Electoral College Thesis

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Electoral College Essay
America is not a country that could easily crumble. From the complex process of turning a bill into a law to the seemingly endless line of presidential succession, America has structured itself in a way that no evil can quickly enter into or demolish its structure. The Electoral College, the process in which citizens vote for the President, is no exception. Under this process, whichever candidate wins the popular vote in a state wins that state’s electoral votes, which equal the number of state representatives in Congress. Whoever receives the most electoral votes becomes President. While the Electoral College is already capable of giving small states some representation and never allows one political party to continuously …show more content…

If a citizen is an outlier in a state heavily leaning towards one party, their vote is as good as dead. On the other end of the spectrum, if two candidates each have almost half the votes, whoever has the most votes, even by a miniscule amount, gets all of the electoral votes. In the 2016 Presidential election, Donald Trump received 47.6% of Michigan’s votes, while Hilary Clinton received 47.3% of Michigan’s votes (2016 Presidential Election Results, 2016). Even though the difference in votes was barely more than 10,000, Donald Trump still won all 16 of Michigan’s votes. This is not fair because almost half of all votes become nullified just because another candidate earned a few more votes. This inequality of voters’ representation causes vote trading. Vote trading is the event in which two people trade votes so that their votes will be more influential. Vote trading may not be new, but with the internet, it is much easier to find others willing to trade their votes. “Trump Traders” is the name of one of these websites, and has matched 40,000 individuals to another interested in vote trading (Ax, 2016). While that may be more beneficial to the people trading, vote trading causes every state’s votes not to illustrate realistically the preferences from each citizen. Changing America’s entire voting system to what Nebraska and Maine use will give more importance to the individual voter and minimize the effectiveness of vote trading. Since each congressional district holds about 710,000 people and not millions statewide, each person’s vote automatically becomes more important. While vote trading may never cease, the idea of one Electoral vote per district will make it harder for vote traders to decide which district to trade votes with. Even if many people from the same district trade votes, their reward will not be tens of Electoral (If

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