by Laasya Gadiyaram

At its conception, the electoral college was designed to oppress the people. It wasn’t created to provide equal representation or partisan favors. Rather, the electoral college was designed to ensure that the American people had less of an influenced over the election of their representatives. Hamilton believed that common Americans were too uneducated to make their own decisions, and the colonial aristocracy should make choices on America’s behalf. This ideal manifested in the creation of the electoral college: a system designed to make “direct” democracy a fallacy to its name sake.

This same sentiment of elitism still exists today, just in a different form. Instead of the colonial elit, the system is benefiting the conservitive wealthy. Most people are dissatisfied with their representatives and feel as though thier needs are not being prioritized in Washington. They feel failed by the system supposedly designed to represent them. But the system didn’t fail. In fact, it’s operating at it’s higest capacity.

The electoral college is very confusing but here it is broken down: citizens of a state will vote in the presidential election. Whichever candidate wins the popular vote within the state then wins all of the state’s electoral votes. The electoral votes are a given amount of “electors” allocated to a specific state. In total, there are 538 electors. Whichever candidate wins the 270 vote majority then wins the election.

It’s confusing, isn’t it. We’re told that every vote matters, yet the electoral college actively represses that supposed reality. If you’re wondering how, here’s how it works.

Here’s a real life example. Wisconsin has a population of 578,759 people and it has 10 electoral votes. California has a population of 39.51 million people and it has a 55 electoral votes.

Now here’s the thing. California’s population is 67.6 times larger than Wisconsin. But California only has 5.5 times more electoral votes. If the ideal that “every vote matters” was indeed true, than California the difference between population would be equal to the difference between electoral college votes.