Political Laryngitis: The Stifled Voice of the American Voter

“We The People”, the three words that serve as the foundation for our country’s most important document, could not be less accurate when discussing how our elections are set up. As everyone reading this knows, the current leader of our country represents a minority of the popular vote, making him our 2nd minority president in 5 elections. Regardless of political affiliation, we can not deny that the will of the people is not currently decided in our country’s federal elections, but how do we fix this discrepancy? The altering the electoral college would be an easy answer, but there are other problems that could rise in altering the system.

First off, the college was set into the framework of the constitution, so getting rid of it would take an immense amount of work. First off, both sections of Congress would have to pass an amendment abolishing it by three-fourths majority, which would be near impossible considering that the controlling party in both just won an election because of the system. It would be possible, however, for state governments to change how their electoral votes are counted. Most states use a winner take all system for votes, however both Maine and Nebraska award votes, “according to district as well as statewide results”(Schlesinger). So why haven’t more states switched to a method that splits the vote more like the population? By giving all of their electoral votes to one candidate, it “augments their power”(Schlesinger), essentially making state opinion’s count more than national opinions in the voting.

 

I highly doubt that this alone would fix the system anyways. In a study done by Jeff Singer of The Daily Kos, he found that, “Despite losing the national popular vote by 2.1%, Donald Trump carried 230 congressional districts and Hillary Clinton just 205.” Even if every state voted in the manner that Maine and Nebraska do, Trump would have acquired 230 votes through congressional districts and 60 more votes by winning 30 states outright, giving him 20 more votes than he needed to win the election. It might surprise people that this would be the case (it certainly surprised me), but it makes sense politically. Trump ran as a republican, the party that currently controls the House of Representatives, meaning that most of the congressional districts would align themselves with him.
These districts bring their own political problems to the table, however. These districts are zoned by state legislators, meaning that whichever party controls the state government, also has the power to effect the representation of their party in Congress. As a matter of fact, David A. Lieb of the Associated Press “found that Republicans won as many as 22 additional U.S. House seats over what would have been expected.” So, if, hypothetically, every district were rezoned to give candidates a more equal chance at congressional representation, There would be 22 more Democratic districts. In the situation that every state divides electoral votes out like Maine and Nebraska, this might have caused Trump to get 22 less votes, preventing him from clinching the presidency by 2. Of course this is not a perfect system, but it is much closer than we currently are.