Electoral College 2.0
By
Staten Island, NY Posted: 11/28/2016 1:00:00 AM
Many people today would like to get rid of the Electoral College. Here's a better alternative.
From time to time we elect a president who doesn't win the popular vote, which naturally leads to a lot of debate about the purpose of the Electoral College. Most of the debate is grounded in the misconception that we are living in a "Democracy".
The fact is, there is no such thing as a PURE Democracy. We're a Democratic Republic, which basically means we don't vote directly for anything, but we do vote for people who represent us. When the Constitution was drafted, the Founders went to great lengths to insure that each community would have a voice that reflects each of their unique values and needs.
Because the population and needs of each state vary so much, the solution was to give each state 2 representatives in the Senate, regardless of the size of the state, and to divide each state into congressional districts that reflect the variations in population for each state. Smaller, less populated states have fewer Congressional seats than larger, more populated ones.
When it comes to electing our President, the Electoral College maintains the same core concept as our Congress in that larger, more populated states get more Delegates than smaller ones, but there's one critical difference. Unlike our Congress, each state is a winner take all race to win all of the delegates of that state, which means that in many states a candidate can win the entire state by focusing on a few heavily populated cities.
I think the best alternative to the Electoral College is to eliminate the winner take all rules, and base it on Congressional Districts.
Here's a breakdown:
1. Eliminate Winner Take All rules for each state.
2. Assign one Electoral Congress Delegate for each Congressional District.
3. Assign Two Electoral Congress Delegates for the winner of each state, just like in the Senate.
Using our current system, candidates have a tendency to ignore less populated areas and only focus on big cities. As such, many people in those areas don't even bother voting because they think their state will be controlled by the vote in the bigger cities. By eliminating the Winner Take All rules, every Congressional District would have a voice in the election, regardless of who wins the state.
The idea behind assigning two additional delegates to the winner of each state is to maintain the spirit of the winner take all rules, while still giving each district their own voice.
Joe Crescenzi, Founder
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