The Electroal College

When Americans vote, each and every vote is not counted, they are voting for the 538 individuals who make up the Electoral College. Most states award their electoral vote to the candidate who has won the popular vote. Let me emphasize, "Most."

The campaign for 2004 that was directed towards my generation was "Vote or Die" (MTV 2004), with words as strong as those, a person like myself, would assume my vote actually counted. But, as I learn more about politics, and the whole Electoral College process, I am stunned and quite aggravated. Honestly I would have probably not ran out and registered to vote, and voted for the first time in my life, if I had known that my vote really didn't matter. They do "claim" that every vote counts, but once again I must emphasize, most states award the electoral vote to the candidate that has won the popular vote. To me this means that even if all the votes of a particular state point to one candidate, it isn't guaranteed that the candidate that should plainly win the state actually will.

I really do not support the Electoral College, I do believe if we allow a Constitutional Amendment to be passed to completely abolish the Electoral College; it will open the doors to other requests that may challenge to abolish any one of our rights. Although I do believe there is something that can be done to make the Electoral College a little bit fairer where all of our voices can be heard.

The Electoral College system is said to be the subject of persistent critisism, and there has been many proposals of reform. There are several plans in which to change and even abolish the Electoral College.

The Direct Election Plan: Under the Direct Election Plan, the Electoral College would be completely abolished. This means that the President and Vice President would be elected directly by the popular vote. The major advantage of this plan is that every vote would carry equal weight. The said disadvantage to this plan is that it would require a full Constitutional Amendment, which is very unlikely. I personally feel this plan is a long shot because in order to build a new Amendment the individuals that would be voting on it, are the same ones that would have to relinquish there voting rights in order to abolish the Electoral College.

The District Plan: This plan would preserve the Electoral College and the basic method of electing the President and Vice President. It would eliminate the "winner takes all" aspect of today's Electoral College. The advantages to the District Plan are that it would better represent the voter in every state and district. Also, it would not require a full Constitutional Amendment. This plan would also be effective even if only adopted in a limited number of states. The main disadvantage is that this plan does require initiatives in every state. I think this plan is beneficial because I don't think there would be much resistance from the Electoral College