Faults of the Electoral College System

Chapter 10 discusses why citizens vote in the way they do and how these voting practices affect that outcomes of elections. It also demonstrates the difference between voting practices and election structures in the United States in comparison to those of other countries with similar governmental structures. The chapter gives a glimpse into the history of voting in the United States and describes the journey of many minority groups in gaining the right to vote. Low voter turnout is a big topic in the chapter as there are a wide variety of reasons why certain groups of people are still widely disenfranchised in our country. I found the campaign section of the chapter to be the most interesting as it was written in a time before Donald Trump. The structure which I want to discuss and criticize most is the electoral college system, as I believe it negates some of the core principles of our democracy.

The electoral college system allows for severe misinterpretation of citizen’s votes. This was displayed most obviously in our country’s most recent election. Hillary Clinton secured nearly 3 million more popular votes than Donald Trump, but Trump was able to win the popular vote in important states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan by very narrow margins. (Smith) The electoral college system makes it so that whoever receives the popular vote in each state receives all of that state’s electoral votes no matter how narrow the margin of this win. This means that if 50.1% of Californians voted for Donald Trump and 49.9% voted for Hillary Clinton, all 55 of California’s electoral votes would go directly to Donald Trump indicating that he is in favor in the state of California which is not an accurate representation of the citizen’s votes seeing that many of the citizens aren’t even voting. This “majority” of voters is not the majority of the citizens of the state of California. The electoral college system distorts the idea that all votes are created equal in our democracy and allows for unequal representation a lot of the time. Also, when dealing with wins of such close margins in important swing states, the third party plays an alarming large role in deciding the outcomes of these elections through the electoral college system. This played a defining role in the 2016 election as well as important demographics that were expected to support Clinton decided to give part of their support to the independent party. 18-29 year olds and Latinos played a huge role in defining the outcome of the election due to their shift of support from democrats to the third party. This small shift was enough to make a huge impact because of the electoral college system. This is ultimately what allowed Donald Trump to win the election without necessarily having popular support, and look where that’s gotten us. Additionally, the low voter turnout of the election was as a result of many people not feeling strongly connected to either candidate. This poses the question of whether or not the people should be involved in nominating candidates for president instead of allowing the party conventions to do so.

Works Cited

Montanaro, Domenico. “7 Reasons Donald Trump Won The Presidential Election.” NPR. NPR, 12 Nov. 2016. Web. http://www.npr.org/2016/11/12/501848636/7-reasons-donald-trump-won-the-presidential-election

Smith, Allan. “The Results Are Now Final: Clinton Wins Popular Vote by Nearly 3 Million.” Business Insider. Business Insider, 21 Dec. 2016. Web. http://www.businessinsider.com/popular-vote-trump-clinton-2016-12

8 Responses to "Faults of the Electoral College System"

Helen Spiller says:

November 2, 2017 at 9:46 pm

While I definitely agree with your statement that the electoral college certainly has some flaws and is in some ways undemocratic, I also think it is important to also highlight some benefits, even if there is few, of the electoral college system. As you have pointed out, even if a candidate wins the popular vote, he/ she can still not be president due to the electoral college. However, this, as the founders set up, also prevents against the mass public making a decision and ensures power of the election in the states. The electoral college was in fact created in a sense to not be that democratic. The founders wanted the president to not be elected directly by the people and instead elected through the electoral college which protects from these masses of the public. While I definitely think you make strong points about the downfalls of our election of the president, I think it is also important to note that this was arguably done by design.
Allison McLaughlin says:

November 5, 2017 at 4:39 pm

You make some really great points in criticizing the effects of the electoral college. It certainly has many consequences that should be questioned and make us think about whether the electoral college really supports and sustains a democratic system. Your point about the role of the third party in the electoral college is very interesting, as I haven’t really thought about this effect before. It is interesting to think about the surprisingly large effect a 3rd party can have considering the fact that the electoral college fosters a 2-party system, mitigating the impact of a 3d party. While all of your criticisms of the electoral college and valid and important, we have to remember the reasons that the electoral college was put in place. You talk about how the electoral college is not an accurate representation of the citizen’s votes because many don’t even vote. With this, I think it is important to understand that the electoral college was created with the idea in mind that the point of a democracy is that government is run by the people – which assumes that the majority of people will vote, as they should. Also, while the setup of the electoral college inherently makes it so that not all individual votes necessarily count the same (ex. California), this is done for a reason. Many time peoples living in certain geographic areas share similar ideologies (rural vs urban), and the electoral college ensures that people living in less-populated, rural areas will still be represented in government. The electoral college is also a safeguard against groupthink, which is defined as “a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome”. Because in the electoral college there are state representatives who ultimately submit the votes, the states have the ability to suppress radical ideas.
Jackson Puckey says:

November 5, 2017 at 5:55 pm

The biggest remaining argument for the electoral college is the idea that it will control the desires of the tyrannical majority. While this argument is understandable, our system of government clearly has many checks on the majority which are actively working. The simple existence of Congress, a body elected regionally, and the Supreme Court, a body whose actions are not held politically accountable, shows that the Founders built in a great deal of control to the whims of the country. I agree with you that the idea that 1 vote in California could (theoretically) decide who receives 55 whole electoral votes is absolutely ridiculous. As a matter of fact, a similar winner-take-all system is what led to Donald Trump receiving the nomination in the first place. The GOP and the DNC, prior to 2016, ran their primaries in a proportional way, allotting delegates to candidates based on their performance in the individual state. However, as we discussed in class, certain reforms made by Reince Priebus led to many key states being changed to winner-take-all plurality states. While this would not necessarily be as serious of an issue in a race with three or four serious candidates with very similar viewpoints, it becomes absolutely game changing in a race where one candidate is significantly different and more prominent than all the others. An optimal compromise to the electoral college question might be to divide the electoral votes proportionally by state. This would maintain the check on a tyrannical majority while also making the system more representative of the popular vote.
Lotte Elfering says:

November 5, 2017 at 8:12 pm

I very much agree with you in the idea that the electoral college system negates some of the core principles of the American democracy. In my mind, democracy should be based on the will of the people in general, not on the will of individual states. While I understand that states are an important part of the American political landscape, the fact that someone can win over 3 million more votes than their opponent but still not win the election seems highly undemocratic to me.

