes, not by ultimately 538 out of 330 million American citizens.
Now, one may argue that the electoral college is deeply seeded in the DNA of America and should be preserved. Some may even go so far as to say disliking the electoral college is unconstitutional and anti-America. Yet. America from the beginning was meant to be a ‘democratic republic’, and the democratic part of that is slowly diminished due to the electoral college. Essentially, the system allows for one American’s vote to count more than another American’s vote. Americans in solidified or ‘non swing-states’ have less of an incentive to vote and a lack of interest in voting leads to a lack of involvement in the situations actively occurring in your country and using your ability to improve the nation.
