After four long days of counting ballots, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. surpassed the limit of 270 electoral votes needed to become the president-elect of the United States.
However, the election is still not over. Even though Biden won 290 electoral votes, the Electoral College still needs to finalize their decision on which candidate will be the president of the United States.
The Electoral College is an outdated system that is used to select a president every four years and is ultimately unjust and undemocratic.
When citizens vote during a presidential election, they “are selecting delegates, or electors, to the Electoral College,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Americans are actually voting on what political party their state will vote for, not the actual candidate.
This is why Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, even though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, according to The New York Times.
It seems quite unfair that the candidate that won the popular vote could still lose the election. Wouldn’t it make more sense to rely on a system that represents the American people’s vote?
At the end of the day, the decision of who will become president is decided by the Electoral College. Not only does this make voters feel like their vote doesn’t matter, but swing states or battleground states, such as Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin hold significant power during an election.
Candidates running for office focus so heavily on issues happening in swing states because they have the possibility of flipping those states. This does not provide equal representation to non-swing states.
Also, during a presidential election, if a candidate wins the popular vote, they receive all of the electoral votes for that state. This means that the votes cast by the minority political party voters in highly Republican or Democratic states are disregarded or ignored.
If our president was chosen based on national popular vote, the results for the 2020 election could have been announced on Election Day. However, after many days, the decision is still not finalized, and it has created a lot of confusion.
If all states awarded their electoral votes to the nominee that won the national popular vote, instead of giving the Electoral College the power to decide, the system would allow every voter to be counted and each individual would have a voice in the decision of who would become the next president.