Fixing The Electoral College

As the title states, I believe the Electoral College is broken. It’s antiquated and has not changed or kept up with the times or the changing nation or emerging technology. How do we fix it? Let’s make it so it makes sense. Should a state’s electoral votes be winner takes all? No. Absolutely not. It does not reflect how that state’s voters voted. With computerization, we should be able to break down the votes by counties or what I prefer, Congressional Districts. Currently, there is a total of 538 electors, there being 435 representatives and 100 senators, plus the three electors allocated to Washington, D.C. The six states with the most electors are California (55), Texas (38), New York (29), Florida (29), Illinois (20) and Pennsylvania (20). [Wikipedia]

Let’s examine my theory using Pennsylvania as an example. PA has twenty electoral votes. Eighteen congressional districts and two senators. If the Congressional Districts are drawn fairly, the population would be spread among them evenly. That would be a true sign of a fair partition of the state’s voting population. Also, if they're drawn to include neighboring counties, it would better represent the mentality and perceptions of the indigenous population. In other words, Philly people don't think the same as Allegheny county or Carbon county peeps. Every ten years, the districts should be redrawn to match population change, regardless of party affiliations. The districts should be drawn centered as close to populated areas as possible (Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, State College, Erie, Johnstown, etc.). This may mean that Philadelphia may have two districts as it is the most populated area in the state. After all, they should be fairly represented in Congress by their volume of voters.

How does this help anything? For instance, if we take the 2016 Presidential election, Trump took the state, but he didn’t take the whole state. That’s why so many Hillary supporters took to the streets of Philadelphia in protest. This protestation was not limited to Philadelphia. Voters protested in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles as well. If the electoral college was divided by congressional districts, it would have better represented the true voter results. In Pennsylvania, Hillary took five of the eighteen districts. Trump took the remainder. Third, fourth and fifth party candidates got a goose-egg. Under my suggested system, Clinton would have received five electoral votes and Trump fifteen (thirteen plus the two senator spots because he took the majority of the districts.) Had they split the districts nine apiece, they would have split the senators and both would have received ten electoral votes. It may seem crazy, but it would reflect the true voting premise. 

Would that have made Clinton win the Electoral votes? Maybe, but not necessarily. The Donald may still have won. The same issue may have been in a state that Hilly took. She may have taken the majority of votes but she may not have taken all the districts. For example, Virginia with its thirteen electoral votes went to Clinton. But if you looked at the map, the majority of the congressional districts went to Trump. She took the most populated areas, but fell short in the other regions. Under my system, she would have taken maybe three possibly four electoral votes instead of the whole thirteen. Based on my two examples and assuming all things are relatively the same, (which is pure conjecture and reaching for a conclusion on my part), Trump may have won by a larger margin than what he did. She took the total national popular vote by about three quarters of a million votes. But if that was centered in the most populated cities, she would not have taken the majority of the country. Take Pennsylvania as an example, again. The majority of PA’s population is in its major cities. Hillary took Southeast PA, Pittsburgh and Schuylkill and Lehigh counties. She received nearly half the state’s votes, but not half the voting districts. Maybe with redrawn districts the results would have been different. They, also, may have been worse for the Dems. You just can’t tell without further in depth research. And I don’t have the time or desire to do that. You’ll just have to trust me that it would be a better representation than what we have now even though the results may have been worse for our girl, Hillary. Also, the districts would need to be better drawn to represent the population than they are now. It seems to be a strange hodgepodge of geometric geographic shapes. Of course, if this is an accurate apportionment of the population, I'll shut the front door. But that remains to be determined. 

So buck up, little buckaroos. You’ve got to just survive four years (maybe eight years) of a Trump presidency and (as of now) a Republican majority House and Senate and Supreme Court. Woo-hoo!!! I may move into the desert sooner than expected. That remains to be seen. But for now, I’ll give our yellow-haired, orange complected Prez-elect a chance…until WWIII occurs, then I’m moving to Fiji. TTFN.