Over the past ten days, America has witnessed an unprecedented political battle that will go down in history as bizarre, if nothing else. In what has turned out to be one of the nation's greatest civics lessons, the American people have become quite well versed in the normally elusive Electoral College system. Those of us who have never before heard of Dade County, Fla. are now having intelligent discourse about its demographics. Participatory politics has suddenly taken on new meaning as the country anxiously waits the election gods' decision about the next president.
With all the hoopla surrounding the presidential election, many have raised the question: Is the Electoral College system outdated? Some argue that every person should have one vote that directly elects a candidate to office.
"The Electoral College is an outdated form of representation and this whole fiasco proves that the system needs to be changed. How can we presume to have a democracy when the people are not even trusted to elect their own leaders with their own individual votes?" senior Janell Zuckerman said.
Then there are those that maintain that, in spite of the occasional glitch, the Electoral College as a whole is still the fairest way to handle the voting tendencies of the country. "I still think it's a good system," junior Natalie Mantell said. "It provides a balance."
Mantell does not believe that the current election standstill is good for the country, however. "[What happened in Florida] is absolutely ridiculous, but the problem in Florida does not reflect badly on the system so much as it does on the use of unclear ballots. There is definitely a need to make the ballots clearer and uniform to ensure that this does not happen again."
For many people, the election itself served to solidify an opinion about the Electoral College. Senior Dan Eisenman said that before the election he preferred the idea of the popular vote prevailing, but he had not been certain of what effect this would have.
"Now that I'm seeing the system in action, I've come to realize how outdated the Electoral College really is. The whole basis of democracy is that people get to choose who they want to be their leader. But when you have people winning all the electoral votes from a state after winning by a slim margin of the popular vote, you end up with this discrepancy," Eisenman said.
Students are not the only ones reacting to the election confusion, which has also brought some excitement to the political science department. Professor Jeffrey Berry, who teaches a class on the presidency and executive branch, unhesitatingly expressed his feelings about the Electoral College. "The purpose of the Electoral College was to keep commoners from electing the president; instead, a big group of wise men would do it for them," he said.
Berry also noted that the Founders harbored a genuine fear of demagoguery, believing that the Electoral College would appease rabble-rousing actions against the government. Berry said that times have changed, though. "Now, the advantage of abolishing [the Electoral College] is that it would get rid of some of the filters and structures that channel our votes in certain ways rather than letting each vote speak for itself."
Berry also says that ousting the Electoral College system would help build political parties in all areas of the country, because there would be more incentive to mobilize voters - even in states that have traditionally been one-sided, one-party strongholds. "Democrats in Nebraska and Republicans in the District of Columbia would have a reason to get out and mobilize the vote without the Electoral College," he said. Berry also expressed a concern that regardless of the outcome of the election, the system has in a sense handicapped the victor because the split vote will constrict his chance to make real change.
Political Science Professor and Department Chair James Glaser also fears that the winner of the election may not have the strong backing he needs. Glaser, however, is not bothered by the fact that there may be a difference in the results of the electoral votes and the popular votes. "Everybody knew the rules of the game when we started and those rules determine how the game was played," he said.
Glaser argues that had the rules been different, the candidates would have campaigned in different places and emphasized different themes. He is not completely as ease, however. "What does bother me is the fact that the Electoral College has made it so that this incredibly close election in Florida will determine everything. We may get a president who is perceived to be illegitimate."
In the clouds of discarded ballots, accusations of fraud, and preaching experts, one thing remains clear: the system currently in place will continue to be questioned in years to come. "I've never fully understood how the Electoral College works, but I have always been under the impression that it was an attempt to make things more fair," junior Lisbeth Kaiser said. "But when the [Ralph Nader] issue came up, it came down to the fact that voting for who you really believe in might completely mess things up. The system hinders free political choice."
Kaiser went on to explain the significance of this election in her mind. "On one hand, the Electoral College deters people from voting because they think their vote does not count. But on the other hand, this election has made it abundantly clear that every vote does count, just in a more convoluted way than we had imagined."
