Americans take pride in their freedoms and rights, including their right to vote for president. However, citizens actually vote for electors, who are representatives. These electors then vote in the Electoral College and elect the president. Although this system has been used for over 200 years, it has become unreliable. The time has come for the American people push for it to be eliminated from the United States election process.

In the time period in which the Electoral College was implemented, it had a legitimate reason to be used. When the United States was first founded, news and information spread slowly, and not all eligible voters had a high level of education. It tooks weeks for any election news to travel from state to state, and voters knew little about the candidates because of this. For this reason, the Framers of the Constitution believed that not all voters were educated enough to make a wise decision, so they suggested the Electoral College. However, in today’s county, Americans are far more informed than those who lived in the United States 200 years ago. It is insulting to suggest that voters are unintelligent, or that they aren’t capable of making their own choices. As of 2011, 96.7% of Americans own at least one television and can watch news stations. During elections, news channels are constantly covering the election, the candidates, and the debates. Thanks to these advances in technology and communication, adults have enough resources at hand to decide the president for themselves rather than have representatives vote for them.

Unfortunately, not all electors are trustworthy. Since the Constitution does not require electors to vote accordingly with the area they are representing, electors are able to change their votes. These electors, called faithless electors, skew the amount of electoral votes each candidate receives. They often work alone but sometimes work together in large groups in order to have a bigger impact. Faithless electors have even caused there to be ties in elections. These electors take power away from the citizens by not accurately representing their area. These citizens’ votes were deemed worthless by the electors. In America, all people are entitled to their opinions. What is the purpose of the popular vote if it is not going to be respected correctly? Faithless electors also have the ability to abstain from voting, which obstructs the citizens whom they are representing from being heard. It is unjust for an elector, who is entrusted with the responsibility of representing a large group of people, to completely eliminate all of those people’s votes. Although faithless electors have never changed the outcome of an election, they have the capability to do so. The possibility for electors to determine the president without considering the wants and needs of citizens does not reflect the values of which the United States was founded upon. The government is supposed to derive its power from the consent of the people. We, as citizens, give our representatives their power. Since they are abusing this power, we need to revoke it.

America is often associated with equality. However, America does not give equal voting opportunities to all citizens. Electors are not evenly distributed among states, and the electors-to-population ratio in each state is different. This means that not all votes are equally weighted in the election. In 2012, Florida had half a million more voters than Texas, but Texas had nine more electors. How is it that a state with more voters gets fewer electors? It is difficult to predict the exact number of people who will vote on election day because not everyone votes. The electors are distributed based on the number of registered voters, but this is inaccurate because not all of these people choose to vote on election day. The Electoral College is impacted by the unpredictable voter turnout in each state. Just because part of the population decides not to vote does not mean that all who do should be negatively impacted. All humans are born equal, and they are still equal no matter what state they live in. Voter inequality based on state, which is caused by our Electoral College system, infringes on the rights of Americans. In a fair voting system, each person’s vote would be equally weighted.

The Electoral College has the power to change the outcome completely. In a typical voting system, the candidate who receives the most supporters wins. Why does the United States allow for the opposite to happen? There have been instances where the popular vote reveals one winner, while the Electoral College reveals another. Most recently, the election of 2000 was not true to the popular vote. Gore won the popular vote, but Bush won the electoral vote. The Electoral College system failed to support the majority of the country, which wanted Gore to be president. This has happened three other times. If most people do not support a candidate, why should that candidate get to become president? The American people can no longer allow nominees with the least support to be victorious. Being president is an enormous responsibility, and the position must be given to the candidate who is trusted by the American citizens. In these past cases, the president was not chosen in the best interest of the people. A president with little support from his or her citizens will struggle to make policies that suit the country. This is a problem that the Electoral College poses and will continue to pose until the system is dissolved.

As our Founding Fathers stated, reforming or overthrowing the government is a duty of the people. It is time for Americans to step forward and demand change in order to be more influential in elections. The Electoral College system is an indirect way of voting. The winner of the election should be who is chosen by the nation to serve, not who is chosen by a few hundred people. By using the Electoral College, the government is exercising censorship of voting and deeming that not all people are entitled to their opinion. This system is becoming corrupt and no longer fits the needs of the country. The American people must push to eliminate the Electoral College before all citizen influence is lost from elections.