Electoral College

stephabef

Do you think the US will ever get rid of it? I feel like this debate has been constant recently, and I've actually never met anyone who sees the benefit in it. Seems to me it's only being kept around because the "founding fathers" created it. I'm frustrated, because my views differ greatly from the majority of people in my state, so I usually feel like my vote doesn't count (the only exception to this is local elections - I live in the city of Atlanta, and people tend to statistically have more mixed views when it comes to the vote than the rest of the state, which is fairly red across the board).

This is how Britannica sums it up:

"In any case, the most cogent argument against just about every proposal to reform or eliminate the Electoral College is that each would require the nationalization of our election laws. That would be a major change in the way we conduct our democracy, with all sorts of unexpected consequences. Right now, strictly or legally speaking, there is no national “popular vote,” but only fifty state results that are unofficially aggregated by the media. All in all, we don’t have enough evidence that the Electoral College is broke enough to need fixing."

Granted, I understand that it's a large change, but I think it reflects how the country has grown (even just when it comes to sheer numbers). I disagree that it fundamentally changes how we "conduct our democracy." It changes it, sure, but not massively so. And why is change so scary?