In the USA, everyone claims to value democracy and equal representation, but the fact is that we are losing that initial sense of democracy that was founded in our country. Today, a president can be elected without winning the popular vote; that is what the Electoral College allows to happen. This structure was set up in the 18th century as a settlement between choosing the president by Congress or by popular vote. In today’s America, the Electoral College does more bad than it does good. It misrepresents the value of single votes, it opens onto biased election results, and supports partisanship. The Electoral College should be abolished because it lets a candidate who lost the popular vote still win; it sets out unequal power to voters who are living in small states, and makes unreliability and unfairness in elections.

One of the most important reasons why the Electoral College should be abolished is that it lets a candidate win being the president even without getting the most votes from American voters. This has already happened about 5 times in our country, and twice in our recent elections. This happened with George W. Bush in 2000 and also Donald Trump in 2016. Megan Shelby and Andrew Reeves discovered that this issue is called “inversions” and they happen when the majority in swing states exceed the popular vote in the whole nation, it makes presidents who don't speak for the voice of the people and the public opinion (Shelby and Reeves 813). Mark Roche states that “inversions undermine democratic legitimacy and distort the voters’ intent” (Roche 46). When a lot of people vote for one candidate of their choice, but another candidate who was not of their choice is made the winner of the country they live in and who leads that same country, it undermines the trust of the people in the electoral college system and makes it known that their votes don’t really count in the decision making process of our country more than others actually do.

Another reason why the Electoral College should be abolished is because it diminishes the value of “one person, one vote” standard by giving more power to voters in small states with less people. This is because every state gets two electoral votes from equal state representation by default, small states like Wyoming and Vermont turn out with more representation for each individual voter than larger states like California or Texas. Based on what Nolan McCarty and Jacob Montgomery said, this unfair division creates a rural advantage of voting power; one single voter in Wyoming has almost quadruple the impact of a single voter in California (McCarty and Montgomery 318). Roche agrees with this perspective, he states that “the system violates the basic standard of political equality” (Roche 47). The inequality prevents voters in larger states from actually voting which gives specific regions double the advantage in deciding the president than they had before.

The last reason the electoral college should be abolished is because it creates a high rate of unreliability and unfairness in our elections. Simon Jackman and Bradley Spahn show a trend of misrepresentation where the policies of the president push back against public preferences because of how the electoral college votes are distributed (Jackman and Spahn 5). In 2020, Jonathan Kastellec and Dean Knox found that there was a partisan lean toward republicans in our voting system. That means that a candidate of the republican party could be president even if they lose the popular vote by millions (Kastellec and Knox 28521). These kinds of trends make elections feel like they were arranged beforehand and very much biased. It all reduces voter participation and increases the split between both political parties. When people think their vote doesn’t matter, they simply just won’t vote. That mentality hurts our democracy over time.

Despite my argument that the Electoral College should be abolished because it protects smaller states and causes unfair elections. George Edwards supports the use of the electoral college by saying that it lets candidates campaign in many different areas and looks after rural voters' concerns and priorities. (Edwards 400). People say that many candidates running for office only focus on swing states and ignore the rest of the other states; but McCarty and Montgomery say that predictable states which we already know who’s voting for who, both the small and the large ones, are regularly ignored, making the idea that there should be greater voter inclusion inaccurate (McCarty and Montgomery 322). Edwards emphasizes that the electoral college system doesn’t really protect small states the way everyone thinks it does. The system gives a few swing states the power to decide the results of the election. He shows that it's a win-win system, small states still get more of a voice but large states also play a role in the election results as well.

In conclusion, the Electoral College should be abolished because it hurts our democracy and those principles of democracy that helped shape our country today. It lets a candidate become president without winning the popular vote of our country, gives some voters in small states more power than others in large states, and creates unfair and unreliable election results. Some people defend the system and say that it's a way to make sure that small states get just as much as a voice than other states do, but all the evidence leads to the conclusion that it helps the swing states almost single-handly decide the results of our country and hurts the power of public opinion and the popular vote. Our America today should use a different system that shows the will of the people and that accurately voices their opinions. To protect our democracy, we should listen to the voice of the people.

Works Cited

Edwards, George C. “A Defense of the Electoral College in the Age of Trump.” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 133, no. 3, 2018, pp. 397–421.

Jackman, Simon, and Bradley Spahn. “Negative Representation and Instability in Democratic Elections.” Electoral Studies, vol. 64, 2020, 102130.

Kastellec, Jonathan P., and Dean Knox. “Electoral College Bias and the 2020 Presidential Election.” PNAS, vol. 117, no. 46, 2020, pp. 28519–28523.

McCarty, Nolan, and Jacob Montgomery. “Partisan Lean of States, Electoral College, and Popular Vote.” The Forum, vol. 18, no. 3, 2020, pp. 313–332.

Roche, Mark W. “Missing the Popular Vote: Pitfalls in U.S. Democracy and Reform Proposals.” Journal of American Democracy, vol. 29, no. 1, 2021, pp. 45–59.

Shelby, Megan, and Andrew Reeves. “Inversions in U.S. Presidential Elections: 1836–2016.” American Political Science Review, vol. 113, no. 4, 2019, pp. 812–828.