Electoral College overview
...gh senators and representatives of Congress vote for candidates their state would like to see in office, there exists one fundamental flaw in the way this system works. Each person’s vote in the United States is not equal, which is the basis for the claim that the Electoral College is undemocratic. A person’s vote in California holds significantly more weight than the vote of an Alaskan. But why does this system seem so unfair? The undemocratic issues of the Electoral College arise from the “winner-take-all” design of the system. Rather than determining the way the people vote and dividing the electoral votes evenly to each candidate, a state devotes all of its electoral votes to the candidate that wins a majority. This may appear democratic, since people’s votes do count because it determines whether a candidate wins a state or not, but there are situations where the system is blatantly unfair. It is possible for a candidate to win the most populated states to get a total of 270, which is enough needed to be elected, while winning none of the less populated states. In theory, the entire populations of most of the states could vote against a candidate, but the candidate could still win since the “winner-take-all” method would allow him to win the fewer, most populated states, rather then winning the actual popular vote. There are four instances in history where candidates have won the election without the popular vote: Jackson in 1842, Tilden in 1876, Cleveland in 1888, and Gore in 2000. It is impossible to justify these Presidents’ victories because the majority of the population voted against them, yet they still became President because of the flaws of the Electoral College. The best way to make the Electoral College more democratic is to adopt more democratic ideals in the way the system works. This would basically mean making aspects of the system much more equal. Each vote should be equal to any other vote, regardless to factors such as state population. There are many different ways to achieve this end. The most obvious solution would be to use direct votes from people and bypass the Electoral College all together. With electronics, computers and the Internet, this method is feasible, and also shows clearly whom the ma...