The American Lie Every vote matters; it is a slogan that has been broadcasted across the United States

during the presidential election between Obama and Romney. Despite popular belief, that is not how the elections really work. Each voter is really voting for state electors in the Electoral College that have pledged to vote for the candidate the voters decide (Sanders 46). Potential electors groups are aligned with a political party and have pledged to vote for that partys candidate; the group chosen to vote in the Electoral College is based off the state popular vote. The Electoral College was made by founders who did not anticipate how the election would progress in the future. It was made to give small states a voice in the election; their opinions would not be swallowed by larger states. During that time, the founders thought that each state would have its own candidate (they did not count on the development of two national political parties) and to balance the effect the larger states had, the smaller states needed a bigger voice (46). While the Electoral College could vote the non-popular vote candidate in as president, the popular vote candidate would always become vice-president (candidates did not run with a vicepresident so the runner up became vise-president) (48). The problem with this system is that candidates now campaign based on the Electoral College; they focus resources and time on getting the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the presidency (45). In fact, Nixon was the last presidential candidate to even visit and campaign in all fifty states (45). In American history, the non-popular vote candidate has won the presidency three times (the elections of 1876, 1888, and 2000), each time being within 1% difference in popular vote (Pava 442). This is not by any means insignificant; the Electoral College has many dangers with its potential impact on the national election and should be abolished so the nation will not have to suffer through another non-popular vote president.

A problem with the Electoral College that is often overlooked by more concerning issues is the electors. There is no set way across the United States that the electors of the Electoral College are chosen (Office). Each state branch of the political party separately decides which people in their party will be chosen to be the electors; the common methods are nominating a person or a committee choosing someone (Office). The electors chosen States have a winnertakes-all attitude about the election (or a similar district version of this); the candidate that has the popular vote in the state wins all of the states electoral votes (Pava 436). The members of the Electoral College vote for the future president after the popular vote election. They have pledged to vote for the candidate that their state has chosen by popular vote (Sanders 47). However, they are not by law required to vote for that candidate (Bennett 121). Northwestern Universitys Professor of Law Robert Bennett when discussing the 2000 Bush-Gore election, explains: Suppose at those electoral college proceedings, a majority of the electors had cast their votes not for George Bush, as they had been committed to do beforehand, but for Utahs Senator Robert Bennett (or, for that matter, anyone else who was a natural born citizen of the United States, at least thirty-five years old, and had been resident in the United States for the prior fourteen years), even though not a single popular vote in the entire nation had been cast for Bennett. (Bennett 121) The electors of the Electoral College can vote for whoever they want; the popular vote is really only a suggestion. The members that dont vote as they have pledged are called faithless electors (121). There have been 156 faithless members in the past, but they have not changed the results of an election (Sanders 47). However, it has come close; Gores campaign was rumored to have looked for faithless electors and if just three members had changed their

minds Bush would not have been president in 2000 (Bennett 123). As a result, some states have tried to bind the electors into doing what their state popular vote says; for example, North Carolina has a $500 fine and New Mexico has it be a fourth degree felony (121). Nonetheless, few states have faithlessness be a crime; most simply require a pledge (122). Conversely, the Supreme Court ruled that the pledge could not be legally enforced; the reasoning behind this decision was it was a constitutional freedom of an elector to be faithless (122). The main problem with the Electoral College is the dangers that could hypothetically happen. In The Very Worse Case situation, a candidate with a very low popular vote count could win the presidency (Barnett 449). The Very Worse Case is a calculation on the minimum percentage of popular votes cast to win a presidential election between two candidates; this means 270 electoral votes (449). One of the rules of this calculation is when the candidate wins; the candidate wins by the smallest possible margin (499). When the candidate loses in a state, the candidate has no votes at all (499). These rules were used to find the price of a state; this was calculated by taking the total votes and dividing them by the number of Electoral College members for each state (the Electoral College number is the Senate number (2) plus the House of Representatives number (varies based on population)) (449). The price is how many votes it takes to win an electoral vote in a specific state. These rules were originally used on voting data from the 1988 election (449). This method has been used on data of the 2008 election.
Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 State WY DC ND VT AK HI RI SD DE Total Votes 253137 265853 316621 325046 326197 453568 471766 381975 412412 # of Electoral College 3 3 3 3 3 4 4 3 3 "Price" 84379 88618 105540 108349 108732 113392 117942 127325 137471 Votes Required 126569 132927 158311 162524 163099 226785 235884 190988 206207

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

WV NE MT ID NM NH AR ME UT NV KS OK MS LA IA KY AZ AL CT TN TX SC CA NY IN MA NJ OR GA MD IL MO CO WA OH PA VA NC MN MI WI FL

