The electoral college was something that the founding fathers came up with in order to compromise between having an all majority vote and having Congress elect the President. We still follow laws that the founding fathers created because they were terrified of a leader becoming too powerful and abusing that power. That was 240 years ago, and there needs to be a change to the system on how the President is elected, especially the electoral college. We need to have an all majority vote, and let the American people decide who they want to be the leader of our country. The American government needs to trust the people and believe that we are going to elect the best candidate to be the most powerful person in the world.
The way the electoral college works is the state political parties choose party loyalists to serve in the electoral college. Whichever party’s candidate wins the most popular votes in the state gets to have its members cast the state’s Electoral College votes. Because the members of the Electoral College are chosen by the parties, they usually cast their votes for their party’s candidate for President. Even though the American people are the ones that actually and go out and vote for the President, the Electoral College decides who becomes President. That system is no way to choose who actually becomes President because the majority vote could end up not actually selecting who wins the election. This happened back in the 2000 election, where Al Gore actually won the popular vote with about 500,000 more votes than George W. Bush. However, Bush ended up winning the election because he received 271 electoral college votes, compared to Gore having 266. This happened once again in this past election, and I really think this election put me over the edge in believing that the electoral college needs to be eliminated or reformed. Donald Trump won the electoral college vote, so he is going to be the next President of the United States. On the other hand, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by only about 200,000 votes. Even though that is not a very big margin, she still won the majority vote of the people who voted. In reality, more people voted for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and that is who should be President right now.
In order to qualify to win the Presidential election, the candidate has to have over 270 electoral college votes. Therefore, even though Hillary won the popular vote, she did not win the election because he was unable to receive enough electoral college votes. This is not the only time this has happened, but it really shows the major flaw in the electoral college. When a candidate wins the popular vote in a state, they receive all the electoral college votes out of that state- a winner takes all system. Two states do not follow that, but the whole winner take all system is extremely flawed. There seriously needs to be a change to the system. The electoral college was made by our founding fathers, and that was 240 years ago. We cannot keep following laws that were made that long ago, with all the change that has happened in our country in regards to who gets to vote. The electoral college needs to be revised or removed completely, so there is just a popular vote on who determines the next President of the United States.
No matter who you supported in this past election, I think everyone realizes that there needs to be a change that is brought to Washington and our government cannot keep functioning under the same laws that the Founding Fathers created so many years ago. Hopefully, the American people realize that change needs to occur soon, or else America as we know it may never exist again.
