Disclaimer: Although some of this article is fact, most of it is my personal opinion. I'm in no way saying that people who like the government and/or the current candidates are bad people. I'm only suggesting a way to improve it. Now, on with the show.
Before anything, let me just say that our government isn't perfect and it will never be. There will always be someone who won't approve of it. But, this doesn't mean we shouldn't search for the best option. In fact, our election system alone could use some major improvement. So I've developed three ways for the election system to become better. I'm showcasing one way every week for three weeks. So check back next week for part two!
1. Replace the electoral college with the popular vote
There's a lot of debate over the electoral college. I'm going to put these debates to rest.
So the Electoral College was created to give every state equal chance and need for the president to visit those states, while still being "fair". There are a couple of problems with this.
The electoral college gives votes to states and not to people. Specifically, 538 are distributed among the 50 states. Now, one of the rules for the electoral college is that every state, no matter the population, starts out with at least two votes before distributing by the population. This would normally be fine, but it disproportionately gives votes to states. Let me explain. If we distributed the 538 votes by population, states like Alaska, Hawaii, and Maine would only have one or two votes. Instead, they have three or four. Because of these and many other states having more votes than they should, over ten states have votes missing. Texas actually would need six more votes, and California would need ten. If we divide the amount of votes by the population, each vote represents 574,000 people. Which means that over 5 million people aren't being represented in California.
Five. Million. People.
That's more than the entire population of Ireland.
Now, one of the biggest arguments against popular voting is that presidents would only visit the big cities. But, in fact, if you add up the population of the top ten cities, including New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, doesn't even add up to 10% of the population. Even the top 100 don't even add up to 20%! Interestingly, although it is extremely rare, it is actually possible to win the candidacy with only 22% of the popular votes. You would do this by visiting the states that have those "extra" votes.
First, you'd start with Wyoming, who has only 18 percent of the population, but has .56 percent of the electoral college vote. But, because you don't need all of them to vote for you (only half of the population and one more AKA majority vote) you only need .09% of the vote. Keep doing this until you have over half of the electoral college votes, and you'll only have 21.91% of the popular vote. Remember, this is the most extreme situation. But the fact that it's a flaw that exists means that it need to be improved. All in all, if we remove the electoral college, all of these problems will be solved. Everyone will get equal votes, no one will get under represented or over represented, and there will be no way for the popular "loser" to win.
Checl back next week when we discuss the second way to better the election: letting people vote for as many or as few people as they want.
