For a country that is known for “letting freedom ring” it’s pretty shocking to see how corrupt our electoral process is. Aspects such as the electoral college and gerrymandering are considered constitutional when, in most cases, they really should not be. Though they were deemed necessary by our Founding Fathers, they have fed into a corrupt government where American citizen’s votes don’t even count most of the time. It’s time to reform our electoral process once and for all.
If you ask the average American citizen how the electoral college works they probably won’t know. A month ago even I wouldn’t be able to fully explain it to you. The electoral college essentially makes it so that average Americans are not directly participating in the election of President of the United States. Now, if most American citizens knew this surely they would be less encouraged to vote in the future elections. Though average voter’s votes are counted as “popular votes” those votes do not mean anything. Article II Section 1 of the Constitution states that:
"The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President."
The 2000 United States presidential election Bush v. Gore was one that really opened people’s eyes up to the flaws of the electoral college. The fact that Al Gore won the popular vote - the vote that sums up all citizens in America, the vote that should count - by 543,895 should have been enough to turn our system around. Al Gore won more individual citizen’s votes but because the electoral college is a winner take all system, George Bush won.
Term limits are a very important thing in our country. Presidential term limits help us to get a refresh every few years of the person in power. It also keeps us out of a dictatorship. Our country runs best when we have an equal time share between Republicans and Democrats. So why wouldn’t this be the same for congress? Nowhere in the United States Constitution is there anything about congressional term limits. This would allow new people the chance to be elected into congress and eliminate the possibility of the same people being stuck in power until they die. We all know that congresspeople form unfair financial ties to lobbyists and other special interest groups. Setting congressional term limits would allow less time for these possible groups to infiltrate and derail the congresspeople from the work they really should be doing.
Redistricting is a fair practice that the government must use in order for it to work properly. People die, people are born, people move away; redistricting is necessary to make sure that congressional districts stay even as these natural things happen. Gerrymandering, on the other hand, is the deliberate, biased, redrawing of these districts to favor certain parties and win elections. An easy way to manage gerrymandering is to not allow the people who are to be voted into power to redraw these boundaries. We need an outside source to do this, maybe even a computer, to be sure these redraws will be completely unbiased and fair.
Though our electoral processes are very flawed here in America, they can be fixed quite easily. Educating people on these problems is the real way to. If I, personally, had never learned about these problems our government had, I would still be completely oblivious and think we lived in a fair society. Educating Americans about the little power they have regarding their own lives will inspire them to change that.
