Election. It’s the word on everyone’s lips, and has been for the better part of the year. Everyone has his candidate, and most people aren’t bashful about announcing who his or hers is. Unfortunately, come November, only about three-fiftieths of the population will have a true say in deciding the next President of the United States.
This, of course, is a result of the electoral college. Yes, the electoral college, the outdated and outmoded mechanism that traditionalists seem willing to lay down and die for, is what truly decides the election. You see, the truth, as demonstrated by the New York Times, is that only about 7 of our 50 great states, representing a whopping one-tenth of the nation’s population, are truly in contention come November. Factor out voter participation and you are left with three-fiftieths (19.77 million) of our nation’s population that truly calls the shots this fall.
While I am all for honoring the constitution and the founding fathers’ intentions, I think we can all agree that given the current circumstances, Jefferson, Washington, Hamilton and the rest of the founders would not have developed the same system that they did hundreds of years ago. Advocates of the college argue that eliminating it strips the states of yet another of their dwindling rights. But shouldn’t the will of the people come ahead of the rights of the states?
One can argue the electoral college until heart’s content, but boil the truth down to this: The college has changed the results of several elections throughout our history. If you were to sit down and redevelop how we elect the president, could you possibly develop the electoral college and find it equitable?
Ultimately, the apathy of the states as well as the Congress needs to be ended, by a constitutional amendment that gives the vote back to 274 million of us that don’t live in the battleground states this fall.
Sources:
The New York Times
http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/president/whos-ahead/key-states/map.html
Populations (US Census 2000) via
http://www.wikipedia.org
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7 comments:
Ray Gun,
I disagree.
I agree with your general idea, that the current system leaves many figuratively uncounted. However, I feel that the blame is not as much as the system's fault (for, it was specifically designed to buffer the damage of the unwieldy masses) but instead that of the pre-election polls. For instance, would California necessarily vote Democrat and Texas vote Republican if polling data did not dissuade voters that their vote counted? Also, what sort of alternative would you suggest that wouldn't lead to equivalent complications? Do you think strict popular majority (or perhaps, largest minority if a major third party comes to the ticket) would be the best imaginable system?
I like your argument here. I've always wondered why an amendment to get rid of the electoral college didn't come along after the 2000 snafu. Admittedly I'm not really familiar with the argument for keeping the college.
As for your concern, Tom, how about we just keep the House vote in case of a plurality.
Ray Gun- I completely agree with your argument that the electoral college is outdated. When the electoral college was instated, the country had fewer and less well-informed voters, and the electoral college more or less upheld the decision of the population. However, now the electoral college has a greater effect on election outcomes than before, to the extent of changing the actual outcome. I feel that it would only parallel the intentions of the founders if the electoral college system were amended or altogether abolished.
That our commonsense notion of democratic equality, instilled from middle school textbooks, is threatened by the electoral college I do not dispute. There are, however, useful aspects of the current system which you ignore. Although you may lament the paucity of campaign advertising in your swingless state, I would just as soon banish it entirely from my Pennsylvanian small screen. Also, I cannot but take umbrage with your Constitutional conjecture about Madison and the others; I am convinced that the founders would find their system fair, not faulty. After all, they stressed the importance of a sharing of federal and state responsibilities, and ensured that small states and regions would not be bullied by their bulkier brethren. Although the electoral college directs candidates to a small number of states, these are geographically and demographically diverse. I would rather force Obama to opine in Ohio than simply allow him to ameliorate his winning precentage in New York City or Los Angeles.
One small yet interesting benefit of the electoral college is that it facilitates the fixing of voter fraud. Mechanical malfunctions of voting machines such as the Hanging Chads of Florida cause messy recount problems. The recount of the 2000 election was complicated and tedious enough, but it would have been worse had the electoral college system not been in place: without the system, we would have had to recount the votes of the entire nation instead of just those of Florida. The reason is that cousins of the Hanging Chads no doubt existed in other states, but since the relative percentage of those machines was too small to have affected the outcome of those states, recounts were not necessary. The electoral college reduces problems to specific battleground states, shortening the amount of time needed for damage control. But furthermore, if the electoral college did not exist, politicians would have a bigger incentive to try and actively commit voter fraud in obscure regions of the US. It would be hard to detect the illegitimate vote here and there, and, practically speaking, extremely difficult to uncover small instances of fraud that add up to a large impact.
Obviously the issue of voter fraud is one of many to be discussed about the effectiveness of the electoral college, but combined with the idea that presidential candidates are forced to appeal to more moderate people in battleground states instead of party hardliners in gimme states, this issue can be another compelling reason to continue the use of the electoral college.
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