713451 798444 490109 655032 830158 707611 1086617 731163 942678 961581 1235801 1462661 1289865 1960761 1530386 1826620 2293475 2099819 1646783 2599749 8077795 1920969 13464495 7590551 2751054 3080985 3868237 1814251 3921693 2622549 5513635 2925205 2401361 3036878 5697927 5992384 3716905 4296847 2900873 5001766 2976356 8390744

5 5 3 4 5 4 6 4 5 5 6 7 6 9 7 8 10 9 7 11 34 8 55 31 11 12 15 7 15 10 21 11 9 11 20 21 13 15 10 17 10 27

142690 159689 163370 163758 166032 176903 181103 182791 188536 192316 205967 208952 214978 217862 218627 228328 229348 233313 235255 236341 237582 240121 244809 244856 250096 256749 257882 259179 261446 262255 262554 265928 266818 276080 284896 285352 285916 286456 290087 294222 297636 310768

356726 399223 245055 327517 415080 353806 543309 365582 471340 480791 617901 731331 644933 980381 765194 913311 1146738 1049910 823392 1299875 4038898 960485 6732248 0 1375528 0 0 907127 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Adapted from: Office of the Federal Register. "U. S. Electoral College." U. S. Electoral College. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Nov. 2012. <http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoralcollege/2008/popular-vote.html>. This data concludes that the winner would need 28548975 votes of the 131032799 total. The winner would win with only 21.8% of the popular vote. This is not that far from the original 1988 data, which had the winner at 21.6% of the popular vote (Barnett 451). This calculation is

not realistic but it does prove a point; a candidate could win the presidency with significantly less popular votes than another candidate (451). To avoid these possible disaster scenarios from occurring, the Electoral College should be abolished. A possible way to do this would be a constitutional amendment; this is extremely difficult to do and not practical (Gringer 182). The Electoral College could be abolished with the National Popular Vote Plan (182). The law student David Gringer explained how the National Popular Votes Plan works: Under the [National Popular Votes Plan], states pass laws awarding their votes in the Electoral College to the winner of the national popular vote. [the law would go into effect] provided enough states passed similar laws to ensure that the winner of the national popular vote would be elected President (182-183). This plan would make the winner of the popular vote the presidential winner because it would cast the electoral vote as the national popular vote winner despite who won the popular vote in the state (182). Currently, this law has not made an impact of the election; too few states have made this a law to change anything and there has not been a need because there has not been a close call election where one could win without the popular vote since the plan was started (182). So far, the plan has been enacted in nine electoral states (Washington, California, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont and Washington DC) and is in legislation in two electoral states (Pennsylvania and New York) (183). The National Popular Vote Plan would be a great way to abolish the Electoral College without a Constitutional amendment. It is not as nice as doing away with it all together, but it would stop a disaster from occurring. Even if there were a few faithless electors it would not even have the possibility of changing the election because an overwhelming majority of the electoral votes would go to the national popular vote winner. The Very Worse Case scenario

would not be a possibility (Barnett 449). The National Popular Votes Plan might later lead to a constitutional amendment and officially abolishing the Electoral College. Whether or not a constitutional amendment happens, the important thing is that every vote will count as they should. There is no good reason that a vote cast in a small state should have more of an impact on the election than a vote cast in a larger state. The United States believes in equality of people and until the Electoral College is abolished, that will not be true for everyone casting a vote.

Works Cited Barnett, Arnold. "Selecting the Nation's CEO: A Risk Assessment of the Electoral College." Journal of Managerial Issues 21.4 (2009): 447-60. Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection. Web. 4 Nov. 2012. Bennett, Robert W. "The Problem of the Faithless Elector: Trouble Aplenty Brewing Just Below the Surface in Choosing the President." Northwestern University Law Review 100.1 (2006): 121-30. Academic Search Premier. Web. 8 Nov. 2012. Gringer, David. "Why the National Popular Vote Plan Is the Wrong Way to Abolish the Electoral College." Columbia Law Review 108.1 (2008): 182-230. Academic Search Premier. Web. 4 Nov. 2012. Office of the Federal Register. "U. S. Electoral College: Who Are the Electors? How Do They Vote?" U. S. Electoral College. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Nov. 2012. <http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/electors.html>. Pava, Jose M. "On Introducing Proportionality in American Presidential Elections: An Historical Analysis, 1828-2008." Political Quarterly 82.3 (2011): 435-47. Academic Search Premier. Web. 4 Nov. 2012. Sanders, Arthur. "Chapter 4: The Electoral College." Losing Control. N.p.: Peter Lang, 2007. 4568. Points of View Reference Center. Web. 4 Nov. 2012.