Is Americas Bizarre Voting System a Thing of the Past?
By Sven E. Feldmann, associate professor, MBS On November 4 voters in just a handful of American states, rather than all across the United States, determined the world’s most powerful president, thanks to an outdated voting method known as the Electoral College system. Today, eliminating the Electoral College and electing the president directly would require a near-impossible change of the Constitution-but there is a simpler method to overhaul the system, called the National Popular Vote, which has already been adopted in several states. Under the Electoral College system each state is assigned a set number of electoral votes based on its population and casts all its votes for the majority winner in that state. In many U.S. states partisan support for either Republicans or Democrats is so lopsided that in these ‘Red’ or ‘Blue’ states the outcome is virtually predetermined before voting even commences. Only in a handful of swing states such as Florida, Ohio, New Mexico or Wisconsin vote
