On Saturday, January 10th, 1779, our nation’s form of electing a president was born. In the election people of the united states would vote for what candidate they believed in. The candidate with the most votes would go on to be the president. This is still how many of the elections we see today run, according to, TIME Magazine. State governors and other leaders are elected by how deeply people want them. Many people saw this as a problem back in the 1800s. Many didn’t want slaves to vote and many saw the size of states unfair when campaigning. Our nation then gave birth to the, Electoral College. There are many problems with the electoral college, we need to get rid of it and move backwards into the popular vote that we used to have.
The Electoral College is a form of voting put to work in, “1804”, according to History.com. The EC looks at how many members of the government there are in a state and then assigns them a number. When all 50 states are added up the total vote count is 538. This means that the runner that reaches 270 votes first automatically wins. Many people wanted the EC as an idea to solve common problems in the election. The EC makes sure that the visit all states when campaigning. If we had popular vote that would mean that most candidates would not even bother to visit small states that did not have as much people. With the EC each state is very valuable and each vote counts even more. This is not as big of a problem now as it was back then. Back then candidates traveled and talked much more than they do now. In our elections now, most speeches, rallies, and debates are talked about and broadcasted all over the internet. What is the point of candidates traveling the same amount as before if they can virtually travel all around the country? This is one reason why the Electoral College is irrelevant and needs to be thrown away.
In the 58 elections that we have had over the years (according to 270towin) 5 of them have been deeply affected by the electoral college. The latest one being in 2016! In 2016 the two Democrat and Republican candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, where having their electoral and popular votes counted. Popular vote is the total number of votes a candidate got (not electoral votes). When the votes were counted Donald Trump won the election by a landslide. Trump won by over 74 electoral votes, according to, politico.com. This was a shock to most people looking at how Clinton won the popular vote by over 2.1%. This means that more people in the US wanted Clinton as their president, yet Trump won the states with the largest amount of votes. This is why we should get rid of the electoral college, it does not represent America as a country. If more people wanted Hillary Clinton as their president they should get Hillary Clinton. “We the people of the United States” is not being enforced in the electoral college, for, “The People,” are truly not the ones deciding for their leader.
Back in 1776 many people in congress wanted to be the ones who voted for the president. They did not think the citizens should be the ones to vote and decide. This helped in the birth of the Electoral College. (According to Samuel Law) However all of these politicians are long gone. Many of them were every racist, owned slaves, sexist and all around horrible people to their country. We need to revisit this problem and see how it would be played out now. Times have changed, our society has changed, everything has changed, we can’t give up on a problem only because it did not work out 200 years ago.
Over all the electoral college was a relevant and correct diction a long time ago. We as a country need to step up and take charge of fixing the problem that is becoming worse every time we continue to use it. You can help change the journey to change into popular vote by signing this petition. There are many problems with the electoral college, we need to get rid of it and move backwards into the popular vote that we used to have.