Electoral College

If anyone asked you “Is our election system fair?” what would you say? If you said no, you may be aware of some big flaws in the Electoral College. If you said yes, then you’re unaware of some major flaws in our voting system. Why do we even have the Electoral College? Why hasn’t it been changed in the last 200+ years? We have the Electoral College because the founding fathers wanted an election system where smaller states could have a more equal voice in government on a national stage. The system is not equal by means of everyone’s vote being equal and it never has been. The United States of America should abolish the Electoral College in favor of a voting system that has no geographic ties and that gives representation based on a more accurate measure of voters’ views because this type of system would be equal for everybody and be a truer representation of the population’s views.

The Electoral College was chosen by our founding fathers because they felt it best fit their society. It was a compromise between congress choosing the president and a popular vote of qualified citizens (National Archives). James Madison was not in favor of a popular vote because at the time of the constitutional convention (1787), slaves counted as 3/5 of a person and therefore the south would always be a minority. Another concern with popular vote was that no candidate would become popular on a national level and you would just have a few regionally popular candidates. The Founding Fathers didn’t want congress to choose the president because they wanted the president and congress to be independent of each other (Goldman). There was also concern about a national, popular vote because many Americans could not read and they lived isolated lives (Stewart)...

... middle of paper ...

...sibility of run-off election, which would drag out the process. A run-off system may be beneficial though, because voter turnout is an issue. Only 60% of eligible Americans voted in the last presidential election, which is 120th out of 169 countries with voter turnout data. This is comparable to Benin and the Dominican Republic, and lower than most Western democracies. Lyle Scruggs, a political scientist at UCONN said that the Electoral College process may reduce turnout among other factors. A reason for this is that candidates mainly focus around 10 or so swing states. People in the other 40 begin to lose interest in the election, and don’t vote. These are all problems that could be avoided with a popular vote (Ghose). This means that with a popular vote system voter turnout would be boosted and we would have a president more representative of what the people want.