Pros And Cons Of The Electoral College System

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The Unites States of America is not a true democracy. The definition of “democracy” includes majority rules, but the electoral college system has discarded the majority on several occasions. The Electoral College system was created at the 1787 constitutional convention as the method of electing the President of the U.S.. Each state has a slate of electors based on their population, which a census every ten years determines. In addition, the two senators from each state have a vote. In forty-eight states the winner of the popular vote statewide receives all the votes. Two states, Maine and Nebraska, split their votes among their congressional districts. The founding fathers created this system for several reasons. One, the slave states wanted more of a say because of their slave population, who could not vote, so the three-fifths compromise counted each slave as three-fifths of a person in the census. Therefore, slave states had more electoral votes. Additionally, the founding fathers did not think that the common person had enough education and information to vote. Clearly, the original purpose of the Electoral College system is obsolete, and the system in now unfair, so why are we still using it? The Electoral College system should be abolished because of it’s numerous flaws. …show more content…
A citizen of Wyoming, which has a sparse population, has a vote worth roughly three times more than a citizen of Illinois (Doc. C). The addition of senators and the differentiation of the population within the bracket for electors throws off the ratio of people to electors. Another predicament with the electoral college is that it can discourage voters by making them feel like their votes do not matter. A democrat in Alabama may feel like their vote is worthless because, quite frankly, it is. Unless there is a severe political shakeup, Alabama probably is not going to vote blue anytime
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