The states are important entities, but their role should not be as important as a federal election, the outcome of which will affect the people living in the country – regardless of which state – equally. In addition to this, the fact that every elector represents a vastly different number of people, with an elector in Texas representing almost four times as many people as an elector in Wyoming, this does not distribute the votes equally. Thus one of the main issues with the electoral college, in addition to those named above, is that they do not ensure equal representation and even work against it, whilst I would argue equal representation is a base value of democracy.

This can also contribute to a lower voter turnout, as voters in larger states like Texas or California feeling their vote is not as represented as a vote might be in Wyoming or Washington D.C. Especially if one were to be a Democrat in Texas or a Republican in California, while those states typically tend to go with the opposite party, these people might not feel they have any influence on government, which is detrimental to democracy as a whole.
Daniel Bonaventura says:

November 5, 2017 at 10:11 pm

Although these are some inherent flaws with the electoral college such as the fact allows for the election of presidents will less popular vote such as in 2016, there are reason that the electoral college must remain today. Many of the reasons that the electoral college was originally created are less important to Americans today. These include an implication to keep elections to the wealthy and educated and also to protect state power in a time when to much centralized federal power was a large fear. On major argument that still exists today refers to the electoral colleges impact on campaigning. If the electoral college was eliminated in favor of a system based on popular vote, we could see a situation where presidents spend the majority of their dollars campaigning in strictly the most populous states. without the votes given to smaller states they would be politically be less important to those running and candidates would instead prioritize their time on making larger states red or blue. As a result this would actually decrease the voice of american’s as a whole because it could fail to involve millions of Americans in the political culture. For this reason I believe that the electoral college system will, and must continue in America.
Camryn Travis says:

November 5, 2017 at 10:53 pm

I completely agree in your arguments about the electoral college on the national level with electing a United States President, but I think this argument can also be trickled down to the primary process in determining party candidates for presidential elections. If you look at the 2016 elections, there was so much competition between the potential Republican candidates that the margin of winning was extremely narrow. In Donald Trump’s case, he was able to win the Republican nomination not because he received the majority of primary votes, but because votes were spread across the Republican candidates and he had the highest ratio of voters in comparison to everyone else. Therefore, although more voters cast a ballot against Donald Trump, proportionally, Trump had more voters than the other candidates. I think it is also important to note that every state has a different primary voting process. The difference in process and schedule of primary elections or caucuses votes play a major role in who wins the nomination for their party. The complicated and multistep processes associated with Presidential elections can often weed-out or water-down full democratic participation by citizens and creates an electoral elite that has the greatest effect on political elections in America.
Katherine Fell says:

November 5, 2017 at 11:23 pm

Everyone in this thread makes very compelling points about the electoral college system, however one point that has yet to have been mentioned is how it effects voter turnout through the winner take all system. As Lilly mentioned, one of the flaws of the electoral college system is that given the demographics of the states, politicians will only focus on a handful of swing states, as these are the states that will give them the electoral votes that decide the election. Because of this, candidates will spend less time in states that consistently swing red or blue because they believe that those elections have already been decided, leaving the voters there feeling neglected. This is also problematic, though, because the residents of these states will oftentimes not feel compelled to vote because they think that their vote won’t count given the voting history of the state. For instance, a Republican that lives in Massachusetts won’t be motivated to vote because the state consistently votes Democrat in elections. This lack of motivation from voters drastically affects voter turnout, and it is a direct product of the electoral college system, showing that changes need to be made in the way that Americans elect their leaders. People who are invested in politics and care about the direction of their country are being turned off from the idea of casting their vote because they feel as though their vote won’t matter in the winner take all system and longstanding voting traditions in this country. It’s time to change this system so that more people’s voices are heard and the United States becomes a stronger democracy.
Jackson Krase says:

November 8, 2017 at 9:26 pm

Through reading the blog post as well as the comments made by my peers, it becomes evident that the electoral college system in the United States does hold many problems that deeply affect the representativeness of the voting public and their opinions. However, as the comments on this post feature mainly the weaknesses and strengths of the electoral college, I will take a different pathway by offering up a way in which to alter our voting process in order to ensure the legitimacy of the public’s preferences. As mentioned, the electoral college system can result in the election of a President who did not receive the largest share of the popular vote but rather the electoral college vote instead (i.e. The 2016 election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton). It is from this that I believe ranked voting to be a creative and effective way in which to deal with some of the faults of the electoral college system.
Ranked voting works by a voter rank-ordering their preferences for candidates on the ballot while not being tethered to one individual candidate. A vote cast for your most preferred candidate still counts the same as a normal vote in our current election system, but instead, when your preferred candidate drops from contention, the voter’s second choice candidate will then obtain the vote. In this way, voting becomes more fair and practical. Voting often times leaves out a voter’s second choice; a very vital component of a person’s political attitude and preferences. In addition, ranked voting will also affect many other aspects of our electoral system such as decreased negative campaigning and the increased salience of the majority. As our country lags behind other nations in the democratic rating of our election system, the implementation of ranked voting will only increase the number of voices heard. Lastly, because of our nation being built upon a social contract between the government and the citizenship, it is imperative that everyday citizens be able to express their preferences for government in ways that do not oversimplify or improperly categorize them and their ideological views.

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