Equality. It’s one of—if not the most—significant topics that presidential hopefuls base their candidacy on. Though in the U.S., the races the candidates enter, the races they spend millions of dollars on, isn’t equal. It’s not even decided by the overall popular vote, it’s determined by a process called the Electoral College. Since I know everyone either didn’t listen in their U.S. Government class or did, but still doesn’t have a clue what the Electoral College is, I’ll give a brief history lesson. 

The Founders of the United States, in search of a presidential voting system, ended up picking the Electoral College. They were afraid that farmers and others in rural areas would lack the ability to inform themselves of who was running and what they were running for, thus leading to uninformed voters who, theoretically, lead the country into “mob” rule. 

Today, the Electoral College looks like this. Each state gets two electoral votes for both of their senators, then their population decides, roughly, how many more electoral votes they get. For instance, California, which has a massive population, receives 55 votes, while Wyoming is only awarded three, because of its sparse population. Whichever presidential candidate wins the states popular vote is awarded with all of the states electoral votes. For a president to win the election, he or she has to accumulate a whopping 270 electoral votes to win. 

This system is broken for multiple reasons. First, it doesn’t represent each state equally. In the past two elections, 2016 and 2020, the race has come down to three swing states. Some call it the Blue Wall, but I refer to them as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. In both the 2020 and 2016 elections, the fate of each of those states has been decided by less than 1 percentage point. Both the Biden and Trump campaigns understood that the key to winning the White House laid within those three states. That’s a huge problem. 

The Electoral College forces campaigns to focus on states where the outcome is in question. For example, Biden never even thought about campaigning in California, with Trump doing the same in Texas. Why? The candidates know that those states heavily favor their individual political party. So why would they waste precious campaign time in states that have voted for their party, without fail, for the past 20 years? 

Second and very similarly, the Electoral College doesn’t represent each person’s vote equally. You see, if your state votes red but you voted blue or vice versa, guess what, your vote is gone. 

You may be thinking, “How? Because I thought that the process to decide who wins the state is based on the popular vote, so wouldn’t that make everyone’s vote equal?” You would be right in your assertion that states are decided by the popular vote, but wrong when you stated the votes counted equally. 

When you break it down, you’re never voting for a candidate. You’re strictly voting for the chance to vote for a candidate. Whichever color, red or blue, your state turns, a group of electors goes and votes for that party’s candidate. On the second Monday in December, those electors march and cast who the state voted for, not the voters themselves. This process completely disenfranchises millions of American citizens. I’m not sure that most Americans understand this process because it’s simply mind boggling. 

Why then does a system, which clearly displays the inequalities in our voting system, still exist? The answer is simple: the hunger for power. 

Republicans currently have control of the Senate, which is the chamber that holds the key to passing any controversial legislation for our nation. Though Republicans aren’t ready to pass any new legislation regarding the Electoral College because that would spell disaster for their hopes at another Republican president. In our nation’s history there have been five elections in which the candidate who won the Oval Office lost the popular vote. Two of those have occured in the past 20 years, both benefiting Republicans. Most recently in 2016, America showed they backed Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, as seen by the 3 million more popular votes Clinton received. But wait — who took control of the White House? Donald Trump. Therein lies the most essential and frankly downright frightening problem that needs to be addressed. 

Somehow, our world-renowned, globally promoted and nationally sacred democracy doesn’t yield, 100% of the time, the power to allow the people to elect the presidential candidate that the majority of Americans believe is best suited for office. 

This isn’t political. It’s personal. Your vote should count just the same as your neighbor’s vote. Your state’s vote should count just the same as your neighboring state’s vote. If you don’t believe in a system that allows this, yet you say you love America’s democracy, therein lies the problem. 

People who shift their views solely based on political preference are the biggest threat to American democracy.