Explaining Electoral College; Students’ views on fair election

     In 1787, our founding fathers had a problem. They wanted to stray away from a popular vote, but needed another fair solution. They created the Electoral College. But is it fair?

     This idea was created as a solution for deciding our president. The founding fathers believed “ordinary Americans across a vast continent would lack sufficient information to choose directly and intelligently among leading presidential candidates,” according to Time.

     The Electoral College is a “unique method for indirectly electing the president of the United States,” as stated by the National Conference of State Legislators (NCSL). It “consists of a total of 538 members, one for each U.S. senator and representative, and three additional electors representing the District of Columbia.” If the College were to tie or not reach the majority of 270 due to a third party, the House of Representatives would decide who to be president.

     These electors are chosen differently for each party. For the Democratic party, “each congressional nominee and each US Senate nominee designates one elector,” the Secretary of State website explains. In the republican party, various political positions “recognized by the Republican State Central Committee shall be electors.”

     When citizens vote, they vote for the popularity in their state. Whoever wins the state vote receives all the electoral votes from that state. For example, California has 55 electoral votes. If 20 million people in California voted for Trump, as opposed to the 19 million voting for Biden, Trump would receive all 55 electoral votes, despite the millions of people who voted for BIden.

     This results in the possibility for candidates to win the overall popular vote, but lose the presidency to the Electoral College. This happened in 2016, when Hillary Clinton got 48% of the country’s vote, while Trump only got 46%. However, Trump had 306 electoral votes, while Clinton had a mere 232, according to Wikipedia.

     This has recently sparked another argument for the Electoral College being unfair. “It doesn’t equally represent all Americans. California’s population is about 68 times the population of Wyoming, but California only has 18 times more Electoral College votes than Wyoming,” sophomore Ian Calhoun explains. “If the Electoral College was fair, the votes would be distributed completely equally. It would be more fair to go by the popular vote, because that would give…everyone [a vote that] counts the same.”

     Even with the recent argument, many people believe the Electoral College is the best way to elect our president. “It’s always been that way,” sophomore Jenna Amrhein says. The election “wouldn’t be fair without [it].”

     “By using the Electoral College, smaller and less populated states aren’t overpowered and actually get a say in the votes,” sophomore Sierra Wendland explains.

     “The Electoral College is not 100% fair, [but] it is as close to fair as it can get. The Electoral is more fair and has more representation of all opinions than the popular vote would have,” Wendland says. Senior Tedrick Rush says, “I don’t believe it’s a perfect system, but I do believe it’s better than true popular-vote democracy.”