*Music*
Voting for the next president seems
pretty straightforward. Americans vote,
and the candidate with the most votes
wins the election. So, how is it possible
that, of two candidates, the least popular
is elected president. This happens
because of the electoral college. It
works like this, each member of the House
of Representatives is awarded one
electoral vote for their state plus, one
for each senator. There are a total of
538 electoral votes to give in a
majority of 270 is needed to win office.
George W. Bush won the 2,000 election
with 271 electoral votes Al Gore won
only 266. Over half a million more
Americans gave their vote to Gore, though
W. won. How does something like this happen?
It's because of the winner-takes-all
method of the electoral college.
In Michigan, if candidate A receives 51% of the
statewide vote and candidate B
receives 49% candidate A will
receive all 16 of Michigan's electoral
votes. Which really isn't a fair
representation of the votes. Did you know
that a candidate can win only these
states and they will still win the Oval
Office even if they don't get a single
vote in any other state? That doesn't add up.
It's a broken system, but how can we
fix it? We can start by giving out a
proportionally correct amount of
electoral votes, instead of a
winner-takes-all system would represent
the votes far more accurately.
Let's work towards making every vote
count. One person one vote
*Music*
