Number of Electoral College Votes per state for the 2012, 2016, and 2020 United States Presidential Elections.
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IntroductionOne of the biggest political debates today is whether or not to use the Electoral College for presidential elections. On first look, it seems obvious that it should not be used. It seems undemocratic, as you don’t vote directly for your candidate, and the people don’t elect the President. It also seems foolish, since a candidate with a lower popular vote can win the election and become president. However, upon further inspection, the true advantages of the Electoral College begin to be shown. And although it has some problems, the Electoral College can be seen as a perfectly fine method for electing the Nation’s presidents as well as being a better distributor of voting power than a plain purely democratic popular vote ever could be.
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What is the Electoral College? |
In order to reach the conclusion that the Electoral College is better than a popular vote for the country, one must first understand what the Electoral College is and what you really do when you go to vote. The Electoral College is not a place; it is a process(3). When you go to vote, instead of directly voting for a presidential candidate, you are really voting to determine electors of the Electoral College process who would vote for your presidential candidate(1). The outcome in each state determines a slate of 538 electors who, in turn, vote for the president and vice president(1). Each state (including the District of Columbia, which is considered a state within this article) sends a certain, set amount of electors to this slate(1). The amount of electors sent depends on the state’s population and is specifically equal to the number of the state’s representatives in Congress (House of Representatives+Senate; the District of Columbia gets 3)(1). The specific electors sent by the state depend on which candidate won the popular vote of the state(1). Typically, if a candidate wins a state, all the electors of the state go to the slate in a winner-takes-all fashion, no matter how close the vote of the state is (Maine and Nebraska are exceptions)(1). In this way, each state has a certain number of votes towards the president before the winning president is determined by the winner of these votes. To be elected President, a candidate needs to win a majority of 270 out of 238 electoral votes(4).
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Advantages of the Electoral College |
As complicated as this system may be, there is a reason behind it and many advantages to it. When the Electoral College was made, it was a compromise on two issues: how much power should belong to the people, and the second was how much power should belong to small and large states(1). Many of the people who wrote The Constitution believed that people couldn't be trusted to directly elect the president, so the electors, voted for by the people, got that role instead(1). Through this, the people indirectly vote for the president, so they get some power while the government also gets some say. In the realm of each state getting a certain amount of electors, during the time of the Constitution being written, people of the United States did not think of the United States as a whole nation(1). They instead identified themselves by their state and thought of the United States as, literally, a union of individual states(1). Because of this, when the Union was brought together by the Constitution, small states were worried about having their say overshadowed by the larger states’ influence(1). The large states, on the other-hand, believed their say should overshadow the small states because they were larger(1). While this issue was compromised in other ways (such as through the House of Representatives and the Senate) it was compromised through the Electoral College as well(1). The Constitution decided the states should vote for the President, so by giving the states electors by population, small states aren’t overshadowed while more populated states still have a larger say(1). Through this, more state equality and a mostly fair system is created through the electoral college, preventing high population areas from under-representing rural parts of the nation(2). This opposes the popular vote, where larger states have a much larger influence and can easily overpower the small states, completely eliminating any compromise that could be made.
