What are the 3 most important words in the history of The United States? We the People. And what does that mean? Who are we the people?” While you may think that that the phrase “We the People” is talking about all Americans, there is actually much more to the phrase. “We the People” includes all the citizens of the United States of America. The importance of this phrase is shows that it was just the framers of the Constitution of the legislators who were giving powers to the government. Instead, the government gets all of its powers from all of the Citizens of the United States of America. “Democracy is a process, not a static condition. It is becoming, rather than being. It can be easily lost, but is never finally won.” is a quote from William H Hastie. So what does this have to do with you now in 2018?
Well coming next time in 2020, many Americans will journey to vote for the next President of the United States. Today, our government leads us to believe that our vote matters, and that we should not take the responsibility lightly. However, this is very just a lie. In the month of November during a presidential election year, each state holds an open election in which all qualified citizens may participate. Citizens cast a vote for a particular ‘ticket’, which comprises of a candidate for President and Vice President.
Many Americans are familiar with this part of the voting process. What happens after this stage, though, is not asunderstood.It is at this point in the election process that the Electoral College begins to take effect. In 48 states the Electoral College is utilized in the same way (Maine and Nebraska have a slight variation). After the votes in each of these 48 states are counted and tallied, the political party whose candidate received a majority in a particular state is allowed to choose a slate of electors who will cast the real votes for President.
The Electoral College was created, in part, to make the states feel important in a federalist government. If the amount of Electoral College votes a state receives was directly proportionate to its population, smaller rural states would be rendered completely irrelevant. So they gave every state (along with the District of Columbia) a minimum of 3 votes.While this distribution method successfully helped distribute power to the smaller states, it produced many unforeseen consequences.As previously stated, the Electoral College is a winner take all system. If a candidate wins the popular vote of a state by a just a single vote, he generally receives all the electoral votes of that state (excluding Maine and Nebraska).
Combine this with the fact that smaller states receive more electoral votes per person than larger states, and it becomes possible to win the presidency by winning just 21.8% of the American public’s vote.While electors are generally extremely loyal to the party they align with, they don’t have to vote the way the people of their state instructed them to. In other words, just because a candidate won the popular vote in your state does not mean that your electors have to cast a vote for said candidate themselves.
Electors that vote against the will of the people are called “faithless electors.”It’s worth considering that it might be time to reconsider the Electoral College and rely exclusively on a national popular vote to determine our President. By electing our President solely based on who the majority of our population selects, without the inclusion of an Electoral College, the vote of every American citizen would hold equal weight and significance like the constitution stated we should have.
Under this new system, when we vote for President we would actually be voting for President, not instructing ‘electors’ on how we want them to vote. The will of the American people would always be executed and honored, and could never be thwarted.With the Electoral College, the voting power of the people has been diluted and unequally distributed across our nation. It’s time that we begin to amend our broken process and truly define “we the people” the right way.