The electoral college of the United States has been in effect since the establishment of the Constitution. Throughout the years, the system has remained effectively the same, though new states have entered the Union and all have grown since the initial founding of the system.
As the system stands today, each state is allotted a number of Electors equal to its number of Representatives in the U.S. House plus two for the state's members of the U. S. Senate. Each decade, the number of Electors may change as a census is taken to determine the number of Representatives each state is given. These Electors are selected by the State party for major parties and are designated by the third parties.
After the general elections for the President, each state tallies the votes cast for each candidate. The party which receives the most popular votes is designated the state's official Electors. These electors then meet to cast their Electoral Votes for the President. This means that the party which receives the most popular votes receives the entire state's popular vote. This is true no matter how slim the margin or the distribution of votes across the state.
The main problem with the system is that it does not respect the distribution of votes across states. In some states that have a large number of Electoral Votes and even in some that have small amounts of votes, a handful of large cities or counties that are particularly partisan can control the entire state. A candidate could for example, campaign only in the city of Philadelphia, and if he or she were to win the majority of the city's votes, he or she would be nearly guaranteed the entire Electoral Vote total from the state of Pennsylvania, regardless of the rest of the state. This is true in many states, and was especially evident in the 2004 election; in Pennsylvania, California, and New York, Senator John Kerry won only certain highly-populated cities. These include New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Hollywood, among others. President George Bush, on the other hand, won nearly the remainder of the states' Representative districts. Due to the distribution of population, however, Sen. Kerry won all three of those states, and with them he received a massive amount of Electoral Votes that nearly turned the election away from President Bush.
The current system takes much power away from the people in that even if 90% of the state votes for a candidate, if that only makes up 49% of the population, they still lose their state's Electoral Votes to the opposing candidate. This puts incredible power in the hands of the big cities and takes power away from rural America. In addition, many highly populated cities are strongly aligned with one party or another, creating a bloc of voters strong enough to cancel out the rest of the state and force the Electoral Votes on their candidate.
The way to fix this problem is currently employed in the states of Maine and Nebraska. These two states distribute their 4 Electoral Votes in a different manner. Two of the state's votes go to the candidate who wins the state by popular vote, the same as the remainder of the states. The other two, however, are given to each Representative district. The winner of each district is awarded a single vote, therefore permitting the loser of the state to still get one of four Electoral Votes.
This system would counter the Electoral monopoly of the big cities. If this system were implemented, rural Representative districts would have a stronger say in who would become the next President of the United States. Each state would be awarded Electoral Votes equal to twice its number of Representatives. (This would mean that the number of electoral votes required to win an election would rise dramatically.) Exactly one-half of those votes would be awarded to the winner of the state, regardless of the margin of victory. The remaining half of the votes would be distributed- one to each of the state's Representative districts. The winner of each district would then be awarded a single Electoral Vote.
This system might also encourage more political participation. If the small districts each had an Electoral Vote to give out, more people would feel that their single vote would make a difference. Indeed, under this system, a single vote that swings a single district could determine an Election. Small communities would also be out from under the shadow of the larger cities, for even if the city did carry the state, the district could award its Electoral Vote to whichever candidate it saw fit.
Another advantage to this system would be that in many instances, large states are sharply divided. What might be good for New York City might not be good for Buffalo, but since NYC is larger, it could carry the state despite Buffalo's voters. Today's political giants might not look closely at a district-by-district map of votes, because they don't need to. They only need to know that they won the state. However, if the candidate who won the election lost most of the counties in New York, he might take more interest in the problems and concerns of those areas and address them. This would encourage political officials to take more interest in the people, and take a closer look on even the states that they won.
Today's voting system is not bad, but it could be far better. Big cities and their sponsored parties can control entire states, even tough they only encompass a tiny fraction of the state and might know nothing about the rest of it. Runners for political office tend to ignore the needs and desires of small cities and low-populace areas and campaign in only the large cities that control the states. Changing the system would bring these problems out and address them permanently.
