The Electoral College is little more than useless…
The Electoral College has good and bad characteristics. If this were the year 1789, then this post would pour over how the Electoral College is the greatest thing since sliced bread. But this is 2011, and as of right now, this method of voting should be as dead as the people who conceived it.
The Electoral College was made in the 1700’s and is a voting system where citizens vote for their electors who will represent their state and vote for president based on the citizens’ interests. Each state has a certain number of electoral votes based on their population. The candidate that gets the majority of electoral votes in a state gets all of that states electoral votes. There are 538 electoral votes in total, and the first to a majority 270 votes wins the election.
If you’ve never really explored how the Electoral College is set up, then you may be wondering why in the world anyone would go to all this trouble to vote. Why isn’t the president voted for directly by the people? Why is the system set up this way?
The Electoral College was made for the purpose of avoiding a tyrant from taking presidency. They were afraid of that happening because information didn’t travel as quickly as it does today, so people would be uneducated about the candidates and everybody would vote for somebody from their own state.
The traditional method of electing somebody for anything, not just president, is to put it to a vote. Every person gets one vote, simple as that. The person with the most votes gets appointed and life goes on. Why don’t we do this? My opposing thinkers would say things like, “Because the smaller states won’t get their say.”
Let’s say that you’re Nebraska, you’re more of a rural, farming state with less population than most other states. The other states will have more power than you and you’re vote counts for little. But this argument isn’t even valid! This is the UNITED States of America! Even if a democrat gets elected, and Nebraska wanted a republican, the president isn’t going to declare war on Nebraska! She/he will understand that Nebraska is important too, and that we need every state to maximize our country to its full potential.
A couple of years ago, in the 2000 election, George Bush won the presidential election over Albert Gore because of the Electoral College. Albert Gore had almost one million more popular votes than George Bush, but still lost the election because Bush received a mere 5 more electoral votes. This process followed the way that the framers of the constitution wanted it to be, because they thought that the voters would be uneducated. But today information moves fast, and people are more educated. The Electoral College just isn’t necessary or practical and it has long outlived its usefulness. Voting for the president of the United States is a big deal, and feckless voting methods aren’t a step in the right direction.