Taylor Monk

Mr. Hawkins
U.S. Government
October 8, 2015
A Broken System?
The Electoral College, a system designed to bypass the problem of
citizen unawareness in regards to the presidential elections. One that
effectively did its job while the job was necessary. The question remains, are
the reasons for its creation and use still applicable to this modern society of
communication, debate, and political awareness? While a clever system
created by our forefathers, the Electoral College in modern society
hurts more than helps, and there are several reasons why.
While, albeit some would disagree, most believe that the Electoral
College should be abolished, there are still many who firmly assert the fact
that the Electoral College is a piece of our governments history. They state
that the complexities of the system and the supposed inefficiencies
are worth the trade-off for a just election process. Mitch McConnell
said that the Electoral College has been the linchpin of American political
prosperity. This is a noble idea, that the system in a sense was designed to
show the publics best interests while still protecting them. The Electoral
College allows the American public to show their interests yet let politicians

make the end decision for they have the experience and wisdom the general
public doesnt. While this might not seem overtly constitutional, it does
appear a good way to protect the public from their own short-sightedness
sometimes, as long as the politicians have pure intentions with positive
meaning for the nation as a whole. If only politicians were pure in such
situations, then the College may still be permissible, but such is not the ways
of our government or any government in the world.
Any system that may seem good, but is unconstitutional, cannot be
allowed to function in this modern day and age. When one allows for a
situation where someone who isnt liked by the majority becomes
president, there is a breakdown and failure to maintain the freedom
and ruling by the people. It is self-evident all across the board for
American history that such things have happened, and they will continue to
happen until we fix the problem. The Electoral College currently has a 5
percent failure rate, meaning that 5 percent of all elections held in the
history of our great nation were not met by satisfying the majority of the
public. Instead, the Electoral College voted against its people for a president
whom they assumed would do a better job. This first happened when Adams
was elected and had roughly 40,000 votes less than Jackson by the majority.
While that may not seem like much, at the time the entire population of the
United States was only about 375,000 people. To put it into better
perspective, in 2000 when Bush won the Electoral vote and presidency, he
had 500,000 less votes than the next best competitor, Gore. Any system

regarding such an important part of our government should not depend on a

95 percent efficiency rate. Rather, we should restore the vote to purely a
vote of the majority, thereby reducing the chances of someone who doesnt
have the popular vote getting into the Oval Office to zero. This is a nonnegotiable topic, as the public should be and should maintain control of the
government, not the other way around.
Unfair proportioning, big words to describe a fairly simple problem with
an equally simple solution. The Electoral College states that every state
should receive a minimum of 3 electoral votes, these being tow for the
Senate and one for the House of Representatives. While this may seem nice
to the less populous states, it cheats the bigger ones out of their proper
weighing in the presidential election. Those who made this rule didnt care,
for they claimed to be giving power to the state, not its population. The
Electoral College is therefore giving more power to the smaller
states by vote than their population should allow. This means that a
Californians vote may be only worth a quarter of an Alaskans vote, or
Georgians, even though the population is more than quadruple in size. In an
odd sort of way, this means certain regions will have more power than other.
More specifically, its the smaller regions, the less populous ones that will
have control over the bigger ones. One need only look to the Middle East, the
Sunnis and the Shiites, to see how well that ends up turning out. While that
obviously is an extreme case, is does show that there is a similar path, and

should this great nation to continue down this path, it could find itself in a
direr situation than ever imagined.
It cannot be ignored any longer; the time for action has come to rid the
system of a faulty part, ere it brings the whole machine to a screeching halt
and fiery death. While the Electoral College was initially a great idea, and is
now a well-known and thought-out system, its time of usefulness had come
and gone. The same as making Amendments to our nations great piece of
literature, we need now to fix this problem and redefine how we choose, as a
country, to pick those who will lead us through times of greatness and times
of despair. The Electoral College is no longer the most ideal idea for
that, and will only bring more harm than help.