Why The Electoral College Is Wrong

The United States always claims that we are living in a democracy, but do we really? For centuries, the Electoral College has been selecting our presidents rather than the voters of the United States. The Electoral College was put in place to compromise the congressional and popular votes during a presidential election. What’s the compromise when only the congressional votes count? Voters from each state elect a person to go vote for them, but some electors can still vote whichever way they please and there is nothing that we can do about it. In Robert Speel’s article titled “ These 3 Common Arguments For Preserving the Electoral College Are Wrong,” published by Time Magazine, Speel talks about the common arguments people make to why the Electoral
College works and points out why each argument is flawed. Throughout the article, Speel uses the warrant model to support his claims with reasons and evidence and he also uses the rhetorical triangle to help further persuade the audience. Throughout the article, Speel makes claims on why three different arguments are flawed and uses the warrant model to support his claims.
The first flawed argument Speel mentions was that the electors filter the passions of the people. His reason to why the argument is flawed is that electors don’t always vote in favor of the people. To complete the warrant he provides statistical evidence, such as “one Gore elector....cast a blank ballot in 2000,”(Speel) and a “Kerry elector...in 2004 voted for vice presidential candidate John Edwards for both president and vice president.” (Speel) Even though there are only a few electors that make mistakes, it can still make a big impact on the direction of the election. For example, in the 2016 election most Republicans were not big Trump supporters, but when voting they were required by their state law to keep their party pledges. Speel stated that the Republican electors could have voted for Paul Ryan to stop Trump from gaining the majority and that would have left the decision to the U.S. House of Representatives. Here Speel is stating that most electors when voting feel obliged to stay loyal to their party even though they and the people they represent don’t like the candidate in of their party. The next argument that Speel states is flawed is the thought that rural areas would get ignored if we didn’t have an Electoral College. His reason to why the argument is flawed is that the Electoral College actually “causes candidates to
spend all their campaign time in cities in 10 or 12 states rather than in 30, 40 or 50 states.”(Speel) Either way, candidates still wouldn’t campaign in a rural area in both the Electoral College and popular vote because there wouldn’t be many votes to gain compared to urban areas. Speel then supports his claims by providing data from the 2016 campaign that show 53% of campaign events were most spent in only four states and in battleground states. Most of the Republican candidates never went to 27 states, which includes almost all of rural America (Speel). The argument that the Electoral College prevents rural areas from being ignored is useless because the evidence shows that no matter what, candidates will always go to where they can get the most votes. The last flawed argument mentioned was that the Electoral College creates a mandate to lead. His reason to why he believes it’s flawed is that “it can also lead to backlash and resentment in the majority or near-majority of the population whose expressed preferences get ignored.” (Speel) He next used the anti-trump protest across the country before and after the election as evidence to support his claim.
To further strengthen his argument, Speel utilizes the rhetorical triangle.
The use of logos was found throughout the whole article as he presents many statistical examples to support his argument. For example, Speel was talking about the drastic differences between popular votes and electoral votes; he gives an example about how Donald Trump won Pennsylvania and Florida with about 200,000 votes and earned 49 electoral votes. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton won Massachusetts by almost a million votes but earned only 11 electoral votes (Speel). Here, Speel is trying to expose one of the many flaws of the Electoral College by showing that it does not make sense that a candidate can beat their opponent by more than 800,000 votes in one state and still not get close to half the amount of electoral votes that their opponent got. Although the article is mainly full of logos, Speel was still able to insert some ethos and pathos. In the beginning of the article, Speel talks about Hillary Clinton’s promise about abolishing the Electoral college when she took office as the New York Senator. He next states that “She never pursued her promise – a decision that must haunt her today. In this year’s election, she won at least 600,000 more votes than Donald Trump, but lost by a significant margin in the Electoral College.”(Speel) Here, Speel effectively uses pathos to make the audience feel bad for Hillary Clinton because the one thing that she tried to get rid of was the reason why she lost
her opportunity of becoming president in 2016. Because of the Electoral College America lost its chance of having its first female president. Next, Speel uses ethos to show that his article is credible. For instance, Speel states that legal scholar, Akhil Reed Amar, has noted that one of the main reasons why the Electoral College was created to protect southern slaveholder interest, which is irrelevant in today's presidential elections. Speel uses Akhil Reed Amar as a credible source because Akhil Reed Amar is a Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University and has also won awards from the American Bar Association and the Federalist Society. Akhil Reed Amar’s statement was used to help further support Speel’s claim to why the Electoral College is biased.
Overall the article was persuasive because it filled with many logical facts and statistics. I like how Speel used currents, such as the election of 2016 since it was very entertaining and was an excellent example that supported his claim. However, I think that the article was more based on facts and it did not have enough ethos and pathos. Although the facts were very convincing, I do believe that the author should have used more pathos to have the reader feel like their votes do not count; to show them how unfair the system is and how the Electoral College is robbing Americans of their democracy. I also think that Speel should have used more ethos to make his argument even more persuasive. The article was heavily weighted on the logos side of the rhetorical triangle; I believe the article would have been more effective if the author had equally used all parts of the rhetorical triangle.