Author: the1ndependent

Ah the good old electoral college, the winner loves it and the loser hates it. Every election it seems that there’s always a group calling for a popular vote. Sure a popular vote makes sense until you realize that all of the power to elect the leader of the country rests within just a few states. I personally don’t like the current system of electoral college but I also don’t like the system of a popular vote. The strengths of the electoral college are that it requires candidates to campaign in many different states and to respond to many different voters. To me the weak part of the electoral college is the winner take all system. It causes liberals from traditionally red states such as Texas to feel as if their vote doesn’t matter, the same goes for a conservative in California. Now like I said I’m not advocating for a popular vote, but I do believe we need to find a way to make these two meet. In my opinion I think the electoral college needs to be a proportionate system. So for example in the 2016 election Trump won 62.08% of the vote in Alabama, and Clinton won 34.36% of the vote with 3rd party candidates taking up the rest. With the current system Trump wins all 9 of Alabama’s electors, in a proportionate system Trump wins roughly 5.5 and Clinton wins a little over 3 electors now because of the 3rd party spoils these numbers aren’t perfect and you obviously can’t have half an elector. So I would put in a 10% rule, meaning a candidate has to get at least 10% of the popular vote in that state in order to gain an elector. So taking away the 3rd party spoils we’ll round Trump up because he won the overall which puts him at 6 for Alabama and 3 electors for Clinton. Now if we do that math for the rest of the country that’ll put the final tally for electors at  270 for Trump, 267 for Clinton and 1 for McMullin. Now they’re may have been some rounding errors and there were a lot of states that were so close I gave both candidates an equal amount or if it was an odd number I gave the winner 1 more elector. Either way Trump still wins the necessary 270 to win the Presidency but it is a much more accurate view of the election. I believe this is most free and fair way for us to elect the President.