To the people who think that "our votes don't matter anyway because the electoral college elects the president, not us"

OR

"We should just have a popular vote system"


Don't forget that in each individual state, the popular vote decides which candidate's electors go to vote in the electoral college. In almost every state, the electors are bound by LAW to uphold the popular vote of that state.

Thus, citizens elect the president, albeit indirectly. That's how our country works.

I'm not saying you are doing this, but it drives me crazy when some people try to misconstrue or misrepresent the electoral college. Some say things like "our votes don't matter because the Electoral College elects the president anyway" when that completely misses the point and the REALITY of the situation.

As I said, the electoral college was an act of genius. We are a very large country, and so it was deemed important for the concerns of ALL Americans to be taken into serious account.

With a straight popular vote, large areas of the country would be irrelevant. Entire states would be hardly worth campaigning in or worrying about. This i still somewhat true even with the electoral vote system, but at least under our current system, smaller states have more say than they would under a straight popular vote system.

For example, Vermont has 3 electoral votes (the fewest possible). There are 538 electoral votes in total.

Therefore, Vermont has about .5% of the total vote (half of one percent).

Under a straight popular vote system, Vermont would have .2% of the total vote (about 1/5 of 1%)

Vermont Population 623,908
USA Population 299,398,484

Note that the electoral college system more than doubles the impact a small state like Vermont has over the election. It is still a small percentage and smaller states with that few votes are often overlooked, even now.

On the other hand, a state like NY State is effected as follows:

Under the electoral college: 31/538= 5.7% of the overall vote.
Under a popular vote system: 6.4% of the total vote.

As you can see, the numbers are not drastically different, yet they are different enough that the concerns of any one geographical area of the country cannot dominate the entire country.

NY is still many times more important than Vermont. Ditto for California (55 votes and the biggest prize), Texas (34), Florida (27) and Pennsylvania (21).

I like the idea that you must appeal to a broad enough cross section of America to get elected. State with huge population bases still have the most pull (see the house vs senate debate when our country was formed).

Few know this (sadly), but when our country was being formed, the original idea was to have a LEGISLATURE. NOT a house and a senate, but one legislative body. Big states wanted the number of representatives from each state to be decided based on population. Smaller states wanted equal representation for all.

Thus the compromise: each state has 2 senators regardless of population, and varying number of house members based on population. The legislative powers are divided between the two houses.

The electoral college is the same principle. A COMPROMISE.

But anyone who thinks that the electoral college is the "true decider" of the elections does not understand the basic structure of the system.

The electors themselves are simply a formality. They are sent by the people of each state and BOUND to obey the people's will.