Voter Disenfranchisement by Derek Miller

Author:Derek Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC
Published: 2019-06-04T00:00:00+00:00

Puerto Ricans cannot vote for president unless they move to one of the fifty states. Puerto Ricans do vote for state and local representatives. Pictured here is the Puerto Rican capitol building, El Capitolio.

The Electoral College and Disenfranchisement

Each state has a particular number of electoral votes, based on its population. This map shows the result of the 2012 presidential race. After the 2020 census, each state’s number of votes will change.

When Americans vote for president, the ballot they cast has a complex relationship with the outcome of the election. This is because of the electoral college—a system that is laid out in the Constitution. The person who wins the most Electoral College votes becomes the next president, not the person who wins the most ballots cast by ordinary Americans. This system has led some people to claim that it disenfranchises voters. It is important to recognize that the system does not actually take away people’s right to vote, but it may make their votes less valuable than would otherwise be the case.

Each state has a certain number of electoral votes, and the total number of votes is 538. A calculation based on state population decides the exact number of these votes that each state has. The formula favors states with fewer people. In 2016, Wyoming had three electoral votes and Florida had twenty-nine. When this number is compared with the number of people living in the state, it means Wyoming has one vote for every 142,741 people while Florida had one vote for every 510,318 people. In other words, a person’s vote in Wyoming was worth more than triple a vote in Florida when it comes to electoral votes, the ones that elect the president.

Another issue with the electoral college is that most states use a winner-take-all approach. This means presidential candidates ignore states that they will win or lose by a large margin. Instead, they campaign in “swing states,” like Florida, that have close elections. Critics say that this disenfranchises voters in states that are not swing states.

Whether the electoral college is good or bad is a question that is hotly debated in American politics. The electoral college is responsible for presidents like George W. Bush and Donald Trump losing the popular vote but winning elections. However, it will not change without a constitutional amendment, which is unlikely in the current political climate.

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