by Dennis Aubuchon

Created on: November 14, 2008

The Electoral College is an interesting subject about which I feel many people do not understand. We believe we elect the President on Election Day in November. While there is much hype about the election and the results, the actual election of the President comes through the votes by the Electoral College. Though the news organizations talk about the Electoral College during the results it is not put in perspective so the public understands. The Electoral College made sense in the beginning of our country but I feel it has lost much of its relevancy. This article will explain why I feel this way and what changes should be made.

The votes assigned to each state amount to one for each representative and the two senators. While this brings some organization to the process those states with large populations get more Electoral College votes than those with less population. This decreases the importance of the votes in each of these states. There needs to be some consistency, which provides equal importance to all states. Candidates sometimes concentrate on those states with the highest electoral votes so they achieve the required number to be President.

At the beginning of our country, there was no easy way for people to learn about the candidates running for President and the Electoral College was established to make the decision. There needs to be some changes in this process. The American people have a right to have a greater impact from all states not just those with higher Electoral College votes. While some may say that this would be unfair to states with higher population, I say that each state deserves equal representation in the Presidential election process.

This can be accomplished in two ways. The first is to assign an equal number of Electoral College votes to each state. This will create a situation where each state has an equal degree of importance in each Presidential election. The other option is for the states to award or assign delegates based on the percentage of votes the candidates receive during the election. This will again allow an equal chance for the candidates to win the quantity of votes to be elected. Today with the large assignment of votes based on the number of senators and representatives the more a state has increases the importance of winning that state. This is wrong.

Prior to Election Day there is another aspect which has a bearing on which candidate wins the nomination for their party. There are states that award delegates

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