Electoral College Fair Research Paper

Melissa Douglas
April 17, 2013

Is The Electoral College Fair?

The Electoral College has been a topic of discussion ever since the election of 2000. When you rely on this system, there could easily be a different outcome in the electoral vote and the popular vote. With the Electoral College in place, some of Americans’ votes are basically worthless. When the Electoral College was put into place it was a solution to a problem of the 1780’s, now in the 21st century, all Americans should have a voice. Although some people feel the Electoral College is just, the Electoral College is an unfair and outdated way of picking a President; the popular vote is the best way to elect a President in the best interest for the public. The Electoral
But the method that the United States uses to elect its president violates this principle by making sure that some peoples votes count more than others. If the 538 Electoral College votes were split up equally among the population (309,000,000/ 538) then every votes would represent 574,000 people. But this is not what happens because the Electoral College only gives votes to states, not people. For example, there are 11.5 million people in Ohio so to be fair they should get 20 votes. But the Electoral College doesn’t give Ohio 20 votes. It gives them eighteen. Where did those other two votes go? Those votes go to states like Rhode Island. Rhode Island has 1.1 million people in it, so it should have about 2 votes, but instead it gets four. Why? According to the rules of the Electoral College, every state, no matter how many people live there, each get three votes to start with, then the votes are redistributed. Because of this, a lot of states that don’t have that many citizens, and should only have one or two votes, now have three or four. This makes votes in some states count more than others. For example, Alaska is a very small state but has 3 electoral votes, making the weight of their vote 2.5. North Carolina however, who gave up two of their votes to make sure one of the smaller states had at least three, has 15 Electoral College votes, making each vote weighted at 0.91 of a vote. A Vermonters vote, according
In the last two months of the 2008 Presidential Election, only eighteen states received even a single visit from a candidate. Just two of those states have very small populations. So the Electoral College doesn’t make candidates care about small states (Mackay). The Electoral College makes the campaigning for the Presidency very focused on just a few states. These are called “battleground states”. The outcome of the elections in these states could decide the entire race. Because of the way this method pans out, there is “virtually no campaign” in states that already have an obvious winner like “Kerry with Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and Bush with Texas and Utah” in the 2004 election