Let Us Choose Our President
The people of America should decide the elections. It is unfair to all the citizens of the United States to have the Electoral College decide who wins our presidential elections. The Electoral College is a system used to elect presidents in which each state is given a certain number or points based on the number of senators and representatives each state has. A president receives these points when the majority of a state votes for him. As we saw in the 2000 election and for the third time in the history of United States elections, the tally of Electoral College votes thwarted the will of the people. As citizens of the United States we must change this historical anachronism at once. The president should be elected by popular vote.
There are many reasons why we should reform the Electoral College. One reason is that it depresses voter turnout. Many people think that since the state is going to be given the same amount of points no matter how many people vote so there is really no incentive in showing up to the polls. People don’t feel like their one vote will make a difference when the winner of the state receives the set number of points regardless of whether or not they show up.
Another reason that the Electoral College should be eliminated is that it over represents people in rural states. In 1988, for example, the combined number of voters in the least populated states (Alaska, Delaware, District of Columbia, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming) was 3,119,000. These states combined received 21 Electoral College votes. Florida on the other hand had 9,614,000 voters and only received 21 Electoral College votes. It’s not fair to the registered voters of Florida that their votes are really equivalent to about 1/3 of the peoples in the smallest seven states. The people in those states are extremely over-represented and that is unfair to the rest of the country.
Another way in which the Electoral College...