Electoral College

Disproportionate voting power. One of the most fundamental aspects of a fair and representative democracy is that every citizen's vote is equal but in the electoral college, the power a single person's vote drastically changes between states and gives drastically more power to people living in smaller states. For example, a small state such as Wyoming has 3 electoral college votes or 1 vote for every 134 783 citizens of the state while a larger state such as California has 55 electoral college votes or 1 vote for every 410 647 residents. This effectively gives a voter in Wyoming roughly three times the voting power of a Californian voter which is incredibly unfair and unrepresentative. A person should not have their vote count more than another just because of something as arbitrary as where they live. This disproportionate voting power also creates a weird scenario where a president can theoretically win the presidency by winning the votes of only 22% of the population. (Source #t=04m24s) Although this is incredibly unlikely to happen in real life, the fact that its even possible demonstrates that small states in the electoral college have far too much power to determine the fate the rest of the country. I do agree small states need a way to protect themselves from the interests of bigger states but the electoral college its current state gives smaller states far to much power over the larger ones. Source: . http://www.nytimes.com...; 2. Winner take all system Every state in the US (except 2) uses a winner takes all system which has the state giving all its electoral votes to whoever wins the popular vote. This system makes it so that any person who votes for the losing candidate in their state has their vote completely ignored. In the 2012 election, roughly 3 million Californians voted for the Republican party and roughly 5 million Texans voted for the Democrats but because of the winner take all system, their votes were basically ignored in the state's electoral votes. In short, if someone wants to vote for their state's losing candidate, they might as well stayed home. This aspect of the Electoral College is completely unfair and ignores millions of American. The winner takes all system must be abolished and replaced with another system that more fairly distributes a state's electoral votes such as giving electoral votes proportional to how many people voted for the respective candidates Sources: . https://www.archives.gov... 3. Swing States Because of the winner take all system that states employ, most states will vote reliably democrat and republican which incentivises a presidential candidate to completely ignore them as they have no chance of losing their support and gaining more support in those states is pointless as that wouldn't give them any more electoral votes. This is why presidential candidates instead focus on so-called "swing states" which are states that had close elections meaning either party could win in those states and their electoral vote. This forces any presidential candidate who wishes to win the presidency to put the majority of their effort and resources into those states. In the 2012 elections,99.6% of Obama's television advertising budget was directed towards advertising in just 10 states and 99.9% of Mitt Romey's television advertising budget was also directed to just 10 states. Also, after the Democratic National Convention in 2012, only 12 states had public campaign events by either the presidential or vice presidential candidate. The swing states the current Electoral College forces presidential candidates to only focus on a small number of select states instead of the entire nation. This is made even worse by the fact that the swing states make up a minority of the population with the swing states in 2012 make up only 18% of the total population of the US. If the states that a presidential candidate focusses on were the most populated ones, it could be at least justified as a candidate wanting to gain the support of the majority of Americans. However the fact that 18% of the population and less than a quarter of the states in the United States get so much attention and focus from presidential candidates, is objectively unrepresentative and unfair. Source: . http://www.fairvote.org...: . http://www.cnn.com... I'm using the 2012 elections because I can find more information on it 4. Faithless electors in 21 states, there is no law that binds an elector to vote for a specific candidate. This means that an elector from a state that voted republican could choose to go against the will of the people and instead vote democrat. There is no other word to describe this absolute horrifying especially when this has happened 93 times throughout American history most recently in 2004 where an elector voted for someone named "John Ewards," which is almost the name of John Edwards who was John Kerry's running mate. Although these faithless electors have never acted in a way that changed the outcome of an election, the fact that it's even a possible that rogue electors can completely override the will of the people is a massive flaw in the electoral college that must be fixed. Sources: . http://archive.fairvote.org... . http://www.fairvote.org... . http://www.vox.com... Conclusion. The electoral college in its current state very poorly represents the American people. It gives people more voting power depending on which state they live, it makes the votes of anyone who voted for their state's losing candidate irrelevant, it incentivises presidential candidates to focus only on specific states while ignoring the rest of the country, and the electors in 21 states can override the will of their voters. The electoral college needs to be reformed, overhauled or even abolished to make room for a new voting system that is actually fair and representative.