Death to the Electoral College

This election day I plan on sitting on my arse, cracking open a nice cold mountain dew, and playing Halo 4 all day. No where do I plan on voting. Now this is mainly because I am registered to vote in Charleston County,  didn’t sign up for absentee voting, and forgot to vote early when I had the opportunity. Despite all of these factors it still doesn’t mean my vote counts at all. No matter who I or any other student at Winthrop votes for, (I’m assuming most are South Carolina residents) it doesn’t change the fact that our states 9 votes in the electoral college will go to Mitt Romney.

People bombard you with the message that “your vote matters”, what they should add is an amendment to that saying “your vote matters, if you live in Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, or another swing state”. People might say that just the vote matters, while in discussion yes, but to think politicians would ever change the  current easily exploitable election system that breeds a two party system is delusional.  In 2008 Barack Obama received 45% of the vote in our state, all of the people who voted for him received no proportion of their voice herd when the state cast its, at the time, 8 electoral votes. With a system like this, what encouragement does Barack Obama to make promises to the state, why would he ever want to be nice to us if its impossible for our electoral votes to reflect our citizens votes.

The worst part about our system is that it absolutely destroys any hope of a viable third party candidate ever being elected to the office of presidency. The fact that electoral votes don’t accurately reflect actual votes makes it very difficult for third parties to rival major parties, especially when third parties have no funding at all. Obviously what I’m driving at here is that I would like to see a system that allocates the votes proportionally, this way the electoral vote more accurately reflects the popular vote. Two states already do something similar on their own, Maine and Nebraska.

Many will complain that republicans and democrats can’t agree on anything, I will make the argument that they can agree on a way to keep a corrupt system in place, whether its super pacs or the electoral college they know how to keep America a nation ruled by parties and not people. Just avoid all the hoopla, stay in (I here its going to be cold anyways) and slay some aliens with me*.

*Exception, if you vote in North Carolina then congratulations, your vote actually does matter, go out and do your civic duty.