The Electoral College

The electoral college of the United States has been in effect since the establishment of the Constitution. Throughout the years, the system has remained effectively the same, though new states have entered the Union and all have grown since the initial founding of the system.

As the system stands today, each state is allotted a number of Electors equal to its number of Representatives in the U.S. House plus two for the state’s members of the U. S. Senate. Each decade, the number of Electors may change as a census is taken to determine the number of Representatives each state is given. These Electors are selected by the State party for major parties and are designated by the third parties.

After the general elections for the President, each state tallies the votes cast for each candidate. The party which receives the most popular votes is designated the state’s official Electors. These electors then meet to cast their Electoral Votes for the President. This means that the party which receives the most popular votes receives the entire state’s popular vote. This is true no matter how slim the margin or the distribution of votes across the state.

The main problem with the system is that it does not respect the distribution of votes across states. In some states that have a large number of Electoral Votes and even in some that have small amounts of votes, a handful of large cities or counties that are particularly partisan can control the entire state. A candidate could for example, campaign only in the city of Philadelphia, and if he or she were to win the majority of the city’s votes, he or she would be nearly guaranteed the entire Electoral Vote total from the state of Pennsylvania, regardless of the rest of the state. This is true in many states, and was especially evident in the 2004 election; in Pennsylvania, California, and New York, Senator John Kerry won only certain highly-populated cities. These include New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Hollywood, among others. President George Bush, on the other hand, won nearly the remainder of the states’ Representative districts. Due to the distribution of population, however, Sen. Kerry won all three of those states, and with them he received a massive amount of Electoral Votes that nearly turned the election away from President Bush.

The current system takes much power away from the people in that even if 90% of the state votes for a candidate, if that only makes up 49% of the population, they still lose their state’s Electoral Votes to the opposing candidate. This puts incredible power in the hands of the big cities and takes power away from rural America. In addition, many highly populated cities are strongly aligned with one party or another, creating a bloc of voters strong enough to cancel out the rest of the state and force the Electoral Votes on their candidate.