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Zury Bello
Anjanette Porter
ENG 111 LN282
30 April 2019
The Electoral College is Inefficient
The Electoral College was inaugurated in 1787 by the Founding Fathers as a way for
citizens to elect the president. Considering it was created at a time when America was just being
established, the Electoral College is defective in today’s society. Regardless of the past factors
that no longer correlate to today’s modern-day America, the Electoral College system continues
to be utilized by the United States in order to indirectly elect the president. We live in a new
reformed America where the Electoral College is no longer efficient; it should be replaced by a
direct popular voting technique.
In 1787, the nation did not possess the adequate resources in order to remain well
informed about politics or topics of any matter. During the course of the Constitutional
Convention, the Founding Fathers understood this barrier, which is why the Electoral College
had a set of said electors. These selected electors, “will be most likely to possess the information
and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations” (Augusta) wrote Alexander
Hamilton in The Federalist. Fortunately, civilians in today’s modern-day America no longer
encounter this barrier in which the Founding Fathers were primarily concerned about. Citizens
today are able to stay informed through multiple different resources; the internet being the main
generating source of information. The World Wide Web is so easily assessable that within
seconds of searching a subject or question, thousands of results are provided at hand. Not only
does the internet assist civilians to stay well informed but also, the news media. Civilians are
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consistently being informed about current news through national television broadcasted on a
daily. What once concerned the Founding Fathers of uninformed civilians is no longer a concern
in present-day America, making the Electoral College an inefficient technique.
The Electoral College revolves around the winner-takes-all method which negatively
impacts the ‘one person, one vote constitutional’ standard. In all actuality, because of the winner-
takes-all feature, not everyone’s vote necessarily counts during the election. The only votes that
actually count are those for the person who wins the state they are cast; the rest of the votes are
disregarded. “The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has been interpreted
as guaranteeing the right of all voters to an equally weighted vote to prevent violations of this
constitutional right, the Supreme Court announced a rule it dubbed one person, one vote”
(Krabill 276). Because not all votes are taken into consideration, the Electoral College violates
this particular section of the Equal Protection Clause. Civilians are being neglected from their
constitutional right since only a certain portion of the population’s votes are actually being
validated during the election and the rest are being ignored. This issue would not neglect
citizen’s rights if the government used a popular voting system in which each vote counts
equally. Not only are the votes being affected by this method, but also the end results of the
election too.
Presidential end results of previous elections have demonstrated that the Electoral
College is not a reflection of the citizen’s preferred president. Throughout the United States
history, candidates have become president five times regardless of losing the popular vote, the
most recent one being the 2016 presidential election. In the end results of the 2016 election
between Clinton and Trump “the final vote count indicates 65.9 million votes were cast for
Clinton and about 63.0 million for Trump, providing Clinton with a 2.9 million national popular
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vote plurality.” (Campbell, et al 331). Trump winning the election regardless of the 2.9 million
national votes prove how the Electoral College does not validate the people’s voice. When it
comes to the end results of the election, the only votes that are actually being validated are the
votes of the chosen electors who are part of the Electoral College, not the citizens’ votes. This
method is completely indirect and does not provide citizens an adequate say in the election as the
popular voting system does.
Since states votes are not equally distributed, this distorts the way a candidate campaigns
throughout the states. There are set states that automatically favor a particular political party,
discouraging the opposing candidate to campaign in that state. Instead, candidates’ focal point
becomes the states they can flip in their favor known as swing states. Swing states are the prime
beneficiary states during presidential elections resulting in other states being neglected.
