The Importance Of Abolishing The Electoral College

The Electoral College has remained a United States voting process since the founding fathers established it into the Constitution. Essentially, the Electoral College is the final process of choosing the President of the United States; the process involves having voters from across the country vote for their favored candidate on Election Day. The votes are then organized by state and each state gets Electorates that will represent the people’s votes; the electorates, that were chosen to represent your state, then vote for who your state’s majority choice is in a final ballot that will choose the President. While this method has been working for over 200 years, it is not a just way to collect the votes of the people of America. The Electoral College is unbalanced and should be abolished. The first reason why the Electoral College should not exist is because the system does
not truly allow voters to vote, if you think about it, the Electoral College votes for voters. Voters are not directly contributing in the final election that matters, they are simply telling Electorates to vote for them. You may be thinking, “Well what’s the problem with that, as long as my voice is being heard, I have no complaints” However, your voice may not be getting heard at all; sometimes, the Electoral College can be inaccurate. Take a look at the results from the Election of 1824. Statistics show that John Quincy Adams got 84 Electoral votes for his 115,696 Popular votes, Henry Clay received 37 Electoral votes for 47,136 Popular votes, Andrew Jackson with 99 Electoral votes for his 152,933 Popular votes and William Crawford racking 41 Electoral votes for his 46,979 Popular votes. Notice that the Electoral votes did not match up with the Popular votes for Henry Clay and William Crawford. Even though Clay had more Popular votes, Crawford gained more Electoral votes during the final election.
You have to remember that the country’s citizens are not directly voting for the President, the government simply allocates Electorates in the way that they think is right, so those Electorates can vote for the people. Considering the fact that it is possible for the Electoral College to misinterpret popular votes, it doesn’t seem wise to continue the Electoral College system. Another reason as to why the Electoral College should be abolished is because the process holds a heavy favor towards the concept of a “Two Party System”, preventing smaller third parties from winning. Fairvote.org, a voting information website, states: “Since most states distribute their electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis, the smaller party has no chance to gain support without seeming to take this support from one of the major parties. Few people will support a party that never wins, especially when they are supporting that party at the possible expense of their least favorite candidate taking power”
(FairVote). Forcing the Two Party System down people’s throats is most definitely not a good thing; first of all, it just isn’t right to cut third parties out of the race like that as it gives third parties even less of a voice, but more importantly, forcing a Two Party System limits the choices of voters: “Because of our two-party system, voters often find themselves voting for the "lesser of two evils," rather than a candidate they really feel would do the best job. The Electoral College inadvertently reinforces this two party system, where third parties cannot enter the race without being tagged as ‘spoilers.’” (FairVote). The quote shown here displays a dilemma that should not be happening in the first place. Americans should not have to vote for “the lesser of two evils”, they should be able to vote for who they believe is the most capable; with the third parties being extremely limited, it is sometimes hard for certain people to vote for who they truly want. Since the Electoral College is still in place, sometimes America must vote for the lesser of two evils. Along with it’s inaccuracy and limitations, the Electoral College holds yet another burden that furthers itself from becoming reliable in the eyes of those against it. It is 100%, completely possible for the Electoral College to have “faithless” or “unbound” electors. Unbound electors are essentially Electorates who decide not to vote for the candidate their state had them vote for. According to FairVote, “29 states and the District of Columbia have legal control over how their electors vote in the Electoral College. This means their electors are bound by state law and/or by state or party pledge to cast their vote for the candidate that wins the statewide popular vote. At the same time, this also means that there are 21 states in the union that have no requirements of, or legal control over, their electors. Therefore, despite the outcome of a state’s popular vote, the state’s electors are ultimately free to vote in whatever manner they please, including an abstention, with no legal repercussions.” Obviously, this is a problem within the Electoral College system. The government should not allow an electorate to selfishly vote differently from what he/she was intended to; such actions deprive the representation of the voter’s will, negating the purpose of having an Electoral College in the first place. Why must we allow a system of election, that has various flaws, be the main method of choosing the leader of the United States? In conclusion, the Electoral College is a bunch of nonsense that conservatives hold dear for the sake of tradition. Instead of having the Electoral College, The college inaccurately represents the votes of the people, effectively eliminates any third party and to top it all off, the Electorates can go AWOL. A flawed system should either be fixed or replaced, keeping the Electoral College as it is would not be the right choice for this country. Perhaps allowing a direct voting method that counts the individual votes would work or maybe that plan would be incredibly flawed as well, perhaps we’ll never find out. The perfect election system probably does not exist however, the Electoral College is definitely not the system we should be using.