There are two number that perfectly encapsulate all that was wrong with last year’s presidential election, 2,868,691 and 64 (cnn.com). The first is how many more votes Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton received over her opponent Donald Trump. The latter is the number of electoral votes Mr. Trump received over Secretary Clinton. These egregiously incongruent figures represent the widest margin by which a presidential candidate has won the popular vote and lost the presidency. Sixteen years ago, a fiasco like this also rocked the presidential election. Back in 2000, republican candidate George W. Bush triumphed over democrat Al Gore whilst losing the popular vote by more than 500,000 votes. By themselves, these two election results are statistical anomalies but together they represent the inherently flawed system that the American public has all but ignored until now. It is known as the Electoral College and it is the reason that the United States is about to go to Nuclear War with North Korea over Twitter.
The original argument for the Electoral College was based around three main points. First, it was to act as safeguard against the will of the mob and protect the country from electing a candidate clearly unfit for the office. Second, it was implemented so that states had some impact on the presidential election. (Huffpost). And third, as Yale professor Akhil Reed Amir puts it, because “Americans across a vast continent would lack sufficient information to choose directly and intelligently among leading presidential candidates” (TIME). Back in the 1780’s these all seemed like valid arguments, the country was very spread out and information did not travel quickly. Presidential candidates would only campaign in the big cities and bypass rural towns for the most part. However, when political parties were formed in the 1790’s, the argument for voter ignorance was quickly invalidated. Presidential candidates were now linked to a set of ideals that were represented by candidates on the local, state, and national level. Now, a voter could know what the candidate stood for without actually hearing them speak. (TIME). The claim that the Electoral College provided a last line of defense against the will of the mob is also quickly debunked. Electors are lifelong supporters of their respective parties and will rarely vote against their party’s candidate. To this point, according to fairvote.org, there have only been 157 so called faithless electors (electors who vote against their party) in this history of U.S. presidential elections. (Huffpost). Keep in mind that there are 538 electors up for grabs – each election. This brings us to the third and final argument: the Electoral College allows for that states to have a say in the presidential election. A problem quickly arises in that smaller states would have very little influence on the election if the number of electors per state was directly dependent on that states population. To combat this, each state was given a minimum of three electoral votes regardless of their population. As a result, there is a disparity in the value of one’s vote depending on the state they live in. Take Wyoming whose three electoral votes are judged by a populous of 532,000 and Texas, which has 32 electoral votes for a population of 25 million. If you divide the amount of voters by the votes available to each state, a vote in Wyoming is four times more valuable than a vote in Texas. (Huffpost). Therein lies the problem at the core of the Electoral College: It is not proportional to the will of the people. This is because it is a winner-takes-all system in 48 out of the 50 states. A candidate only has to win the majority of a state’s vote to take all of that state’s electoral votes. That means that all the dissenting votes in that state are rendered meaningless because they gain no delegates. A prime example of this is Texas in the last election. Donald Trump won 52% of the vote compared to 43% of the vote won by Clinton. (NYTimes). However because Trump won the majority of the vote, he gets all the delegates. He doesn’t get 52% of the delegates, he gets all of them, and Clinton get nothing. All those millions votes for her in Texas are rendered meaningless. Furthermore, the extent to which a candidate can lose the popular vote and still win the presidency is simply astounding. According to fairvote.org, a candidate can theoretically win only 21.8% of the popular vote and still gain the 270 electoral votes needed to obtain the presidency. (Huffpost).
It is quite obvious that the Electoral College is a deeply flawed system and with last year’s election results, it is also obvious that the problem can no long be overlooked. However, I believe there is a solution that would not require a complete repeal of the Electoral College, which mind you would be nearly impossible. (Washington Post). If the system were to be altered so that electors were given based on the percentage of the vote a candidate wins in each state rather than the winner taking everything, the electors would directly represent the will of the people. There would be no discrepancy between the electoral vote and the popular vote and the system would still be in place just in case someone completely incompetent was elected for President, Ironic as that may considering our current Commander in Chief,
21st Century Citizenship 