Millions of people around the country have protested the election of Donald Trump to the highest office in the nation. It is easy to be dismissive of these protesters; “I know they don’t like it, but Trump won fair in square” seems to be a common sentiment of protest spectators. And while that is a valid statement, the protests will not change the results of the election. But as much as they protest the president-elect himself, they are also protesting the system that elected him: The Electoral College. Many people now question the necessity of the Electoral College, especially considering the fact that two of the last three presidents we have elected have secured their victories only in the Electoral College and actually lost the popular vote. So now, let us examine the original reasons for the Electoral College’s inception, as well as the pros and cons of its continued use in a modern United States of America.

When creating the laws of this country, the founding fathers were concerned that a tyrant could ride a wave of popularity, but ultimately misguided support into the office of the presidency. So they created the Electoral College to distance the populace from the actual electing of the president. This system was also implemented because information took much longer to gather in the 1700s, so it was much easier for large groups of people to simply give their opinions to one person and have him ride on horseback to the capital to vote.

Pros:

• The Electoral gives voice to smaller states that may not have the population of larger ones like California and Texas, but whose voices still deserve to be heard.
• Many people feel that large populations of people who are so densely packed together (i.e. big cities) should not have the power to control the government of the United States, which has power over a vast continent of territory. The Electoral College lessens the impact that those large population centers have, allowing for more geographically diverse political ideas to carry weight.
• The added power that smaller states hold in this system encourages candidates and the country as a whole to include them in national campaigns and conversations they might otherwise not be considered important enough to be involved in. In other words, if the Electoral College did not exist, winning the presidency would become a matter of winning only a few population-heavy states, taking away the significance that many Midwestern and northeastern states hold.

Cons:

• Because the Electoral College system is entirely based on the states, it excludes all the U.S. citizens who live in territories. It certainly seems odd that U.S. citizens are not permitted to have any say in who governs them, especially in a race where one of the candidates took such a strong stance on immigration and others outside the borders of the country.
• The Electoral College does not always represent the will of the people, due to the base amount of electoral votes given to states. This year’s election of Donald Trump was the most recent example of a president being elected but losing the popular vote, bringing the percentage of presidents who did not receive the most votes but still won their election up to seven percent.
• The Electoral College discourages voter participation. Unless you live in a swing state or a state that allows portions of its electoral votes to go to different candidates, to many people it feels as though their vote will not have any impact on the election. According to the United States Election Project, only 58.2% of eligible voters participated in this year’s general elections, and numbers were especially low among young people. Changing the system to make young people feel like they are truly responsible for the direction this country goes for the next four years may do a great deal for voter participation.

Donald Trump has been elected as our next president, and no amount of marching in the streets will change that fact. But if you expect everyone to peacefully accept the results of a democratic election, first ensure the system that elected him is truly democratic.