The Electoral College Should Be Abolished

Every 4 years, our country makes an incredibly important decision. We vote for the person who will represent the US in all domestic and international affairs; The President. Currently, we have many troops in Iraq fighting to help them establish a democracy. We are giving the citizens a right to vote, a privilege that many people claim we are lucky to have. In actuality, how democratic is our system overall? What many people don't realize or care to face, is we don't directly vote for our president. In 2000, the majority of us voted for a President who in the end was not determined the winner. There are many other corruptions in our current electoral system, including the underlying racist and sexist roots, voter inequality and other flaws that go against every true democratic principle. The only solution and the only way this country could be truly democratic is to abolish the Electoral College.

The way a winner is found in most every level of professionalism (high school government elections, mayoral elections, even governor elections) is by counting the votes and the candidate with the most, wins. However, the Electoral College, the method in which we choose the most important position, President, is an indirect way of voting. This means that when Americans go to the poll every 4 years to vote for our President, their direct votes is not what determines the outcome.

The very make up of our election system is flawed. Every state has electoral votes that are equal to their representation in Congress, which is based on population. Every state is promised at least 3 votes this way. After each census, the numbers are adjusted accordingly. However, censuses do not occur as frequently as elections. They occur during the first year of each decade, versus every four years we hold an election. Elections that take place during census years use the census for the decade prior. So in 2000, we used the census from 1990. Using this method, there is guaranteed to be over or under representation of many states. For example, according to the 1980 census, California is allotted 47 electors. However, according to estimations made by the Census Bureau California's actual population in 1988 would give them 54 electors. Quickly growing states are penalized, while slowly growing states benefit. More importantly, candidates who win support from high-growth states are greatly penalized, while those winning low-growth states are helped (Edwards, 2).

Because the Electoral College gives greater say in electing the President to some than to others, it is in blatant conflict with the principles of equality among citizens found in the Declaration of Independence (Abolish the Electoral College).

Most states use a "winner-take-all" system to distribute the votes amongst the results within the state, in which the entire sum of the electoral votes for a state go to the majority vote, thus granting the candidate with what is known as a "plurality" (Abolish the Electoral College). This is flawed for many reasons. Primarily, this causes any support a minority candidate had in the state to be thrown out. For example, if you lived in Georgia during the 2004 election and you voted for Kerry, because Bush won the majority of the state, your vote is given to Bush. Secondly, the "winner-take-all" system disenfranchises voters, specifically minority voters. Even though voter turn out is notoriously low among minorities, the number of electoral votes does not reflect that. Regardless of voter turnout, the electoral votes remain the same. If a citizen does not vote, in a roundabout way, they are handing their vote to the majority (Edwards, 36). The "winner-take-all" system is simply unfair. George Edwards put it best in his book against the Electoral College, "The operation of the winner-take all system effectively disenfranchises voters who support losing candidates in each state" (Edwards, 35).

There is also concern for the fact that it is possible for an elector's vote to not reflect that of the expectations of the state. This is what is commonly known as a "faithless elector." Samuel Miles was the first faithless elector who voted for Thomas Jefferson instead of John Adams. "What, do I chuse [sic] Samuel Miles to determine for me whether John Adams or Thomas Jefferson shall be President? No! I chuse [sic] him to act, not to think!" was the outcry of an angry Federalist as written in the United States Gazette (Peirce, 23). Since then there has been more than 8 cases of faithless votes being cast (Peirce, 23).

The problem that has brought the Electoral College to the spotlight in the past few years is the fact that the Electoral College winner does not always reflect the winner of the popular vote. This has already occurred three times in history: Rutherford B. Hays vs. Samuel J. Tilden in 1876, Benjamin Harrison vs. Grover Cleveland in 1888 and most recently, the 2000 election between Gore and Bush (Cornwell). Although half a million more Americans voted for Al Gore than did for George Bush, Bush won the Electoral College 271 to 266, granting him the presidency (Abolish the Electoral College). It doesn't make much sense that the candidate in which received a majority of the votes overall would lose.

Another way to understand the Electoral College is to take an in-depth look at it's origins. The Electoral College is a system based on historic policies that no longer exist and are irrelevant to modern voting. The delegates who developed the Electoral College believed that voters would not be able to make a reasoned and informed choice. With advances in technology and the improvement of our educational system, every individual has the opportunity to seek the information needed to make a sound decision. During election season, it is impossible to turn on the TV without seeing newscasts about candidates or to look at the front page of a newspaper without reading about the latest debate (Abolish the Electoral College). In addition, it is insulting preposterous that our society which has overcome so many obstacles of prejudice would deny a citizen the right to directly vote because of the stipulations that they are not intelligent enough.

Keeping in mind that in the days of the early drafters, the population was a mere 4 million, spread across the entire eastern seaboard, it is easy to understand their concerns of transferring information from state to state in a timely matter to choose the President. in a time when it was difficult to transfer information from place to place. However, it doesn't take a genius to realize that we have many great advances in technology. Population is much more concentrated. It only takes a few hours to get from New York City to California when in their day it took months, even years. As far as communication