The Electoral College Must Go

I have searched the Internet for both the history and the current justifications for the electoral college.  The history is interesting but does not have much relevance for our current situation.  In early times, the ability to effectively and accurately gather a full popular vote was doubtful.  There was also the question of population differences in the slave and ‘free’ states.  The slave states imposed their will and it is no coincidence that four of the first five presidents were Virginians (Virginia had the largest percentage of slaves and the largest overall population in that time).

The main arguments today for keeping the electoral college revolve around the idea of giving a minority of voters with a regional concentration the ability to check an out-of-control majority.  Some also claim that it gives small states more of a say in presidential elections. These are specious and convoluted arguments that make very little sense upon close examination.

The two recent elections that elected presidents who won the electoral college and lost the popular vote (Bush and Trump) were not decided by small states, but rather large midwestern states and Florida.  The vote in these states was extremely close in both cases.  The decisions were a result of complex (and absurdly expensive) election campaigning in a small number of states and the random nature of voter distributions rather than any glorious cause of a repressed minority.

In the Clinton/Trump election, the margin of popular vote was over 3 million in favor of Clinton, yet Trump became president.  That kind of result is an insult to the voters and has the potential to seriously erode faith in our election process.

The only reason some go through painful logical contortions to justify the electoral college is the changing demographics of the country, which in the current state of the political debate ensure that the popular vote will lean democratic.  It would be wiser and healthier in the long term for conservatives to modulate their political platform to tune into the new demographics than to look to the hail Mary of the electoral college.

The simple fact is that the USA is supposed to be a democracy.  Yes, it is also a representative democracy, but that is a practical matter, established to allow elected senators and representatives to make decisions, budgets and laws rather than putting everything to a popular vote, which would be impossible. 

Each representative is chosen by a popular vote.  The most important representative, the president, should also be chosen by a popular vote.  Having electoral ‘representatives’ choose the president places that decision one very significant step further away from the people.

Every voter should know that his or her vote goes directly toward the election of the president.  Currently, if you vote against the candidate that wins in your state, your vote is meaningless in the overall election of the president.  There is no mystery in the fact that the USA generally has a lower percentage of voting than most other democracies.  Why vote if you are fairly certain your vote will not have any meaning? 

Tabulating a national vote is no longer a logistical problem, though clearly it could be done better and in a more timely manner.  If the USA is truly a democracy, and every vote should matter, then there is absolutely no excuse for making the election of the most important representative of our government an indirect, frustrating exercise that denies the true power of the vote to almost half the population.