Inspecting The Electoral College
By Kaylee Fullington & Angel Gomez
As the coming election season draws near, many voters are unaware of the inner workings of their election system. This is especially true for the new generation of voters participating in their first presidential election. All eligible voters should have an elementary understanding of how the United States determines their representatives and president.
The Electoral College has been around since the founding of the United States and has remained unchanged since its conception.
The election is not decided by the popular vote, but instead by swing states. These states are referred to as swing states because depending on the state's outcome, it could swing the election. This is due to each state having a different number of electoral votes based on population.
Voters are not directly voting for the presidential candidate, but instead voting for who their state will elect. States with less electoral votes are more valuable as they represent more people in each vote and can make winning a state easier.
Vermont for example has only one representative in Congress and three electoral votes including their two senate seats whereas Florida has thirty electoral votes. As a result, this makes Vermont voters more powerful than an average Florida voter because their vote could swing the whole state either way.
Swing states have this power because when the country was first founded, the smaller states did not have as much power as the larger states. In order to fairly divide power between them, the House of Representatives is structured to have more seats in larger states but smaller states continue to have two senate seats the same as the larger states.
When the founding fathers decided on the election system, they could not comprehend how successful and populated the country would eventually become. Compared to today’s largest state, California is 68x bigger than Virginia which was the most populated state when the country was founded.
The Electoral College creation was also a rushed process conjured up by the “Committee of Postponed Matters”. James Madison was even quoted saying, “It was created with a degree of the hurrying influence produced by fatigue and impatience.”
This voting system was created to shift power from one group to another, but as our country continues to grow the parties which are favored by this system have changed. The electoral colleges' greatest protectors are those who are benefitting from its structure.
With this in mind, it could be argued that the function of the electoral college system does not fairly represent today's voters. Small changes to the electoral college could ensure better representation for voters as not all votes have been equally accounted for in recent elections.