On The Electoral College

Given the seemingly endless political turmoil that plagues the Middle East and the corrupt leaders of Syria and Libya known to massacre their own people, we find ourselves thankful to belong to a country with relatively no corruption and a fair, democratic process. But how democratic can a country truly be if its presidential elections aren’t actually decided by the number of people who vote for a given candidate?

Before I begin, a disclaimer: this is a nonpartisan editorial. True, it was inspired in part by the closeness of the election on November 6 (and to a lesser extent the election of 2000), but I have held the following beliefs for some time now. Since, however, this is the first election in which I’ve actually been able to vote (I was four months short of eighteen in November of 2008), I feel particularly passionate about this topic.

The Electoral College dates back to the late eighteenth century, when the Committee of Eleven decided that rather than having Congress elect the President as had been the protocol, a given number of representatives from each state (equal to the number of congressional representatives in that state) would instead vote to elect the President. At the time, delegates from smaller states were grateful for the Electoral College, since it protected them from larger states, whose influence would otherwise control the election.

Now, over two hundred years later, not much has changed. The number of electoral votes allocated to each state is determined by the number of Representatives and Senators that the state holds in Congress – so, essentially, the states with the highest populations receive the most electoral votes. Excepting Nebraska and Maine, each state (and Washington, D.C., which while not present in Congress is allocated three electoral votes) operates under a winner-take-all policy, which means that the candidate who wins the popular vote in each state wins every electoral vote in that state. Put another way, as soon as a candidate’s popular vote exceeds 50% in a given state, he is automatically delegated all of the state’s electoral votes.

How are these electoral representatives chosen, you may ask? Each state’s political parties nominate the electors in the months leading up to the election. These electors cannot also hold positions in any federal office. According to our political system, these lucky few are the ones who actually elect our country’s leader.

When it comes down to it, I believe that the Electoral College is, frankly, a completely bogus method of choosing our presidents. Call me crazy, but does nobody think it would make sense to base our elections off of, I don’t know, the number of people in this country who vote for a given candidate? I know – it’s a lot to wrap your mind around.

In most cases, the vote of the electoral representatives is a product of the popular vote in a given state – so the popular vote does, albeit indirectly, influence the outcome of the election. However, what about the election of 2000 between George W. Bush and Al Gore? We all know that Bush won the electoral vote – obviously – but Gore won the popular vote! More people in this country wanted Gore to be president, yet he lost the election.

In situations like that, I fail to understand how anybody could possibly call the Electoral College democratic. Rather than electing the candidate with the majority of support from the population, we elected the candidate with the majority of support from a select group of individuals. Sounds fair, right?

Another reason why I’m not a fan of the Electoral College is that it essentially assigns more worth to some votes than it does to others. For example, my lovely home state of Vermont counts for a measly three electoral votes, while California is allocated fifty-five. Doesn’t this mean that my vote actually counts for less? When Vermont inevitably goes blue in an election it hardly makes any difference at all, but California has so much influence that it can literally determine an election.

I understand that Vermont’s population can’t even compare with California’s, but why should that mean that our votes don’t matter as much? With the Electoral College, a Vermonter’s vote straight up doesn’t count as much as does a Californian’s. Under the popular vote, we count votes out of the entire country, not merely state-by-state. This way, states aren’t pitted against each other, and every individual vote holds the same weight. That smells more like democracy to me.

However, all the ranting in the world won’t change the fact that there’s probably no way that we’ll do away with the Electoral College in our lifetimes. Our country has a nasty tendency to grasp onto tradition and antiquated practices like our lives depend on it, and unless the people who are actually in the government attempt to make the popular vote our method of choice, it looks like I’ll have many more opportunities to complain in the future.