Josh Duffy-Cooper, Staff Writer  

The 2020 elections are right around the corner which means the frenzied political rhetoric has grown in exponential proportions – especially relevant in this upcoming election is the electoral college.

Some are calling for the complete abolition of it. They feel that because the electoral college is the dominant deciding factor of elections, that their vote has no value and does not count. However, the electoral college is not only important, but necessary to the continual balance of power between states and the federal government.

Originally, the purpose of the electoral college was to prevent common folk from electing a buffoon to the presidency. However, the electoral college and his voters have gone through a multitude of transformation. In modern times, the electoral college is a group of voters, all that cast their electoral vote based on the popular vote.

Problem with this process is that in most states, it’s a winner take all system. This means that if 2 million people vote for Donald Trump in Ohio, and 1.8 million votes for Hillary Clinton. All the electoral votes go to Donald Trump even though 1.8 million voters voted for Hillary Clinton.

In the current system, this is unfortunate and it means that people‘s votes really don’t count.

So what’s the solution?

Many people want to abolish the electoral college entirely. However this is not the effective solution. If we ban the electoral college entirely the largest population centers become hubs of political relevance for presidential candidates.

This would become a major problem for states like Montana Iowa Wyoming etc. Because they lack high population centers. This would dramatically destabilize which states had majority influence in the legislatures, as well as make states like California, New York, and Texas superstates.

The ultimate solution is to make the electoral college not a winner takes all system, but a representational distribution of electoral votes.

This would mean that the total electoral votes of each state would be divided up based on the number of votes that each candidate got in the states. This would more effectively and accurately depict votes across the country, and make sure that every vote counts.

Through this simple change, we can drastically improve representation of popular will and the effectiveness of our own democracy inside United States.