The 2016 elections was a
crazy experience for all. Not many knew who to vote for or even if they wanted
to vote. Both candidates got below 50% of all the votes which means less than
half of America did not like either one. According to CNN, Donald J. Trump got
46.3% of the votes and Hillary Clinton got 48.2% of all the votes that were
counted. Even though Donald Trump got only 62,693,993 votes to Hillary
Clinton’s 65,260,513 votes, he still won the election. Shouldn’t Hilary Clinton
be the winner in this election since she got the biggest number of votes
towards her? The Electoral College was the only thing that got in her way to
win. The Electoral College should be the way the
election is run because it shows the stance of the states and makes sure each
state has value.
This result isn’t new. There are plenty of U.S. elections
in the past where even the loser got more votes than the declared winner of the
election. In fact, in all the elections that we have had, we have had four not
including our most recent election this year that the candidate who won the
election did not get the popular vote. It first started out Andrew Jackson and
John Quincy Adams in 1824. Jackson had 38,000 more votes than Adams, but still
lost because he didn’t meet the required electoral vote of 131. Second was
Rutherford B. Hayes who was 250,000 votes behind Samuel J. Tilden, but still won
the electoral vote. The 2000 election was the more recent one where Bush beat
Al Gore even though Bush was 540,000 votes behind.
So
what makes a candidate win an election? We already established that the winner
doesn’t always need the most votes, or as it is well known as, the popular vote
to win. This is because our Founding Fathers of the United States America
through many different ideas chose the way to president would win the election
would be through something called the College of Electors, or as we call it
now, the Electoral College. On the archives.gov website, they said what the
Electoral College is saying, “The founding fathers
established it in the Constitution as
a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and
election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens. The
Electoral College process consists of the selection
of the electors, the meeting of the electors where they vote for President and
Vice President, and the counting of the electoral votes by Congress”. This way
of election has always been a part of our system since the foundation of the
United States becoming a country.
However, mostly because of this
recent election, there have been many who have signed petitions and want to
fight for the Electoral College to be done away with and just be dependent on
the popular vote. They claim that this way, every vote will be counted and
valued and this way it would be fair.
Let us clarify what exactly the
voting process is for the Electoral College. In the response to the question, “Why does the U.S. have an Electoral College?” Joe
Miller answered the following, “When U.S. citizens go to the polls to “elect” a president,
they are in fact voting for a particular slate of electors. In every state but Maine and Nebraska, the candidate who wins the most votes
(that is, a plurality) in the state receives all of the state’s electoral
votes. The number of electors in each state is the sum of its U.S. senators and
its U.S. representatives. (The District of Columbia has three electoral votes,
which is the number of senators and representatives it would have if it were
permitted representation in Congress.) The electors meet in their respective
states forty-one days after the popular election. There, they cast a ballot for
president and a second for vice president. A candidate must receive a majority
of electoral votes to be elected president.” Instead of just counting up all
the votes of those who voted in America, this Electoral College way includes
each and every person in that state able to show their say in what president
they want.
But even the
Electoral defined, there are others still saying that popular vote would still
be the fairest way for a president to be elected. So the main question is: “Why
did the founding fathers create the electoral college instead of doing the
popular vote”? Joe Miller further explains on this question, “The reason that
the Constitution calls for this extra layer, rather than just providing for the
direct election of the president, is that most of the nation’s founders were
actually rather afraid of democracy. James Madison worried about what he called
“factions,” which he defined as groups of citizens who have a common interest
in some proposal that would either violate the rights of other citizens or
would harm the nation as a whole.” Let’s think for a minute and picture that
the popular vote actually is the way we vote the president. The most populated
state in America is California which has approximately thirty-eight million
people. California has voted for the democratic candidate every time since
1992. If popular vote was the way we do elections that would mean majority of
that population would go toward the democratic candidate. The same can be said
for the other side like Texas.
If this was
the case, the country would become divided as the country would be run by, as
James Madison called them, factions. The large cities that would be dominantly
conservative or liberal would more likely establish the outcome of the election
instead of the whole state itself. In other words, the large cities would be
more in power than the whole state itself.
The whole purpose
why we call ourselves the United States of America is so that all of us will
support each other and the American people will be united in purpose. If we
allow different factions to control our countries outcomes, we are not all
united. The only way that all of America can be representative is by the
Electoral College. The popular vote only shows how dived the country is.
Gary Gregg
said it best, “If the
United States does away with the Electoral College, future presidential
elections will go to candidates and parties willing to cater to urban voters
and skew the nation’s policies toward big-city interests. Small-town issues and
rural values will no longer be their concern.” The electoral vote is the
best way to show that every vote matters. Are there better ways to vote for a
president in this country? There could be possibly better ways, yes. However,
changing the entire system to the popular vote would not be the right decision
and step towards the fairest election method.
The preamble of the Constitution of
the United States of America states, “We the
People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect
Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and
establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Notice
how at the beginning it says “We the People”. This country has the special
opportunity for all of its residents to speak out and stand up for what they believe for. We the People have the ability to vote who we
want to become the next president of the United States. We the People are best
represented in the presidential election by the Electoral College. The
Electoral College is the best way to represent “We the People” in the
presidential election.
The
hope is that this country doesn’t turn into the Divided Factions of America or
even to the United Large Cities of America. The founding fathers created this
country and its name for a purpose so that all the states may become united no
matter our different opinions. Popular vote will just magnify that division and
we won’t become the name we were put out to be. Whether the president candidate
that we voted for does not win the election, we should still move on and still
let our voice be heard. Let us not complain that a system is corrupt because it
simply did not go our way. We should continue to stand strong and let our
voices still be heard. The Electoral College should be the way we vote for the
future president of the United States of America.
Works
Cited
Collisen,
Stephen. "President-elect Trump." CNN. CNN, Web. 08 Dec. 2016.
Gore,
D'Angelo. "Presidents Winning Without Popular Vote." FactCheck., 24 Mar. 2008. Web. 09 Dec. 2016.
"U.
S. Electoral College, Official - What Is the Electoral College?" National
Archives and Records Administration. Web. 10 Dec. 2016.
Miller,
Joe. "The Reason for the Electoral College." FactCheck, 11 Feb. 2011. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.
"California
Elected Officials Lookup." California Presidential Election Voting History. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.
Gregg,
Gary. "Electoral College Keeps Elections Fair." POLITICO. Politico, 05 Dec. 2012. Web. 13 Dec. 2016.
U.S.
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