Don't Get Rid of the Electoral College, Reform It

For Full Results, see http://waunakeegan.weebly.com/waunakeegan-results.html

The electoral college shows as a major problem, but removing it and replacing it with the popular vote would also show as a terrible idea. This system would allow candidates to focus on a few large states and ignore almost the entire country. Because of the way things are in the current system where, due to winner-takes-all rules, candidates focus only on swing states.. Running up the score in rural areas won't matter if urban areas go out and vote, even in smaller percentages.

Actual Results Map

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Changing the system prevails as necessary to advance the quality of elections. To start this, the electoral votes need to move proportionally to candidates. This gives the incentive to candidates to campaign in every state instead of only in swing states under the current first past the post method. With most proportional systems a threshold finds necessity. I would suggest to take 100 divided by the number of electoral votes the state has to determine the threshold as that is the percentage needed for one electoral vote. This system stays fair since the threshold abides by doing simple math. However, when the proportional system obtains, a problem will likely happen will show where to give the extra, to solve this, simply give all extra electoral votes to the winner as a bonus for winning.
The popular vote also needs reform, currently the winner of the popular vote no matter how small of a percentage, wins all of the votes. Changing to a ranked system allows the vote to still count even if their first choice no longer remains in the race. In this system, voters would rank the candidates and their votes transfer if their first choice fails to survive a round. It allows voters to move their vote and make it still count, even if their first choice can’t win the election. The voter can rank their choices for a race until they don’t care anymore and stop filling in that race and place the ballot in the box. When the ballot for the round stands as blank for that round, the ballot gets thrown out and they count as if they didn’t vote at all. As long as they voted, the vote should count in how the electoral votes are distributed. Third parties will have a much better chance to make a large impact on the election. Fair reform successfully obtained now gives everyone a chance to win.
The election portion might now be fixed under these reforms but who gets to vote stays a lingering problem. Currently those that live in the territories or in prison in most states don’t get to vote. The major problem exists as the right to vote should proves as inalienable. All citizens at least 18 years of age on the general election date should prevail as eligible. Ballot access for candidates are also difficult as in most states, only two or three candidates get on the ballot and every state has different rules for getting on the ballot. Getting on the ballots proves to have the immense difficulty to do for most candidates who don’t have large amounts of money and need every cent to campaign with. Seeing this, changing the amount of petitions needed to get on the ballot to 0.1 percent of all eligible voters in that election, this number placed so low to allow every serious candidate to make it on the ballot while keeping non-serious candidates off the ballot, not crowding the ballot. Because of the low threshold, write-in votes aren’t needed and write in’s are now banned to allow any group of voters to run any candidate eligible for that seat to enter the running for the office. This system would have likely placed Bernie Sanders on the ballot in every state, allowing that group of voters to vote for him, even though he didn’t want to run. This develops into a draft effort by the citizens. I will go over a sample election on how this system runs.

Example Election Under My Rules- The State of WaunaKeegan

The Rules of the election are as follows for all states unless noted:

• Electoral College
  
  • Proportional Electoral Votes
    
  • 100 divided by the number of electoral votes as the threshold to get one electoral vote
    
  • Winner gets all extra electoral votes
    
• Popular Vote
  
  • Ranked Choice Popular Vote
    
  • Blank ballots are thrown out
    
• Ballot Eligibility
  
  • All Citizens at least 18 years old on election day eligible
    
  • 5 percent first round votes to stay on without petition
    
  • 0.1 percent of all eligible voters in petition to get on
    

The citizens go to the polls and these are the Initial Results of the race:
Republican: 345,000 34.5%
Democrat: 310,000 31%
Libertarian: 185,000 18.5%
Independence: 100,000 10%
Green: 50,000 5%
Constitution: 10,000 1%
First, any candidate that gets five percent of the vote makes their party or the independent that makes a party eligible without petition in the next election. Then the next step to continue that any candidate that meets the threshold will get electoral votes but with parties below the threshold, their votes get transferred first. After the Constitution party gets their votes transferred and then the Green party votes are as well, these are the transferred results with every party qualified for electoral votes.
Transferred Results:
Republican: 350,000 35%
Democrat: 330,000 33%
Libertarian: 200,000 20%
Independence: 120,000 12%
What happens first abides that electoral votes are transferred for every time the candidate hits a threshold for one electoral vote. Electoral vote distribution needs to round down, if the candidate misses the threshold, they don’t round up even if their one vote short. This means that the electoral votes are distributed as this first.
Transferred Electoral Results:
Republican: 350,000 35% Three Electoral Votes
Democrat: 330,000 33% Three Electoral Votes
Libertarian: 200,000 20% Two Electoral Votes
Independence: 120,000 12% One Electoral Vote
One Unallocated Electoral Vote
Regardless who rests the closest to the next threshold, the winner gets the last electoral vote even if they are the furthest from the threshold, if there persists a tie for the winner of the popular vote, the closest to the threshold gets the unallocated votes.

The electoral college remains the idea that never should’ve came about. The founding fathers knew this, we have the power to change that and we should. If we had this system for our last presidential election, the results would fairly represent everyone that voted and would prevent the winner of the popular vote from losing the election, but not always winning the election in most cases. While not everyone may end up pleased with the system, they can understand why the system works.