When reviewing all of the previous presidents and their elections, it has become increasingly clear that without a significant change to the U.S. election system, there will be fewer people who are going to want to vote in future elections. This prompts a question: how did these candidates get elected?
It is important to note that our current system is pretty much the same as it was at the founding of our country, with the only difference being that the Constitution now allows for more people to vote. We still have the Electoral Colleges and the winner-take-all system, both of which are unlikely to get changed or removed, despite having significant flaws. This is simply due to how long they have been in place.
Starting with the Electoral College, this system was created due to the fact that most people were illiterate and uneducated at the time. The founding fathers feared that if left to their own devices, the people of America would inevitably end up picking the “wrong” person to lead the country. However, I feel that in this day and age, the Electoral College is simply not needed. People are more educated now than they were 300 years ago, and even if you feel you aren’t, thanks to the internet, you can be. We literally have access to infinite information at our fingertips. In addition, the Electoral College can be underrepresenting of people in some states. For example, in California, there are 11 million Democrats, while there are only 6 million Republicans. This means that no matter what, the Republicans will not win. But why? Not because they aren’t voting, they certainly are, but the reason that republican candidates won’t ever win California is because of the winner-take-all system.
The winner-take-all system is a system where whichever party wins the majority of a certain state’s vote, gets all of their electoral votes. So let’s use North Carolina for example. Say that the Republican candidate gets 40% of the popular vote, the Democratic candidate gets 30% and the Green Party Candidate gets 30% as well. Because the Republicans got the largest number of votes in this scenario, the Republican candidate would receive all 16 electoral votes of North Carolina, leaving several millions of people feeling unrepresented.
While I personally have no issues with our electoral system, I do have issues with people being underrepresented. I believe that more states should either, A: remove the Electoral College and the winner-take-all system entirely or B: switch to a style more similar to that of Maine and Nebraska, where they divide their electoral votes up into districts. This district system means that more than one presidential candidate can receive votes from a state, thus, there is a wider representation of the state’s population.
Not changing something just because that’s how it’s been for hundreds of years is detrimental to the progression of our country. With our society constantly changing, it is time for our voting system to keep up with the times.
