Should Electoral College Be Abolished Essay

1302 Words3 Pages

In the Electoral College system, every state has one electoral vote for each congressman and senator. Congressman is allotted by population and every state has two senators, so Rhode Island, which has basically nobody in it, has three electoral votes. California, with 53 representatives and two senators, has 55 electoral votes. The states choose electors and the electors meet in what is called the Electoral College to pick a president. In practice, nearly every state has passed a law that the electors will all vote for the popular vote winner in their state, but as the Supreme Court said in Bush v. Gore, the people of the United States do not have a constitutional right to pick the president. A state could, if it felt like it, select the electors by coin toss, party affiliation and could let them vote how they liked. It should be scrapped because it is undemocratic. …show more content…

As a Californian, my vote for president is worth 1/3 that of an Alaskan or Rhode Island. One reason Bush won in 2000 is that his support was spread over small states with their extra senators. Democracy is in principle wedded to the idea of one citizen, one vote. The Electoral College is an insult to that principle and discredits our democracy.
With or without point one, the Electoral College can pick a popular vote loser as president. It doesn 't happen often, but when it does, it is as much or more an insult to democracy as lopsided vote values. People who support it can go on all they like about the "subtle brilliance of the framers in balancing urban power with rural" or rubbish like that, but any system that awards a victory to the loser of the popular vote is quite simply wrong. It requires in it somewhere that some Americans are worth more than others and should have a greater say in who is

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