Electoral College Unfair

In the 2000 presidential election between George Bush and Al Gore, Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral college; this had only happened four times in history. This brought out a lot of controversy between people who didn’t understand how the electoral college worked. The electoral college is made up of representatives of each state, who vote for the president and vice president. Each representative is voted for by their individual state voters, whom they will represent. Currently, there are 538 total electors, 271 votes needed to win the electoral college. This process of voting has been questioned because, it appears to be unfair to voters, and it doesn’t allow outside American territories (who are American citizens) to vote or …show more content…
This is understandable since, the way the electoral college really works, could seem confusing and appear to be unfair. The representative that is chosen for each state is based on the popular vote of the state. For example, California for the most part is democratic. So, when Obama ran for re-election in 2012, he won California’s popular vote. This means that the representative chosen to vote in the electoral college must represent the popular vote or the values that the state holds. Most of the time this is what happens, but sometimes, like with Al Gore & Bush, they can lose the electoral college because the representative voted differently to the state vote. Unfortunately, this seems unfair but sometimes it could be for the better. Truth is, there are many people who go out and vote for someone or something that they are completely uneducated about. Per say, someone could go out and vote for someone without knowing how that candidate feels about certain education issues, gun control reforms, foreign policy issues etc. The electoral college serves as a backup plan for people who make uneducated votes because, what is popular is not always the best …show more content…
One of the biggest problems, I believe to be of the electoral college is, its discrimination of the outside U.S territories. The process prohibits the U.S. territories from voting in a popular vote or having representatives in the electoral college. Currently, there are about 5 million U.S. citizens who are not allowed to vote because of where they live; this includes: Puerto Rico, Guam, Virgin Islands, American Samoa and Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. In a recent video, John Oliver, of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, he states, “residents of America 's island territories can 't vote because the Supreme Court found in a series of early 20th century decisions that they belonged to the United States but were "not a part" of the United States. The decisions also found the territories were inhabited by "alien races" who might not be able to understand Anglo-Saxon laws, so the U.S. Constitution didn 't have to apply.” Our constitution guarantees all citizens the civil right to vote; so why do these outside territories gain citizenship and no voice in their government? Technically, the answer to this is because they aren’t a state, just a territory.Unfortunately, the citizens of these territories are