The founding fathers of the United States had to decide during its creation how a group of presidential electors is required by the Constitution that will choose the leader of the country for the survival of the United States and its citizens. However, contrary to that, the Electoral College has always suppressed the rights of the common people who want to vote for the president of their liking through the national popular vote, and therefore the democratic process is distorted. One of the reasons why I strongly believe that the Electoral College should be abolished in the United States is that the Electoral College denies the voting rights and freedom of the citizens by being archaic, indirect, ambiguous, and undemocratic to elect the president of their choice and gives power to the presidential electors making them more privileged than the citizens of the States[1]. The underlying flaws of the Electoral College negatively affect the process of National Elections because presidential electors’ choices can be swayed by their self-interests as they are specific party loyalists. Another reason I think why the Electoral College should be abolished is that electoral voting is against democracy because it does not represent the majority vote which does not seem fair at all.
This system further distorts democracy as votes are not distributed according to the one-person vote principle of the population of the country. Secondly, the notion that people living in states with minority status need the electoral weight they get through the “senatorial bump” more than states with a majority population. All the voters are not given equal rights to vote for each member of the state and its delegation to the House of Representatives rather electoral voting restricts each state by giving one or two electoral votes as “bonus electors” to represent only two senators for each state to the House of Representatives. Building on the notion of the Electoral College marginalizing the one-vote right of the citizens, I propose that presidential candidates in the elections would be elected directly through the common people’s national popular voting system. To further prove my stance on why voting should be done according to the popular vote, I put forward that the total electoral votes of the less populous states are more than double of the states with large population status which is politically unfair and incorrect. So, Electoral College should be abolished to represent citizens accurately by their electors Schlesinger wrote in the Washington Post cited by Wegman in “Let the People Pick the President” that the Electoral College system imposes a “fatal burden” on the minority president therefore the electoral voting is intolerable and undemocratic [2].
For example, if you have voted for a presidential candidate along with other 90 million American voters, but another candidate is elected as president in the middle of December with just attaining 538 votes of citizens from all the states of the USA, how would you react? You will definitely consider it an obvious flaw in the system because the votes of the majority did not help count the presidential place for the candidate appropriately. So, it would be a false and unfair representation of the victory for the American people to believe. Presidential elections should remain unbiased and that can only be achieved through the one-person vote principle by the national popular voting system. The political system needs to understand the fact that the Electoral College system for voting was founded by the founding fathers for some viable reasons that each state would have a set number of electors based on the population of each state to elect the president of the United States.
However, this reason is not viable for current circumstances as I feel that people of the United States want the legible privilege to vote for the president. Democratic legitimacy requires the voting process to be fair, clean, and equal and for all the citizens to be treated the same throughout the United States. Thus, the Electoral College system is not required anymore because it does not accurately represent the voice of the common people and is therefore detrimental to American society.
References
Feerick, John D. “The Electoral College–Why It Ought To Be Abolished.” Fordham L. Rev. 37 (1968): 1.
“Let the People Pick The President Pgs 1-34-1.Pdf: XL2_POL-1-47560/47559 OL (08/22-12/17) American Politics.” Accessed September 14, 2022. https://rccd.instructure.com/courses/59982/files/10352713?verifier=KsgoeqU4kvtuyraXMlXUwsHayGrV0eyhv1w1vRms&wrap=1.
John D. Feerick, “The Electoral College–Why It Ought To Be Abolished,” Fordham L. Rev. 37 (1968): 1. ↑
“Let the People Pick The President Pgs 1-34-1.Pdf: XL2_POL-1-47560/47559 OL (08/22-12/17) American Politics,” accessed September 14, 2022, https://rccd.instructure.com/courses/59982/files/10352713?verifier=KsgoeqU4kvtuyraXMlXUwsHayGrV0eyhv1w1vRms&wrap=1. ↑
