Does my vote really matter?

Allison Brown English 1010 Professor Taylor 13 December, 2019 “Does my vote really matter?”: Addressing Uncertainty in the Electoral College Since the early elections of the 2000s, American citizens and researchers have noticed a lack of representation and failure within the Electoral College. Perhaps the most clear example occurred in the presidential election of 2016 when the Electoral College and the popular vote disagreed, with nearly three million citizens voting for the candidate who would ultimately lose due to a lack of electoral votes. This failure and lack of representation has caused many Americans to give up voting altogether because they feel as if their vote doesn’t matter, effectively silencing them. However, many researchers voice reluctance about straying away from the college, citing a foreseeable upset in America’s representative democracy and a lack of representation for states with smaller populations. The college established in 1804 is no longer an accurate representation of the way the American population thinks, acts, and votes. In this paper, I will argue that the electoral college needs to be reformed to abolish “winner-takes-all” states. The Electoral College has been a fundamental aspect of American elections since the nation’s founding, however, with the electoral college seeming to fail more often, is it not time to rethink and reform the presidential voting process? According to a CNN article published in 2016, “More Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than any other losing presidential candidate in US history. The Democrat outpaced President-elect Donald Trump by almost 2.9 million votes, with 65,844,954 (48.2%) to his 62,979,879 (46.1%)” (Krieg 2). The presidential election of 2016 wasn’t the first example of the electoral college and the popular vote disagreeing, “Andrew Jackson won by over 10% in 1824 but was denied the presidency which went to John Quincy Adams” (Krieg 3). With inconsistencies in results, it begs the question, is the electoral college the most accurate representation of presidential elections? Frankly, the answer is no. The electoral college in its current state is not an accurate representation of the popular vote and creates unfair representation in states. The electoral college even discourages voters from casting their ballots and has Americans wondering, “Does my vote really matter?” (Glass 1). The United States, founded on a representative democracy, cannot morally stand for its citizens believing that they do not have a say in their own government. The electoral college needs to undergo drastic reform to increase representation and inconsistencies with electoral and popular votes. To understand why the electoral college needs to be abolished it is important to explore its flaws besides its inaccurate representation of the popular vote. A glaring issue is that the electoral college creates an unfair representation of the population. An example of this is explained in a Fairvote article titled “Presidential Elections State-by-State: Hardening Partisanship” with an example close to home, “Wyoming has three electoral votes for a population of 532,668 citizens and Texas has thirty-two electoral votes for a population of almost 25 million . . . Wyoming has one “elector” for every 177,556 people and Texas has one “elector” for about every 715,499” (Fairvote 4). The electoral college granting more votes per person in smaller states has created a disparity regarding the impacts of a citizen’s vote. Another flaw of the electoral college is the idea of swing and safe states, Lewis, a political science masters student in “Why We Should Abolish the Electoral College”, builds on the argument that Fairvote makes, “In 48 states, a presidential candidate can win 50.01% of the popular vote in a state, yet receive 100% of the electoral votes from that state” (Lewis 14). Swing states and safe states are key factors in presidential candidate campaigns. States such as Florida and areas like the Midwest are more heavily campaigned because they are not dependably safe states for either party. With the winner-takes-all reform, why would a candidate bother to visit or campaign in a state that is safe? This is not fair to American citizens and makes some votes more important than other votes in the campaign process. Perhaps the most concerning flaw of the electoral college is a small portion of the popular vote that a candidate needs to win to become presidential elect. According to Ruderman’s “Winning an Election with 22% of the Popular Vote” in 2004, “A presidential candidate could be elected with as little as 21.8% of the popular vote by getting just over 50% of the votes in DC and each of 39 small states . . . a candidate could lose with 78.2% of the popular vote by getting just under 50% in small states and 100% in large states”. This statistic is alarming and brings into question if we as citizens want a system that doesn’t even truly reflect what the majority of the population wants. With the electoral college, the opinions of American citizens is being ignored and denied. A solution that has gained traction with politicians and citizens alike is the complete abolishment of the Electoral College. According to “Changing to the Popular Vote” from Penn State Research in 2017, “[since] the 1980s, 55-60% of Americans have favored a popular vote” (Schneider 18). There are three main ideas that support why the popular vote should replace the college: re-gaining core democratic principles, an increase in genuine campaign efforts, and fair representation of the popular vote. The United States prides itself on being a democracy with fair representation. Allowing the popular vote to determine presidential elections would increase the involvement that citizens themselves have in the democratic process. Abolishing the college would allow Americans to believe that they have more of a say in their own leader and negate the idea that their vote has no impact in the election. According to “Vittana’s Popular Vote”, the election of the president is the only race that uses the electoral college, “. . . mayors, governors, and senators [are] elected by a simple majority” (Regoli 21). If the popular vote is the norm for all other races, then why should