The United States Constitution was written to serve the ideals of a federalist nation.
The Federalists Papers were published in 1788 to justify a framework for a government that aimed to distribute power fairly between larger and smaller states.
A representative democracy is fulfilled in the use of the Electoral College and, although flawed, is the best way to give every state balanced representation.
If the Electoral College was abolished it would strip states of their power and throw mob rule in power rather than each state getting a balanced say on the next president.
Middle America lacks the voting power to ever out number a force as big as any coastal state.
This would result in whatever values those states hold to make laws that might not speak to people in lower populated areas.
In a New York Times article, Colorado Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg said that states like Wyoming and Utah will be hurt and the power of California and New York would be too much.
“People in rural areas did not get overrun by the masses,” Sonnenberg said in the article.
Expanding on the senator’s opinion, Wyoming relies on industries such as coal mining to keep its economy rolling.
Wyoming only has 557,000 citizens in the entire state.
Comparatively, the city of San Jose contains one million people.
If popular vote was implemented as the only tool for voting then San Jose, which has no mining industry, could easily turn down any candidate that is ready to make policy that would hurt the Wyoming mining industry, leaving its citizens powerless and in some cases, jobless.
Candidates would even go as far as to skip some smaller states like Wyoming all together because there would be no point in campaigning in an entire state when a candidate could just campaign from large city to large city across America.
Not only does this problem affect elections state by state, but without the Electoral College large cities within states would dominate the entire election.
San Jose, Los Angeles,San Francisco and San Diegowould form a monopoly on California voters leaving multiple smaller towns and theirneeds unheard.
And if the argument is going to be made in the first place that a system of government needs to be fixed then the Electoral College is the wrong place to start looking.
The United States Senate has a far worse deviation of power, with each state containing two representatives no matter its respective population.
This does make each state fully equal, but it ignores the population differences completely unlike the Electoral College that at least uses population as a factor in assigning electoral votes.
Any legislation has to pass through the Senate, and senators themselves possess influential power in the United States.
The system holds more importance than the Electoral College that is only used every four years for either the election or reelection of the president.
The Electoral College is certainly not perfect, but it keeps the United States loyal to its federalist roots.
American democracy functions better when states have balanced power.
