It seems like with every election the same question about America's voting process gets asked: What is the Electoral College and why does it exist? I'm not going to focus on what the Electoral College is so much as discuss why we have and if it's a process we still want/need in America. If you don't know what the Electoral College is or need a refresher, click here to watch a quick video explaining the basics.
So one of the primary reasons the founding fathers decided to use the process of the Electoral College was because they actually feared the power a direct democracy could have. Basically, they didn't want less populated areas to be overlooked and ignored when it came time to electing a president. If you went with a popular vote system like some people suggest, it would lead to candidates passing over primarily rural states and counties to focus on the more heavily populated cities. This is why low population states like Wyoming have more people represented per college vote than a big state like California. It helps keep a balance and prevents regional, population majorities from taking over.
The Electoral College is also an important part of maintaining federalism in the U.S government which is basically the co-existence of general (federal) government with regional (state) government. It does this by ensuring the previously mentioned point of ignoring the regional minority does not occur. This allows for a constitutional majority to elect the president. Federalism helps to preserve a national, cohesive moderation of political ideas.
No system can be perfect and the Electoral College is no exception. One of the biggest perceived flaws of the system is that it can give too much power to small and swing states. Wait a minute, didn't we just talk about how the whole point of the College was to keep the balance of power? Unfortunately, this a complex system with complex problems. Some believe it's better to have a little too much influence than to have no sway at all. That can be scary thinking but it's just as scary to imagine not having any say.
One of the other big drawbacks to the process is the oft-cited and just recently realized scenario where a presidential candidate can be chosen without winning the popular vote. This leads to the argument that a direct vote should be implemented over the college when making the decision. That's ok to make that argument but what most people don't realize is that removes the aforementioned aspects of federalism to our elections. Both processes are democratic, but popular vote removes one of the foundations that the country was founded on. Whether that is right or wrong is up for debate and for us a country to decide.
So is the Electoral college right for America? From a fundamental ideological perspective, I think the Founding Fathers had the right idea. Even though it may not the best we have, we can always try and make changes, it's been done before. What do you think of the Electoral College? I hope this inspired you to learn more about our election process and help you better understand some of the histories of the process that determines our next president. I hardly scratched the surface on this topic and there's so much to learn about the College so I encourage you to research the topic more if this article interested you.
