The Pros And Cons Of The Electoral College

Are You Being Cheated? Over the years the Electoral College has been proven to be outdated. People wonder constantly if their vote counts anymore or, if this method is affective any longer. There are three main reasons why the Electoral College is outdated and should be abolished. The presidential candidates only pay attention to the states with the most Electoral votes, we also have a larger and more educated population then when this was originally set up, lastly it does not seem as if your vote really counts since there have been at least four occurrences where the president with the popular vote has lost the election. The first problem with the Electoral College is that the presidential candidates only pay attention to the states
with a high amount of Electoral votes. The problem is that each state is allotted a certain number of votes which equals to the number of senators, two, plus the number of representatives in that state (Clayton 30). This is why we see presidential candidates paying attention to the states with the larger amount of electoral votes and leaving the smaller states out. This concept causes us to have a voting population that is going into vote based solely on what they have seen on televisions and read in papers. The presidential candidate only needs two hundred seventy votes to win the election even though the total number of electoral votes is five hundred thirty-eight (Clayton 30). This could be an issue because the presidential candidate could become lazy because when you think about it, it really is not that hard to get two hundred seventy votes. These votes are not hard to get because California holds fifty-five, New York holds thirty-one, and Florida holds twenty-seven of those votes. This is another thing that causes states with low votes to get ignored. No one is going to pay attention to a state with three votes when there is a state that gets fifty-five. Another reason the Electoral College is believed to be outdated is that we have a larger and more educated population now than we did when it was originally set up.
When how to elect a president was first being discussed the idea of a direct popular vote was rejected. They felt as if the citizens were not well enough educated to make informed decisions and they would thereby be compromising the democratic process (Clayton 29). This is no longer true. We have a larger and more educated population now. Look how many people have graduated from high school and have some type of degree compared to then. Also, a lot more people are literate now. Another reason the rejected direct popular vote is because this would put the southern states at a disadvantage since the slaves were not allowed to vote (Clayton 29). This is yet another way our population has grown and changed. Slaves are no longer an issue and have not been one for a long time. Are society is changing and growing everyday, something that may have worked for the people back then does not mean it will work for the people now. The last problem with the Electorial College is that it seems as if our vote does not count. One of the things that is supposed to be so great about America is that we, as Americans, get to choose our leader. The sad thing is with this system the probability of your vote counting is very
slim.
One of the motivations for voting is that one vote can make a difference. In a presidential election, the probability that your vote is decisive is equal to the probability that your state is necessary for an electoral college win, times the probability the vote in your state is tied in that event. We computed these probabilities a week before the 2008 presidential election, using state-by-state election forecasts based on the latest polls. The states where a single vote was most likely to matter are New Mexico, Virginia, New Hampshire, and Colorado, where your vote had an approximate 1 in 10 million chance of determining the national election outcome. On average, a voter in America had a 1 in 60 million chance of being decisive in the presidential election. (qtd. In Gelman, Silver and Edlin)
At this point people start to think what is even the point in voting? Their vote has a one in six millon chance that it will count so what would it matter if they didn’t vote. The way this is going we might as well just let the government decide who will lead our country and cut out voting all together. If a presidential candidate was to take one thousand voters in New Mexico and persuade them to vote for him they would have a one point three percent chance that the states Electorial vote would change (Gelman, Silver and Edlin). A more recent example of this is the AL Gore and Bush election. They had to recount the votes several times because they were so close. AL Gore won the popular vote but because Bush won the electoral vote, he got to be president. The sad part is, just because your state has voted for one president does not mean that the electors have to give your states electoral votes to that person. They can pretty much do whatever they feel is best with it (Walbert). So, even if the majority of your state votes for one president they may not even win your Electoral votes which means your vote really did not matter. In the end people are starting to see that they are being cheated with the Electoral College system in place. It in no way seems to be what peoples idea of democracy is. They don’t get the attention they deserve from the presidintal candidates, their intellegence is being insulted because they cannot make a direct decision on who their leader is, and finally their vote does not even count because states can do whatever they want with the Electoral votes no matter what the popular vote says. This is sending a bad message to Americans. It is saying “Who cares what you want? You do not matter anyways.”
Works Cited
Clayton, Dewey M. "The Electoral College: An Idea Whose Time Has Come and Gone." The Black Scholar 37 (n.d.): 28-41.
Gelman, Andrew, Nate Silver and Aaron Edlin. "What Is The Probability Your Vote Will Make A Difference?" Ecnomic Inquiry 50.2 (2010): 321-326. Web.
Walbert, David. Does my vote count? Understanding the electoral college. n.d. Web. 8 10 2013.