Absolutely. It is insane to think that there have been 5 presidential elections in US history where the person who didn’t win the popular vote became president. This has happened in 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016. Every time the person who won the popular vote but denied office was a Democrat. Coincidence?
The main argument against eliminating the Electoral College seems to be that people think that big states like New York and California will dominate the election. Well.. shouldn’t it? Do people in Canada complain when Toronto dominates? Do people in UK complain when London dominates? Do people in Japan complain when Tokyo dominates?
The biggest cities and states *should* dominate the election – because it has the most economic power of the country! Why should California voters – the economic engine of the country – matter less than New Hampshire voters (a swing state) when New Hampshire produces a fraction of the US economy ?
This ‘tyranny of the majority’ argument is senseless and stupid. The majority SHOULD dominate the election. If smaller states want to matter more in the election they should find a way to attract more people to move there, period.
It would be much more fair. Right now, a vote in Ohio, North Carolina or Florida is worth more than a vote in California or New York or Hawaii because they are battleground states. Because of the electoral college, candidates no longer need to care about states that are solid red/blue and just go for the states that really matter which are battleground states. That means a vote in Nevada or Colorado or Pennsylvania is worth way more. That isn’t fair.
A lot of answers here focus on the fear of being dominated by the majority. Oh but what if California/New York dominate every election? Oh but what if Los Angeles and Chicago decide every election?
Well, so what? Not every New Yorker is a Democrat, and not every Chicagoan is a Democrat. They vote for whatever candidate they feel is best. I feel like the people who are against the popular vote system are overwhelmingly Republicans who fear that the Democrats who are usually in the more urban areas will get to decide every election, then they won’t get to win elections anymore. Boo-hoo. Maybe then they’ll actually have to appeal to the middle class, and the majority of people.
As it stands, they can disregard all the immigrants and non white folks, since they are usually in the big cities, to focus on the rural white folks who disproportionately matter more.
Every other democratic society votes by popular vote. And they have provinces or states like the USA does. In Canada, PEI and Newfoundland don’t complain about being dominated by Quebec and Ontario. In South Korea, Jeolla and Jeju don’t complain about being dominated by Seoul. Only in the US do I find such fear about actually giving everyone a fair vote. If the smaller cities or states don’t matter enough in an election then maybe they should change their policies to entice more people to live there so that their votes matter more.
I know, Americans have to be different from the rest of the developed world. Everyone else uses Metric system, we use Imperial. Everyone else has reasonable gun laws, and we are thinking to arm teachers. Everyone else uses popular vote, and we have had 5 elections where the popular vote winner wasn’t elected. (In case anyone’s interested those 5 were all Democrats named Andrew Jackson, Sam Tilden, Grover Cleveland, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton)
Leave a Reply