By Melissa Ratliff
The necessity of an electoral college has been a much debated issue since the infamous presidential election of 2000.
Many of us remember going to bed with Al Gore as president, only to wake up to George W. Bush. Gore had won the popular vote, but Bush had succeeded in capturing the majority of electoral votes.
There was a public outcry and a lot of finger pointing, but the results should not have been surprising. This was the fourth time in American history that the election was lost by the winner of the popular vote. One famous example is the 1824 election in which President Andrew Jackson lost to John Quincy Adams.
The electoral college is a census-based system that allots states a certain number of electoral votes (Kentucky has 8). On Election Day, U.S. citizens aren’t voting for a candidate individually.
The issue in question is simply that the individual vote has less importance in smaller states or states that are predisposed to go Democratic or Republican, than they would in swing states or states with larger populations.
This means, as a Democrat living in a predominantly red state, my vote carries less weight than it would if I lived in, say for instance, the hotly contested battleground of Indiana.
Shouldn’t every American vote count? Especially in this very important race.
If the wishes of the majority of Americans had prevailed in 2000, Bush wouldn’t have been president.
The electoral college voting system needs to be abolished.
