What is the electoral college?
There are two types of democracies, a direct democracy and a representative democracy. The direct democracy is a system where the people vote directly on laws without representatives. Meanwhile, in a representative democracy, the people vote for representatives who vote for the leader of the country in this case the President of the United States. These representatives are called electors. So when people vote on the ballot, they are voting for the electors who vote for the president. The amount of electors depends on the amount of house members and senators that the states have depending on their population and senators. However, the minimum that each state has are three electoral votes. Therefore small states like Wyoming inherently have more representation in the electoral college than populous states like New York or California. The logic was set by the founding fathers of the constitution who wanted to give power to small states as well thereby implementing senators in the bicameral legislature and systems like the electoral college. However, it comes at the expense of the majority opinion in voting which is when the president who is voted in by the popular vote may not be the one elected according to the electoral vote.
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Popular vs. Electoral vote
The popular vote is the vote that is directly submitted by constituents (the people that are being represented). In general, the popular vote represents the interests of the most populous states. The electoral vote is a gathering of the votes of each state. States have a minimum of three electoral votes meaning small states have a disproportionate leverage on the outcome in presidential elections. Washington DC that is a very populous district with many more people than states like Wyoming, only has three votes as well. The controversy with this is that many larger populous states are heavily Democrat while smaller states are heavily Republican. These large states have many urban areas populated by many minorities while small states are mostly white. This also brings in a polemic on the racial representation in the electoral college.
The 2016 Election
The 2016 election featured the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton and the Republican nominee, Donald Trump. In the end as you many know, Donald Trump won the electoral votes as he is the sitting president for now. Hillary however won the popular vote. In one interesting article from the Atlantic, the author takes the side that the electoral college was meant to stop leaders like Trump and goes into depth into the ambiguity of the electoral college language in the Constitution.
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On the other hand, especially on the Republican side, many say that the electoral college should not be abolished. The reasons include that it would leave a very ineffective system that is more chaotic with such a large country and instead of favoring small states and giving their vote, it would be favoring large urban cities instead. In addition, proponents of keeping the electoral college say that amending the Constitution would be a difficult job to execute. This NPR article further discusses the perspective.
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