Weaknesses Of The Electoral College

A substantial amount of American citizens expected Hillary Clinton to win the presidential election over Donald Trump. Her popular votes exceeded over one million, however Donald Trump won the electoral college. So although Hillary won the popular vote, the people’s vote, we have the electoral college which says our votes do not matter. The creators of this procedure most likely did not expect this scenario to occur. In the recent years it has been also revealed that it has many weaknesses. They can however, be improved by the people who want to see change happen. The voting system we currently possess in our society is not fair enough where every vote could be heard due to the electoral college.
First of all, where did the electoral college come from? In 1787, …show more content…
The original plan to elect the president and vice president was proved unworkable. The plan was that each elector gave two votes for President and no votes for Vice President. After the votes were counted, the contender that received the most votes was elected president and the next runner up became Vice President. One reason it was made was to satisfy the smaller states. Each state is given a number of electors equal to the number of its U.S. senate representatives. Another reason was that they did not want to give all the power to congress to select the president. They believed regular popular election was too reckless and prone to error.
The electoral college is not perfect and has many faults. If the loser of the popular vote wins the electoral college, they win the election. Another problem is that the candidates campaign becomes distorted. Some states votes cannot be changed and their votes will stay the same as the previous elections, these are called safe states. “Safe states for Republicans include Texas, Arizona, Georgia, Tennessee and Indiana, amongst others. Safe states for Democrats include New York, California, Maryland, Illinois and Washington, amongst others”