OUR VIEW: Electoral College system outdated
One of our editor’s family resides in a swing state. Things are great for three years – everyone goes about their lives contentedly and with relative ease. And then come the elections.
Attack ads litter the airwaves and the candidates visit every few weeks or so. The political atmosphere is heated and divisive. Everyone prays to their various gods for the first Wednesday in November to come to pass and signal the end of all the negativism.
The focus is always on the same group of states every election cycle: Ohio, Florida, Colorado, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Wisconsin, etc. The candidates for president swoop in and spend millions of dollars to make sure you know the other one wants to restrict your freedom and eat babies.
Swing states would have to deal with this a lot less if we reformed or completely got rid of the electoral college.
Utah, a state where the turnout for Republicans is generally double that of the Democrats, gets no attention in the months leading up to the election because it is a sure deal for the boys on the right. Just next door in Nevada, the candidates come by every two weeks to tell you that you’re great and should vote for them.
If we didn’t have the electoral college, you can bet we’d have seen more of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney – most likely more of the latter – this election season.
Candidates spend no time in non-swing states because they either have them wrapped up or they are a lost cause. Without the electoral college, they would be able to rally their base in every state, not just six or seven of them.
The electoral college promotes low participation and voter turnout. When the majority opinion of the state differs from a persons, they don’t feel the need to go to the polls because their vote in all honesty won’t matter.
The electoral college makes voting for a third party candidate a joke. If the two major parties saw a third party candidate getting a good percentage of votes in a popular election, they would change their tune and become more flexible.
Democracy, a government ruled by the governed, demands that every vote in a country matter. With the electoral college, your vote still matters – in a handful of states. It’s time to re-think the electoral college, switch to more of a winner-take-all system, or get rid of the college alltogether.