Opinion: Should U.S keep the Electoral College?
The founders created the electoral college as an important part of American democracy to make sure that large states did not dominate small ones in the presidential elections. It’s the idea of checks and balances in the constitutional system.
But it’s time to abolish the electoral college, here is why.
The first reason is because of how it has function in practice. To explain briefly how electoral college work is that each state voters cast their ballots in the presidential election, the party candidate with the most votes in a particular state often received all the electoral college votes of that state, except for Maine and Nebraska which allocate votes at the congressional district level within their states.
But in the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump lost the popular vote by almost three million ballots, yet won the electoral college by 74 votes. That made him the fifth person to become president without winning the popular vote.
Relating to the above problem is “faithless elector” this means that electors cast their ballot in opposition to the dictates of their state’s popular vote. Throughout American history, 157 electoral have voted contrary to their state’s chosen winner.
Katrina Heuvel a columnist covering national politics, progressive politics and movements, and foreign policy wrote an article title “No matter who wins, it’s time to get rid of the electoral college.”
Heuvel point out that the “Constitution’s greatest failures: Under the electoral college, some votes matter far more than others.”
She explained the reason why the electoral college is a fail because not everyone come out to vote “It’s mathematically possible to win the electoral college with less than 22 percent of the popular vote.” she continued “That’s an extreme case, but the fact remains that, under the electoral college, a voter in Wyoming has nearly four times the power of a voter in California. By creating artificially narrow results, the electoral college makes it 40 times more likely that the results are close enough that the outcome could be swung by unelected judges.”
On top of that if the election ends in a 269-269 draw. The decision then goes to the House of Representatives, where each state delegation casts one vote. This cause a problem because in the state of North Dakota with the population of 762,000 will have the same influence compare to Texas with the population of 29 millions.
There are many arguments to why the U.S should change the electoral college, but above are a few problems that in my opinion should be change.
