Americans across the nation went to vote for our next President on Nov. 8.

But voters were not directly voting for the next president. They were participating in a system called the electoral college, a group of 538 electors. 

Instead of directly voting for president, voters are voting to elect an elector who will vote for the candidate.

This dilapidated system needs to be replaced with a system of direct popular voting.

The electoral college heavily favors voters in smaller states, such as Wyoming which currently has three votes.

But when dividing the electoral votes by the state’s population, Wyoming would get only one vote to represent it. The state has three votes due to a clause found in the electoral college that gives a state, no matter how small it is, a default of three electoral votes.

If we were to distribute votes according to population size, California would get 68 electoral votes. The state is robbed of 13 votes because it has only 55, the same number its had since 2004 despite California’s population growing by approximately 4 million people since then.

These votes are given to other states with smaller populations. 

This electoral college system is also a misrepresentation of the will of the American people. As a result of this system, a vote in one state could be more powerful than others just because of where someone voted.

This system needs to be changed because of a winner-take-all system in 48 of the 50 states. If a candidate wins the majority of the vote in a state, he or she gets all of the votes.

If a voter ever lives in a state that traditionally votes as either Democrat or Republican, it would be as if that vote never counted if the voter doesn’t side with the majority.

This system has brought unexpected results in some elections where a candidate wins the popular vote but loses in the electoral college. This has happened four times in American history in: 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016.

In theory, the electors are supposed to represent the interests of the people. But there have been instances where the electors vote against their state’s candidate. In 24 states, electors are allowed to vote for whomever they wish and only get a small fine as a penalty. This contradicts the very foundation of the electoral college. 

Now that we are in an age of rapid communication, we have the potential to have a direct democracy. We need to abolish the outdated electoral college and make way for a direct democracy where’s people’s votes actually represent their will.

Without a new voting system, America would be turned into a deplorable oligarchy of corrupt electors voting against the will of the people.