Donald Trump secured the magic number of 270 electoral votes to secure the Presidency. Hillary Clinton fell short of 270, but received over two million more individual votes than Trump.
This election is one of few where the popular vote winner did not win the electoral vote. In this case, the raw vote gap is the largest in an instance where the winner did not obtain the popular and electoral votes.
This, however, is among the least of my reasons for expressing disdain for our out-of-date and ineffective presidential electoral system. The motivations of the Electoral College are flawed.
The Electoral College was decided upon and put into our Constitution in Philadelphia in 1787. The framers of the Constitution were working within the context of 13 colonies that comprised roughly four million people and had been largely sovereign entities underneath the previous Articles of Confederation.
Today, fifty states and sixteen territories comprise over 320 million individuals in a radically different national and global context. There are 538 total electoral votes and 270 of the 538 are needed to secure the votes in order to win the election.
A common assertion is that the Electoral College was established to solve for the tensions between densely and dispersedly populated states and to provide a check on uninformed voters. The latter may have been true when life was certainly more local and less connected - but it simply is not plausible to argue that individuals can not be informed voters, and is blind to the intangible benefits of civic engagement.
Furthermore, I direct proponents of the “little” states to the function of the House of Representatives in the Legislative Branch.
The imprisonment of Africans served as a backbone of the American economy, particularly in the South. Madison expressed the dilemma slavery played in deciding an election system when he said: “The right of suffrage was much more diffusive [i.e., extensive] in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes.”
Southern states wanted their slaves to count as population to increase the number of electoral votes and political clout the state had, and eventually settled on the Three-Fifths Compromise. The roots of this system leave a stain on the continuation of the Electoral College.
The framers did not intend for the Electoral College to operate within an expansively different nation - they did not even foresee the emancipation and enfranchisement for people of color and of poor, uneducated individuals.
One may argue that states with more people have more leverage over the outcome, warranting the need for an Electoral College. But this issue is exacerbated by the Electoral College system itself.
Certain states have more electoral votes. Due to this, presidential candidates typically bounce around the map of states and focus heavily on states with a hefty number of electoral votes and on swing states. This makes certain states like Florida inherently more important and receive more attention than states like Alabama.
In a popular vote system, communities and states get more influence when they get more individuals to vote. In the electoral-vote system, a state has the same amount of votes and power if 5% or 90% of the electorate shows up to the polls. Many in non-swing states have felt that their vote did not matter.
The preset influence of states can leave voters in most U.S. states feeling ignored and disconcerted with government.
The capricious nature of the Electoral College is shown in the online tool “Redraw the States,” created by mathematician and data scientists Kevin Wilson. Using the tool, you can move counties into neighboring states and see the result it would have on the electoral vote. The Washington Post details a handful of specific scenarios where the electoral vote varied wildly in result.
This doesn’t mean we should abolish state lines, but the online tool highlights a lack of accuracy in reflecting the genuine will of the electorate. It also implies that small population shifts at the state and county level can alone sway the election of the federal executive branch. This could become - and arguably already has been - a factor in fueling disenfranchisement and tampering with voting rights.
Individuals being elected to effectively serve as CEO of the wealthiest nation in world history should have to build an inclusive platform and organize a comprehensive network that authentically inspires voters and persuades them to believe that giving their time and effort to go vote is worthwhile. The current Electoral College system hinders the progress of our republic to continually embrace more democratic methods.
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