After this year’s abnormal election, more people than ever before have investigated the process of getting a presidential candidate into office. Many are not liking what they find. The measure under criticism is the Electoral College.

After some investigating, the conclusion is that the Electoral College may have been created to give equal representation to all states in America, but it overlooks the support for certain candidates.

Despite having such adamant opinions, many people have formed rash thoughts about the Electoral College without fully understanding how it works, the purpose it serves, or the problem recently brought to light about it.

The Electoral College, originally created during the writing of the Constitution, ensures that small states receive the same attention from the presidential candidates as the more populated states. The Electoral College contains 538 electors who vote for president, and a candidate needs at least 270 to pull majority and win the election. Each state (as well as the District of Columbia) has a set number of seats on the college, based on their number of congressional seats. The number of congressional seats assigned to a state is based on population, but it is still impossible for a candidate to win the election solely on the support of heavily-populated states. Therefore, the candidates must theoretically campaign in all states and districts, not just the heavily populated ones. While this process might seem perfectly logical, in the last few years, the United States has realized it also has a major flaw.

Since the United States uses the Electoral College, each state holds public elections, in which the people vote for the candidate they want to win the presidency. But the controversy lies in how states convert this popular vote into their allotted votes in the Electoral College. Almost all states have a winner-takes-all policy (excluding Maine and Nebraska, which have a variation of “proportional representation”), in which the candidate who receives the most popular votes receives all of the state’s votes in the Electoral College voting.

Under the winner-takes-all method, the number of people supporting a certain candidate does not matter much after they reach the majority number. For example, let’s take the 2016 presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. In Florida, Trump had 49% of the popular vote and Clinton had 47%, but Trump still received all 29 of Florida’s Electoral College votes. On the other hand, in California, an extremely liberal state, Trump had 32% of popular votes and Clinton had 61%, so Clinton won by a large majority and received all 55 of California’s Electoral College votes. If you look at the numbers, Clinton had 54% of the two states’ popular vote, while Trump had only 40.5%.

Some may now jump to the conclusion that because California has more seats on the Electoral College, it evens out. Unfortunately, it does not, because of the way the Electoral College skews the seats to make sure a candidate cannot win the election solely with the support of populated states. So, the fact of the matter is that Clinton may have won the popular vote, but Trump still won the presidency, just by playing to the Electoral College. Since the Electoral College allows this separation between popular vote and the official voting, it will always be easy prey for those looking to criticize the United States government and presidential candidates.

Max Niculae ’20 believes the Electoral College’s benefits outweigh the bad: “It’s been working for the most part… and I really think we need the benefits.”

While I do understand that, without the Electoral College, presidential candidates would focus considerably less on smaller states in America, I think that’s a price we must be willing to pay for the benefit of our citizens. Our entire country is based on the people; the people should be able to decide their president without interference. That is the definition of a true democracy.

Using the Electoral College, the popular vote does not necessarily have the deciding factor that they should, which many should find extremely concerning. If the majority of citizens want one presidential candidate to win the presidency, then that candidate should win the presidency. Nicole Roberts ’19 agrees: “I think it’s unfair because if one person is liked more than another, that person should become president.” If one candidate has more support from the nation, he or she should be the one to represent the nation and their supporters’ wishes.

Now, after hearing all the facts about the Electoral College, ask yourself, is the Electoral College a yay or a nay?