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Problems of the Electoral College |
Even with the advantages, though, there are still disadvantages of the Electoral College that need to be addressed. The first, most major problem is that electors are not legally tied to their candidate(1). It was mentioned earlier that when you vote for the President, you vote to decide electors who will vote for your candidate(1). But they don’t have to vote for your candidate, and could, in theory, vote for any candidate(1). While this seems like a huge problem, and is in theory, some states have laws forcing electors to vote according to the popular vote and most states (excluding Nebraska and Maine) have laws that give all the votes to the winner of the popular vote(1). In addition, since electors are chosen by their candidate for their loyalty, and since electors take their responsibility very seriously, this rarely happens(1). The last time this did happen was in 1988, and it had no impact on the result of the election(1). Still, it is a large oversight and should be eliminated by legally binding electors to their candidate. In addition, an effect of the Electoral College that initially looks like a problem is that, in each state, each individual vote is weighted differently(1). Since, when you vote for President, you vote in a state election, not a national election, each person's vote has a different weight in each state(1). The weight of a vote in each state is the number of residents per elector (state population divided by number of electors) compared to the national average(1). Typically, the smaller, less populated states have a larger vote weight than the larger, more populated states. For example, Alaska (a small state by population standards) has a vote weight of 2.50. North Carolina’s vote weight is 0.91, and California’s is 0.831. Votes are worth the most in Wyoming and the least in New York(5). Of course, the national average is 1.00. While this might immediately seem like a problem, one has to remember that this helps the compromise between small and big states, allowing small states to have each vote be worth more while big states keep the most electors and thus the most influence on the election of the whole. And while the vote weight could probably be averaged out a bit better (especially in states like Alaska) it is overall not a big deal and part of the Electoral College/large-small state compromise. Finally, there is the big problem of the Electoral College allowing the President to be elected without the majority of the popular vote, as it did in 2000 when George W. Bush was elected over Al Gore thus refueling the large controversy over whether or not the Electoral College should be used(1). While this too seems like a problem, it once again comes back to the Electoral College protecting states’ power. Theoretically, a worse situation could arise from the popular vote. A candidate could theoretically win through popular vote with only the majority supporting them in very few states. If a candidate were to be close to victory but fail to win in almost all the states, specifically the small ones, but only win in landslides in a few big states, such as California, Texas, or New York, they could win with the majority supporting them in only those big states. This would completely eliminate the wants and needs of the smaller states. Through the Electoral College these states’ powers are protected. If this same situation were to theoretically happen in the Electoral College, the candidate that won nearly every state, except the two or three big ones, would easily win with all the electoral votes from the small states. Even if a candidate wins without the popular vote in the Electoral College, they still win the support of the majority of the states/electors, thus winning through the literal union of states that is the United States. A candidate winning without the popular vote has also only happened three other times, in 1824, 1876, and 1888. This shows how rare such an occurrence is as well as how it is not worth it to replace the proven method of the Electoral College when the main point opposing it has only occurred four times in the country's history and only happened once in over a century.
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The results of the 2012 United States Presidential Election, with each pixel representing one electoral vote and each state being represented as the sames number of pixels as the number of their electoral votes.
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ConclusionAll of these examples show why, in the United States, the Electoral College is a better method for electing Presidents than a pure popular vote. The Electoral College gives the power to the states, assuring that the large states alone won’t overpower the small ones. It also allows both the government and the people to have a say in the election. And even though it has problems that may need to be fixed, it promotes the large-small state compromises and shines as a better system than a popular vote. The popular vote may be the purely democratic system for elections, but the Electoral College breaks through as the better system for the United States that should be used for generations to come.
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Works Cited:
(1)Walbert, David. "Does My Vote Count? Understanding the Electoral College." Does My Vote Count? Understanding the Electoral
College. UNC School of Education, n.d. Web. 6 Jan. 2016.
(2)"Electoral Vote vs Popular Vote." Diffen.com. Diffen LLC, n.d. Web. 6 Jan 2016.
(3)"What Is the Electoral College?" National Archives and Records Administration. National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.
Web. 6 Jan. 2016.
(4)"Electoral College." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 2010. Web. 6 Jan. 2016.
(5)Kirk, Chris. "How Powerful Is Your Vote?" Slate. The Slate Group LLC, 2016. Web. 6 Jan. 2016.
Images:
In Introduction: Lenhardt, Adam. Electoral College 2016. Digital image. Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 14 Mar. 2013. Web. 8
Jan. 2016.
In Conclusion: Kelvinsong. Electoral Vote- Cartogram. Digital image. Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 25 Nov. 2012. Web. 8 Jan.
2016.
Section and Article by Aidan Lynott
(1)Walbert, David. "Does My Vote Count? Understanding the Electoral College." Does My Vote Count? Understanding the Electoral
College. UNC School of Education, n.d. Web. 6 Jan. 2016.
(2)"Electoral Vote vs Popular Vote." Diffen.com. Diffen LLC, n.d. Web. 6 Jan 2016.
(3)"What Is the Electoral College?" National Archives and Records Administration. National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.
Web. 6 Jan. 2016.
(4)"Electoral College." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 2010. Web. 6 Jan. 2016.
(5)Kirk, Chris. "How Powerful Is Your Vote?" Slate. The Slate Group LLC, 2016. Web. 6 Jan. 2016.
Images:
In Introduction: Lenhardt, Adam. Electoral College 2016. Digital image. Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 14 Mar. 2013. Web. 8
Jan. 2016.
In Conclusion: Kelvinsong. Electoral Vote- Cartogram. Digital image. Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 25 Nov. 2012. Web. 8 Jan.
2016.
Section and Article by Aidan Lynott