What is a democracy? In the United States democracy is the ability to vote and elect freely and equally. The problem is that some people are not educated about voting, which the United States attempted to solve with an electoral college, a group of delegates whose votes matter more, as a safety net. This unfortunately did not work as well as the government had hoped and only made things more complicated. The electoral college should stop being used because of the fact that it has political inequality in voting, confusing elections, and too much power.
The first reason that the electoral college should be abolished is because it promotes political inequality. In elections, there are two groupings of elections: the popular vote, which is the public’s vote, and the electoral college. Because people who live in smaller states feel like they aren’t represented, the electoral college gives these more votes. This actually leads to the opposite because less people are being represented fairly. An example of this is the fact that 13 of the smaller states have a combined population that is smaller than the state of Illinois’s population, yet have 24 more electoral votes. This proves that the electoral college gives unequal representation to certain groups.
The second reason that the electoral college should no longer be used is because it leads to confusing elections. The electoral college can lead to elections where a candidate can have the most popular votes yet still lose. In the election of 2000, for example, despite the fact that Al Gore had almost 500,000 more votes than George Bush, Bush won because he had the most electoral votes. This makes no sense because it is obvious that more people voted for Gore. The electoral college causes confusion during elections.
The third reason that the United States should get rid of the electoral college is because it has too much power. In many elections, it seems to be the only thing that matters, such as in the 1992 presidential election. Despite the fact that Bill Clinton didn’t even have half the popular vote, he still won because of the electoral college. This is bad because it makes Americans feel as if their votes don’t matter.
Though some people think that the electoral college is a good thing because it is a safety net over uneducated voters, it isn’t because the majority of voters are educated to begin with. The electoral college should be abolished because of the fact that it has political inequality in voting, confusing elections, and too much power.