This week, the United States elected the 45th president of our country. Even though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by around half a million votes, Donald Trump took the presidency. Why was this? This was because of a group called the Electoral College.
What is the Electoral College? It is a group made up of 538 people. These are the people who basically choose the president. That's right. Your vote really doesn't matter.
See, these 538 people who vote are spread out through each state. The amount of Electoral voters in each state depends on the population. If your state is smaller, you have more electoral voters. On voting day, they get to cast their own vote on who should become president. A candidate has to have 269 votes to win. That is around half of the Electoral College. So basically, either one is going to win based on the Electoral College's vote no matter what. Trump got 290 of their votes, while Clinton got 228 of their votes. Even though Clinton had the majority vote of the whole population, Trump still won.
How is the Electoral College set up? Well once the populations casts our vote on which candidate we prefer, this determines who is an Electoral College voter for our state. It is a whole bunch of unnecessary jumble. Whoever is selected to be an Electoral College voter, can vote for whoever they want, no matter what the population said. You can find out more about why this is a horrible system here and another one here
I am not upset about the outcome of the president. I am upset because the President we choose as a nation was not the candidate selected. Our government will govern all of us, not just a few. It is our right, and solely our right to choose who will become president. It is the President for 300 million of us, not just 538.
Who knows what these 538 people are like. Do they understand what it is like to live in a poor family? Do they understand what it is like to be a minority? We have no idea what type of person they are, and what their views are. There is not many rules as to who can be in the Electoral College. Article 2, Section 1, Clause 1 of the amendment says that no one holding an office shall be an elector. It also states that no one who has committed rebellion or offered aid to enemies shall be an elector. That is all.
If you don't agree with having the Electoral College as the voting system, you can sign the petition to abolish it here.
I wish this country well during the next 4 years, and I hope that we can make a change for our votes to actually matter.
