This is a short essay I wrote, it's not my finest work, but it does offer some insight to how the government is run, and my two-bits on it. It's a very biased essay, but that was the point!
The electoral college is a voting system that was in place over two hundred years ago by our founding fathers that is still standing today. America in 1787 is poles apart from today, and the electoral college once served a vital role when it was first implemented. Now that the nation has grown and its needs and processes are dissimilar, it is time to update the voting system to reflect what the people of the United States want. The electoral college is an outdated system that is not suitable for America today.
“...the Electoral College is worse than merely useless. Its primary function is to malapportion political power, and it does so…” this fragment of an argument written by Josh Chafetz articulates the fact of the matter, which is, that the electoral college has more say than an average American’s vote. The electoral college was made in conjunction with the ⅗’s clause, which if you are not familiar with it, is put into place so that slaves are only counted as three-fifths of a vote, which is both dehumanizing and quite obviously extremely racist. With the electoral in place, citizens do not always get the last say in the voting process, and a lot of times their vote is overruled by the electoral college.
The electoral college is a pillar in the way that our country uses suppression to silence minorities in the voting process. Due to the Civil War, the ⅗ clause was eliminated, mostly because the Southern states who were in favor of that specific clause realized that they would have more capacity to put their mark in the Presidential election if they counted Black people as whole people. On paper, the oppressed slaves of the South had voting rights, but Jim Crow laws still kept them from exercising their newfound rights.
While the electoral college makes it clear who is the winner, and who is not, I believe that the individual vote matters far more than ease and convenience. Steve Neumann, who writes for Monmouth University, reassures us against the backdrop of discrimination with a quote, “One of the advantages is the result is clear: “Somebody wins; somebody gets a majority of the electoral votes.” This is a necessary sort of adroitness and reliance that we deal with within a populous country such as the United States. Yet, even if a state has more residents, they do not get more electoral votes in all considerations.
However, each state’s total allotment is based on its representation in the Senate (always two people) and the House (varies by population). “So take Washington, D.C., as an example,” says DeRosa. “More people live in D.C. than in Wyoming, the least populous state in the union; but they both get three electoral votes. (Neumann)
This logic is nothing but faultful. It gives increased potential to a state that does not hold the majority of people and does not give the people in D.C. the same voting power and rights as in Wyoming.
This type of system reinforces income inequality and voter suppression based on geographics. The small to medium states in this system tend to get overrepresented, leaving states with larger populations in the dust. This is an issue concerning the fact that higher populated states usually have more racial minority groups, relating to the racial complication of the electoral college. “Allegations of balloting irregularities that require an Electoral Commission to decide the votes of contested states do not make the general public feel very confident about the integrity of the process. And faithless electors could render the popular vote moot in particular states.” (West). Darrell West is making an excellent point about how this system is sowing distrust in our government. If an individual votes, they expect that vote to make a difference in the election, not to go unheard.
Neumann writes something quite interesting, “If you had more than two parties contending for the presidency, you might have somebody winning with 30% of the votes, and that’s a ticket to an extremist candidate.” He is explaining that if there was a majority vote system in place, you may have many candidates with votes spread out all over the board. While this is technically true, it also makes sure that your vote is seen, and that it can balance the scales on how the American population is wanting, making presidential candidates strive to fit those ideals. If we abolish the electoral college we can force presidential electors to play on an even playing field, trying to make more compromises and appeal to the larger demographic that is America as a whole.
The electoral college has been a part of the nation since the beginning. While it does hold many uses for convenience and so-called extremist reasons, America is past the time when the electoral college is beneficial. The nation needs to look forward to the future where all votes get equal representation in deciding who the president is so that we can have transparency and trust within our voting system.
Works Cited
Chafetz, Josh. “Why We Should Abolish the Electoral College.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 17 Mar. 2020
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly about The Electoral College - Monmouth Magazine. (n.d.). Monmouth Magazine.
West, D. M. (2019, October 15). It’s time to abolish the Electoral College. Brookings.
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