So...What's the Deal with the Electoral College?

It’s no secret that the election we just had was controversial. A big controversy surrounding the result is the fact that president-elect Donald Trump did not actually win the popular vote. However, Mr. Trump did win the electoral vote, therefore winning him the presidency. According to CNN politics, Hillary Clinton had 65,844,954 votes, which made up 48.2% of the popular vote, while Donald Trump had 62,979,879 popular votes, making up only 46.1% of the popular vote. However, Donald Trump had 306 electoral votes, completely wiping out Clinton’s 232 electoral votes.

How could this happen? Well, it’s simply that the electoral college allocates a number of votes to a state based on the size of its population. For example, while data from CNN politics shows that Trump beat Clinton with a 0.8% margin in Wisconsin, anyone who voted for Hillary had their votes not count in the end, since the electoral college makes it so that the electors of the state all must vote for Trump. Trump was able to secure his victory this way with many states. For example, he won Pennsylvania, a state notorious for being a swing state, thus earning him 20 electoral votes, even though the popular vote between Clinton and Trump was so close in Pennsylvania.

Regardless of whether you supported Trump or Clinton in this past election, it is clear that the electoral college system causes many people’s votes to be unheard. As citizens, everyone has the right to vote, yet not everyone’s vote counts. This same scenario happened in 2000 during the election between Al Gore and our former president George W. Bush.

This has happened twice in the span of sixteen years. Is it time to bring a change to our voting system?

#election