Dear Editor, The framers of the US Constitution created the Electoral College as a result
of a compromise for the presidential election process. During the debate,
some delegates felt that a direct popular election would lead to the
election of each state’s favorite son and none would emerge with sufficient
popular majority to govern the country. Other delegates felt that giving
Congress the power to select the president would deny the people their right
to choose. After all, the people voted for their representatives to the
federal legislature.
The compromise was to set up an Electoral College
system that allowed voters to vote for electors, who would then cast their
votes for candidates, a system described in Article II, section 1 of the
Constitution.
Each state is allocated a number of electors equal to the number of its US
senators (always two) plus the number of its US representatives (which may
change each decade according to the size of each state’s population as
determined in the Census).
Whichever party slate wins the most popular votes in the state becomes that
state’s electors—so that, in effect, whichever presidential ticket gets the
most popular votes in a state wins all the electors of that state.
The debate has started again as to whether the US Constitution should be
amended in order to change the presidential election process. Some promote
eliminating the Electoral College in favor of a direct popular vote for
president while others believe the Electoral College should remain
unchanged. Just as compromise solved the initial problems of the framers so
it is that compromise can solve this problem.
The solution is to change the
electoral votes to electoral points and reward each candidate a percentage
of points based on the percentage of popular votes received in each state.
This would eliminate the “winner take all” system thus allowing for all the
votes to count. A voter is more apt to believe their vote counted when a
percentage of popular votes are taken into account rather than the “all or
nothing” system currently in existence.
Further, this new system would
integrate the desire for a popular vote for president with the need for the
individual states to determine who actually gets elected.
As for political primaries the number of delegates awarded in each state
should be determined by the percentage of votes won by each candidate.
For 2016 multiplying the percentage of votes each candidate received
{in each state} times the number of electoral votes {in each state} results
in the following: Clinton 256.985 and Trump 253.482.
Thank you, Joe Bialek From Cleveland, OH.
