Ever since the presidential debate came to a close, headlines have been all about Donald Trump’s election victory over Kamala Harris. However, for the past few years, an issue regarding the election system has been the subject of discussion, more specifically, circulating the Electoral College. As times have changed, so have policies and systems, but the Electoral College, created in 1787, has stayed nearly the exact same. The controversial voting system hasn’t adjusted to modern times, and I believe that this is a major issue, thus the Electoral College should be replaced with a system that accounts for both sides of the vote, not majority rules .

To begin with, let’s take a deeper look at what the Electoral College even is. The Electoral College is a system used by the U.S. to determine the winner of the presidential election. Rather than directly voting for the president, Americans vote for “electors” who then go on to cast their votes for the president and vice president. Sounds simple, right?

Each state is assigned a certain number of electors based on the total number of representatives and senators for that state (e.g., California has 54 electoral votes, 52 representatives, 2 senators). Now, when citizens vote, they are voting for the electors to then support the candidate (president & vice president). The candidate who wins the popular vote in said state wins all of the state’s electoral votes (in Maine and Nebraska, they use a “Congressional District Method,” where it isn’t a winner-take-all system and candidates can split their electoral votes based on district and state results). In layman’s terms, instead of voting for a presidential candidate, you are voting for a group of people to vote for said candidate, assuming they win the state’s popular vote, and the electors (group of people to vote for said candidate) will then go on and cast their electoral vote.

To win the presidential election, a candidate must receive 270 votes out of 538, and the first candidate to reach that 270 mark is declared the winner.

On paper, this system is great. Here’s where the trouble is, the whole electoral system is too black and white. For example, if in California, 49% of people vote Republican and 51% of people vote Democrat, all 54 electoral votes—the most out of any state—will go to a Democrat candidate. Obviously, this is completely skewed because rather than the votes being nearly down the middle, the majority side wins every single electoral vote. In other words, let’s say there is a state with 100,000 people, and the state determines 20 out of 200 total votes for the presidential election. Now, if 49,999 people vote for Candidate A, and 50,001 people vote for Candidate B, all 20 votes (100% of the votes) are now in favor of Candidate B. It is basically a winner-takes-all system, and that completely disregards the many people opposing the selected candidate from their respective state. 

Besides this form of voting being confusing to understand, it gets even worse when you realize that getting a majority of votes across the country does not guarantee the president title.

Another issue involves the popular vote and the electoral vote. The “popular vote” is the total number of votes a presidential candidate receives from voters across the country. The issue is that despite getting more total votes, a candidate can still lose in the Electoral College system, hence losing the election despite getting more total votes. 

Now how does this happen? Certain states carry more votes than others. For example, California has 54 electoral votes, but a smaller state such as Kentucky only has 8 votes. Here’s a hypothetical scenario: Kentucky has about 4.28 million people, whereas California has about 38.97 million residents. If all 4.28 million people in Kentucky vote for John, John will then receive 8 electoral votes. However in California, 19.97 million people can vote for Bob, while the other 19 million vote for John. Now Bob has 54 electoral votes to John’s 8, but a total of 23.28 million individual people (popular vote) voted for John, whereas 19 million people voted for Bob. This is essentially what happened in the 2000 election and the 2016 election, where individually, the losing presidential candidate received more popular votes than the winning one, but the winning candidate received more electoral votes, and it is merely the electoral votes that matter. Clearly, this system is flawed and we need a new way to count votes.

So, should the Electoral College be abolished?

Well, yes, but it likely won’t. 

After the 2000 election where a majority of Americans voted for Al Gore, but George W. Bush ended up winning, Congress hinted at a change, and for good reason. Bush actually won with a minority of votes, but since he won the big states, he ended up being the 43rd president. Again, after the same thing happened in 2016 with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, with Clinton getting more votes than Trump despite losing, critics argued that the system was clearly outdated. These two occurrences thus prove that the Electoral College is flawed.

So for now, despite the Electoral College being outdated, it is here to stay, but what other alternatives do we have?

Well, the best possible option is likely the system used by Maine and Nebraska, where electoral votes are split between two candidates rather than all of them going for one. By doing this, elections will capture more opinions and votes for candidates will be far more accurate. Citizens could be more inclined to vote, because instead of a state always voting for one party (such as California voting Democrat nearly every election), voters could make their voices heard, which would likely cause an influx of voices. On top of this, roughly 61% of Americans believe that a new voting system should be implemented, further proving that this outdated system should be retired. 

Ultimately, it is up to Congress to decide, but the Electoral College should be exchanged for a “more fair” system.