The way I see it, Americans should vote for the U.S. president through nationwide popular vote, meaning that each individual citizen's vote would be counted equally.
Despite this, the United States uses the electoral college which makes it so some people's votes are higher valued than others.
How is this fair, you may ask? It isn't, and that's the point.
You see, the founding fathers created the electoral college in 1804 because smaller states thought their voices would be drowned out by the bigger states. They also feared that candidates would spend less time campaigning towards them since they didn't have a big population.
However, the number of representatives is based off of a state's population, so no matter what, the smaller states still have fewer electors compared to big states such as California and Texas. So in reality, the problem was never actually fixed.
With the use of the electoral college, many of the bigger states in the U.S. are left out of the campaign trail that many of the candidates dedicate themselves to gain votes.
For example since California is a mainly democratic state, there was only one instance where Obama came for a short period in 2012 and his running-mate Romney only went to California to gain money for his campaign.
Most of the candidates only go around to the swing states which, coincidentally enough, are the smaller states that pushed for the electoral college in the first place.
Many believe that if the electoral college wasn't in the Constitution it would be struck down almost immediately as unconstitutional because it violates the principle of one person, one vote. There have been three times in election vote history so far, 1876, 1888 and 2000, that the person with the most votes for the presidency didn't win because the other candidate had more electoral votes. That's a five percent failure rate on something that our nation swears is the most accurate way to choose our commander in chief. If the people could just vote directly there wouldn't be any failure rates at all.
Due to this election and the terrible choices both sides have, it has been drilled over and over again in my head from all angles of the media that voting is so important. "Your vote matters," they say, "It is your responsibility as an American to have your voice heard."
Well I say phooey to that! We don't have a voice in many of the states in the U.S. My voice is taken away from me just because of where I live! California hasn't voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1988 and Texas hasn't voted for a Democratic candidate since 1976. The only time my voice is heard is for local matters like who I want as my city's mayor and who I want on the school board, and to be completely honest I don't pay attention to any of that stuff.
I believe that the U.S. would benefit greatly if a nationwide popular vote was used to decide the presidency. Although the candidates may not win as many states as they would with an electoral vote, at least each vote made by the people would count towards their total number of votes.
Every person's vote should matter and be a deciding factor in who is going to be our nation's next leader.
