#29: The Electoral College

With the elections coming up (and some elections already started,) I saw it only fit to write this note now. Voting is definitely a good idea, and I would encourage it, since we should take advantage of our rights. There are a lot of people who don't have the right and who fight hard for that right, and people in the past in the United States have fought for our right to vote. If you're black, some amazing people fought for your right to vote. If you're a woman, some strong women (and some men) fought for your right to vote. So it's a good idea to take advantage of it. However, it's hard to feel like it even matters if you vote when the Electoral College is being implemented. The Electoral College, for those of you who don't know is a system in which every state gets a certain number of electoral votes based on its population. When a candidate wins most of the votes in one state, he/she wins the entire state and gets all of that state's electoral votes. I believe, however, that the popular vote is a better way to go, since it's traditional, and it ensures a fair election.
Going the Electoral College way, it's unfair for candidates and for voters. Candidates get jipped out of votes they should have won, and voters' votes don't count unless they match the popular vote of their own state. For instance, if I vote democrat in Georgia, my vote doesn't count, because Georgia is always a red state, so all the electoral votes for Georgia will always go toward the republican candidate. This is even more unfair to third party candidates, who have no chance of winning any electoral votes at all. There are only red states and blue states, and since majority votes are always either going to be for republicans or democrats, at least as of now, third party votes don't count. I'm a Green Libertarian, so I don't appreciate never being able to cast a vote that counts. Having the Electoral College around is not only unfair to everyone involved, but it discourages people from voting. And don't we want people to vote? This also discourages third parties, and some of them are really good and have really good ideas, which should be heard. With the growing independence of people these days and the growing technology (enhancing our ability to research third parties,) it seems like people would be more interested these days in picking a side that isn't necessarily republican or democrat. This might be true if, of course, we got rid of the Electoral College. It would encourage people to really do their research and pick the side they really believe in. It would open up so many new opportunities for candidates and voters, and so many more diverse ideas could be brought up and implemented in the government.
The presidential election of 2000, between Al Gore and George W. Bush, is a good example of what I argued above, just to further explain my argument. Gore won the popular vote, but Bush barely won more electoral votes, so Bush won. Does that seem fair? If more people wanted Gore to be president, then shouldn't he have won the presidency? Poor Gore. That was an unjust election, if you ask me.
It all started with the 3/5 Compromise, in which slaves were allowed to vote, but they only counted as 3/5 of a vote. So, in order to get rid of this, a bunch of people in the government decided to implement the Electoral College, so that having 3/5 of a vote didn't really mean anything, because all the votes for that state would go to one candidate anyway. While this was a swell idea (I hope you can detect my sarcasm,) it would have made more sense just to do away with the 3/5 Compromise. But since they didn't, now it is our obligation to do away with the Electoral College. The reasons for the Electoral College are null and void now anyway, since there are no more slaves and the 3/5 Compromise no longer exists. So why not get rid of the Electoral College since it's unfair and discouraging in a lot of ways for a lot of people and parties.
To prove my point farther, most people are against it. When I was in the 5th grade, I did a project on the Electoral College. Well, my parents did the project, if we're being completely honest, but I did help as much as my tiny 5th grade brain could help. I took a poll from about 100 people, and in that poll, I asked who was against/for the Electoral College. An overwhelming majority of people voted against it, and out of the ones who voted for it, the majority of them admitted that they didn't even know what the Electoral College is. So if that's not proof enough that we need to do away with the Electoral College, then I don't know what is.
So I propose we eliminate the Electoral College from our system and bring back the institution of popular vote. It's the only fair way to go about it, and there's no point in having the Electoral College if it's unfair, it's discouraging, it no longer serves a purpose, and no one wants it.

This is an example of the Electoral College Vs. Popular Vote. You can see the numbers on all the states. Those are each states' electoral votes. You can see each candidate's electoral votes won and population votes won at the bottom right hand corner.