Three Good Reasons to Abolish the Electoral College

Abolish the Electoral College Now!
Definition of the Problem:
The United States has a problem and just kicking it down the road isn’t enough anymore. The Electoral College was established in 1787 during a period in America’s history when the Founding Fathers had few models to draw on when they crafted the presidential election laws.
Since its establishment, the Electoral College has been the formal body that is used to elect the nation’s president and vice president rather than relying on a straight count of the nation-wide popular vote. The operation of the Electoral College is set forth in Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution which stipulates that the total of representatives and senators that each state has equals the number of "electors" it sends to the Electoral College (the District of Columbia has three electors in the Electoral College).
This means that when Americans vote in presidential elections, they are not voting directly for the candidate of their choice but rather for a slate of electors that is then tasked with casting their ballots in line with the voters’ preferences districts (Electoral college facts, 2020).
Unfortunately, this Rube Goldberg approach to electing the leader of the Free World has subverted the will of the American people more than once, and the potential for future recurrences is even greater due to politically motivated demographic manipulations of voter districts and increasingly overt efforts at voter suppression. In sum, the American people want, need and deserve to elect their president directly.
Analysis of the Problem
Over the course of the 56 presidential elections in the history of the United States, the winner of the popular vote lost the election due to the outcome of the Electoral College vote at least four times, meaning that the will of the American people was subverted by this irrelevant, arcane and archaic government institution.
Although the candidate that receives the most popular votes is required to receive the electoral votes in 26 states and the District of Columbia, the rest of the states use a variety of different methods to allocate their electoral votes (Electoral college facts,2020), leading to confusion and the sowing of even more distrust in the election process on the part of the American people.
Beyond this fundamental problem, there are some other issues that are associated with the Electoral College that warrant its abolishment, including most especially the following:
Problem No. 1
Except for television and radio ads, presidential candidates tend to just ignore the 40-plus states they know they cannot win or cannot lose and concentrate on the states that are up for grabs that have the most electoral votes such as California, Texas and New York. This has serious implications for voters in the rest of the “ignored states.” Indeed, the editors of New York Times Upfront emphasize that, “With the Electoral College, voters in two-thirds of the states are effectively disenfranchised from choosing the President because they do not live in closely divided ‘battleground’ states” (Should we elect the president by popular vote?, 2008, p. 22). This point was also made recently by Pearson (2020) who cites the 2016 presidential election as a good example of a broken system. According to Pearson (2020),the Electoral College is why “why 70% of American voters are ignored, while campaigns shower attention on five to 12 battleground states. In 2016, two-thirds of the general election campaign (spending and events) took place in only six states; 94% was centered in just 12 states” (p. 30).
Problem No. 2
Not only does the Electoral College essentially disenfranchise tens of millions of American voters during each presidential election, it also compels candidates to assign far greater priority to policy issues that are important to voters in swing states. Such issues may be less important or completely irrelevant to voters in other states, meaning that president candidates are attempting to appeal to just a percentage of Americans while running for an office that requires concern for and attention to all Americans.
Recommendations
Fortunately, unlike the answers to most of the major crises that are facing the country at present, the solution to promoting participatory politics in the United States is straightforward and easy to implement: Abolish the Electoral College and do it today! As Althouse (2011) concludes, “Direct popular election of the President is the only real reform” (p. 994). Please contact your congressional representatives and senators and encourage them to abolish the Electoral College through a constitutional amendment at the earliest opportunity. The country and its electorate deserve no less!
Now is the time!
The American people have waited long enough! We hope you join us in our efforts to abolish the Electoral College and make America a real democracy where every vote really does count once and for all. Continuing to ignore the votes of more than tens of millions of Americans has repercussions beyond each presidential election and extends to an increasing dilution of trust in a voting system that routinely marginalizes a majority of American voters.
References
Althouse, A. (2009, Spring). Electoral College reform: Deja vu. Northwestern University Law Review, 95(3), 993-999.
Black, E. (2012, October 14). Ten reasons why the Electoral College should be eliminated. Minneapolis Post. Retrieved from https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2012/10/10-reasons-why-electoral-college-problem/.
Electoral college facts. (2020). U.S. House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives. Retrieved from https://history.house.gov/Institution/Electoral-College/Electoral-College/.
Pearson, C. (2020, March-April). Winner-take-all ignores the will of too many voters: The Electoral College should follow the popular vote. State Legislature, 46(2), 29-33.
Should we elect the president by popular vote? After hundreds of attempts to abolish Electoral College, opponents are promoting a plan to work around It. New York Times Upfront, 140(10), 22.