Because of a strange state election law, President Bush might be noticeably absent in the presidential slot on the Alabama ballot in 2004. Alabama law states a candidate has to be registered by Aug. 31 of the election year. However, the Republican Party – not wanting to interfere with Olympic coverage – has moved its national convention to Sept. 2. Unless the election law is changed, Bush would have to rely strictly on write-in support to win Alabama – a state which helped him narrowly win the 2000 election.
After the debacle that was the 2000 election and this current obstacle in the upcoming one, it is time for the United States to once and for all get rid of the archaic system that is the Electoral College. The founding fathers originally formed it because they believed the people of this country were too poorly informed to popularly elect its leader. Obviously, that belief has long since died, and the Electoral College should now go with it.
The presidential election is a national election. Fifty percent of Ohioans wanted someone other than Bush to be the leader of the United States, but their votes did not matter because the president technically “won” their state. Under a popular election system, the votes in that 50 percent would have actually counted toward the respective candidates instead of being immediately discarded after Ohio had awarded its electoral votes. The Electoral College takes one election and turns it into 51 smaller and less important elections.
People in less populated states like Wyoming or Alaska might decry the abolition of the Electoral College because under that system their votes actually count more than those people of densely populated states. California counts for 10 percent of the electoral votes even though its residents account for 12 percent of the population of the United States. Wyoming, on the other hand, gets .5 percent of the electoral vote while it accounts for only .1 percent of the total population of this country. Thus, individuals in less-populated states have a slightly greater influence on national election results.
People in these states are also worried that because their electoral power will drop, then the national leaders will not pay as much attention to their states’ needs. However, it is the role of the president to represent and rule the country and its people, as if it were a whole. States have senators and representatives who attend to individual states’ rights on the national scene.
The leader of a democratic nation should be a popularly elected official. Because of the out-of-date Electoral College system this has not been the case on three separate occasions – Bush, Rutherford B. Hayes and Benjamin Harrison. When individual states are allowed to dictate individual rules of a national election, nothing goes smoothly. The situation in Alabama proves the system will continue to cause problems until it is changed.
