Americans are growing more disgruntled with the role the Electoral College plays in our presidential elections. For starters, the Electoral College is the system we have that actually elects the president via a series of delegates who represent states based on their population. The more people a state has the more EC votes it gets and the more influence said state gets in presidential elections; however, problems arise that cause people to advocate for its removal.

The largest problem people are angered about is that EC votes aren’t distributed proportionally for a state’s population as there’s a finite amount of them. While California has 55 electoral votes, the most of any state, the number of votes it takes to represent just one vote is substantially higher than it is for Wyoming and their three electoral votes. Because of this disproportionate representation, it becomes possible for a candidate to win the presidency and lose the popular vote.

This system, albeit somewhat outdated, should not be removed as it still plays a role in preventing the tyranny of the majority. While the majority of the time good, decent candidates will be elected by the people and EC, it is not certain that the populous will always elect a decent person to the presidency. Such occurrences have in fact happened with presidents Rutherford B. Hayes and Benjamin Harrison winning without the popular vote, but preventing southern anti-black candidates from taking the presidency.

The original purpose of the electoral college was the idea that 18th century farmers wouldn’t know enough to make a well informed vote for the presidency, so the states sent their delegates proportionate to their population to vote on behalf of the people as they would be more informed in the capital. With the advent of effective mass communication, this no longer needed as the majority of voters are informed and responsible, which is why popular votes by state determines who the state’s electoral votes go to.

It’s been argued that the Republican party uses the Electoral College as a reliable crutch to gain the presidency. While the past two Republican presidents have in fact won the election without the popular vote, those occurrences have been a coincidence and not a surfacing trend. With the amount of elections that have happened and with the complexity of each election, it’s entirely likely that coincidental occurrences such as these happen.