Wyomingites are monstrous giants who decide the fate of normal-sized Californians with an iron fist
But seriously though this is why the electoral college system doesn’t make sense in modern America. It effectively reduces the validity of your vote as an individual if you happen to share your state with more people. It pretends every state is like a mini-country with its own unique and special interests rather than treating all Americans as a single population.
Because they are? That’s why each state has a Governor and a Congress? Because the needs of the people in Wyoming are not the same as the needs of the people in California? We’re a Union of separate States under a Federal representative government; aka UNITED STATES (note the plural?). That’s why there’s two houses in the national Congress, and why Presidents compete for States, not popular vote alone. Because each state IS significantly different from the others and have their own unique problems, cultures, habits, and needs.
And while each person in Wyoming has more ‘voting power’, it’s because their state is only worth 3 Electoral votes. Without the Electoral System, the greater Midwest would be absolutely worthless to Presidential candidates. They wouldn’t need to care about the problems in Wyoming, Montana, Arkansas, Kansas, etc, leaving these states effectively voiceless in elections, their concerns unaddressed.
The system ensures that the states with the largest populations have the highest values, but the states with smaller populations still carry significant weight, compelling Presidents to actually at least give a show of caring about their problems and perspectives.
Welcome to a representative republic; where you can’t just do whatever you want simply because you have more people. The power and rights of the smaller states are protected by the Electoral College and other systems so that no State is voiceless in government.
So please, go to Texas and tell them they have the same problems as people in Maine. Or tell a man from Chicago that he might as well be from Brooklyn. Yes, we’re all Americans, but to pretend the States don’t have their own unique needs and cultures is just turning a blind eye to reality.
The president ends up impacting things that DO affect our entire population the same. Health care laws. Environmental regulations. Whether or not we go to war. The individual states have their own governors to worry about their differing needs. The U.S. president is equally the problem of everyone regardless of where they live.
Our choice in president effects the entire country, where as individual state laws effect individual states, and are voted upon by said states.
The electoral college does not decide individual state laws, California can not weigh in on laws in Wyoming. At this point in our nation, electoral colleges do little but directly cause vote inequality.
The point is, getting rid of the electoral college would get rid of sectioning out votes by states, and make every US citizen’s vote equal.
No one state would be deciding anything, instead the populous of our country would make the decision, you know, like a democracy.
Yep, and no matter how anyone tries to rationalize it, one state is not one interest group. One state is home to many different demographics in many different circumstances and does not suddenly give way to a whole different set when you step over the state line.
Look how Arizona voted this year, for instance:
Trump won the popular vote in Arizona by less than 5%.
This is a state which is, incidentally, listed as “37% Hispanic,” and only about 51% white.
We know that 60-70% of white people voted red this election nationwide, while some 80-90% of minorities voted blue because Trump’s entire campaign treated them as enemies of this country.
If it’s not fair for California’s larger total population to have more say than Wyoming’s smaller total population, then why is it fair for Arizona’s only marginally larger white population to decide the entire state’s vote?
If we went by total popular vote rather than the electoral college system, then the voices of the minority populations in these states would have actually mattered and their interests heard fairly, instead of drowned out by a 5% margin.
People are arguing that the electoral college exists to give “smaller populations” BY STATE an equal say, and yes, that is technically what it’s doing – by erasing smaller populations within those states. It is doing the exact opposite of leveling the field.
Not to mention that the Electoral College doesn’t even do a good job of making sure that all states get representation, since it’s feasible to win the White House with only 11 states out of 50. Which is bullshit.
Not to mention no presidential candidate goes to campaign in Wyoming anyway because there are so few people in it, nor do they campaign much in any state where it’s already known which party it will vote for due to the electoral system. If every individual vote in the country was added together candidates would actually visit MORE states, and not just concentrate on the swing states.
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