the presidential election be any different? Although moving to the popular vote could increase citizen involvement and create equal representation in elections, there are issues that could exist with complete abolishment. One of the most concerning issues to policy makers and advocates against the popular vote is how the margin for a candidate to win decreases. This is clear in “Vittana’s Popular Vote” where the author Natalie Regoli considers the disadvantages of a popular vote, “if the presidential election were switched to the popular vote, then it would only take about 35% of the vote for a candidate to win” (Regoli 17). An example where this has occurred in mentioned in “The Electoral College: An Idea Whose Time Has Come and Gone” where the author describes the Republican Primaries of 2016, in which Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz both claimed 30% of the G.O.P. vote, which gave Trump the opportunity to take the state with only a 35% majority of Republicans backing him (Clayton 28). To this argument individuals have voiced concern on grounds that moving to the popular vote could increase the amount of election recounts, regional candidates (like mayors or governors) of large cities could be major political candidates, and that it would decrease representation for sparsely populated states like Wyoming or Alaska. The popular vote is not a viable option to replace the electoral college although it is favored by citizens and some politicians. Marginalizing less populated states and decreasing the percent that a candidate needs to win could lead to a slippery slope where states like Wyoming have no say and an unwanted candidate could take all of the state’s electoral votes with only 35% of the vote. Fortunately, the popular vote isn’t the only solution to tackle the shortcomings of the electoral college. Policymakers and advocates have turned to an option that Nebraska and Maine have implemented, abolishing the winner-takes-all clause. The winner-takes-all clause in the Electoral College makes states either completely red or blue, regardless of how close a race is, if a candidate theoretically wins by only 0.1% they still gain all electoral votes for the state, silencing half of the states population. Take Florida for example, according to the New York Time’s “2016 Election Coverage” Trump won Florida at 48.6% with Clinton trailing at 47.4%, because Trump won with about 1.2%, he took 29 electoral votes which put him ahead in the race to 270, this close call in Florida also existed in 2012 when Obama took the state with a 0.9% lead (Aisch 2). This discrepancy isn’t only obvious in Florida, it is obvious in all 48 states that uphold the clause. Maine and Nebraska split their electoral votes depending on the popular vote to best reflect the will of the state’s voters. According to Dewey Clayton, abolishing the winner-takes-all clause to the electoral college could be the solution, “states could have the flexibility and independence in choosing how to award Electoral College votes . . . the direct and popular elections would all require constitutional amendments, a difficult goal to accomplish” (Clayton 19). Although Clayton determines that staying with the electoral college but abolishing the clause would be the best solution, it would be difficult to pass a nationwide level, “[it would be] a difficult goal to accomplish. A constitutional amendment would require a two-thirds majority vote of both houses of Congress and subsequent ratification by three-fourths of the states” (Clayton 25). However, if individual states were to amend their own constitutions like Nebraska and Maine to abolish the winner-takes-all clause, the benefits of splitting electoral votes could be seen nationwide. Abolishing the winner-takes-all clause will not completely eradicate issues within the Electoral College, but would be a step in the right direction to increase the accuracy of elections and fairly represent the voters. Ultimately, Americans need to regain their faith in the United States political system, and how can we expect them to if their voices are not accurately represented when electing their own president? A system developed in 1804 that has numerous flaws cannot accurately represent the thoughts and ideas of America. Unless we change the way we vote, the very foundation on which we built our country is at risk. With the upcoming presidential election in 2020, the United States is unlikely to move away from the electoral college foreseeably misrepresenting voters again. Until our supposed democracy moves to a process that more accurately represents our ideals, citizens’ voices will continue to be marginalized. Works Cited Aisch, Grogor. “Live Presidential Forecast.” The New York Times, The New York Times, Nov. 2016, www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/forecast/president Clayton, Dewey M. “The Electoral College: An Idea Whose Time Has Come and Gone” Black Scholar. Fall 2007, Vol. 37 Issue 3, pp. 28-41 FairVote.org. “Presidential Elections State-by-State: Hardening Partisanship.” FairVote, 2018, www.fairvote.org/presidential_elections_state_by_state_hardening_partisanship Glass, Russell. “‘Does My Vote Really Matter?" Yes – but Probably Not Why You Think It Does...” Votergy, 27 Dec. 2017, votergy.org/2017/12/27/does-my-vote-really-matter-yes-but-probably-n t-why-you-think-it-does/ Krieg, Gregory. CNN, Cable News Network, 22 Dec. 2016, www.cnn.com/2016/12/21/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-popular -vote-finalcount/index.html. Lewis, Tyler. The Huffington Post , “Why we should abolish the electoral college” 12 Jan. 2017, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-we-should-abolish-the_1_b_8961256 Regoli, Natalie. “18 Pros and Cons of Popular Vote.” Vittana.org, 2018, vittana.org/18-pros-and-cons-of-popular-vote Ruderman, Jesse. “Indistinguishable Electoral College.” Jesse Ruderman " Winning an Election with 22% of the Popular Vote, 2008, www.squarefree.com/2004/11/01/winning-an-election-with-22-of-the-popular-vote/ Schneider, Karl. “Changing to a Popular Vote?” THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE: PROTECTING THE PUBLIC OR DISMISSING DEMOCRACY?, Penn State, 20 Feb. 2017, sites.psu.edu/electoralcollege/2017/02/20/changing-to-a-popular-vote/