As voters head to the polls next year to cast their ballots for president, the perennial debate over the Electoral College will reignite itself once again. It is certainly worth consideration, as the grand prize of the presidency hangs in the balance.

The Electoral College is an old institution, and it has evolved over time. Today, in almost every state, the winner of the popular vote within a state receives every electoral vote from the state. 

This leads to several problems, the first being wasted vote syndrome.

Highly partisan states like California and Mississippi are guaranteed to vote blue and red, respectively. Therefore Republicans in California and Democrats in Mississippi have no chance at “flipping” their state. Furthermore, even those who are part of the majority party feel disinclined to vote, because they know that their vote is not needed to win the state.

Secondly, because some states are uncompetitive races, they do not receive much, if any, attention from candidates. That could have an impact during the presidency as well, as presidents may be somewhat neglectful to states where they know that they have no prospect of winning. In the six major swing states that Trump narrowly beat Clinton in, he made 133 visits… in the final 100 days before the election.

Thirdly, some states are disproportionately more represented than others. The exact number of people per elector varies from state to state, but it is based on the number of Senators and House Representatives that a state has (D.C. also gets 3 electoral votes). This means that smaller states inherently receive disproportionate power, as the number of Senators is fixed at 2 per state.

Finally, the fundamental argument is that any system other than the popular vote is undemocratic. The idea that a minority can overcome a majority purely by geographical location appears unfair. Winning the Electoral College but not the popular vote provides a much weaker mandate for presidential authority, as demonstrated by the extensive use of the #notmypresident hashtag on Twitter following the 2016 election.

In conclusion, the Electoral College causes a sense of voter discouragement, neglect of “solid” states during campaign season, and disproportionate voting power per individual, fundamentally challenging the idea of popular sovereignty. This said, there are certainly grounds to challenge the institution. Before deciding to scrap it, however, it is imperative that everyone understand both sides of the argument so that they can weigh their merits and render a proper verdict.

Author’s note: I wanted to justify both sides of the debate, but as this is by far the more commonly adopted position by media outlets and academia, I encourage any reader to also check out my Passion Blog 2 to better understand the issue. Furthermore, in the interest of transparency and integrity, I lean in favor of the institution, although being a natural debater I believe that I do a fair job of summarizing the case against it (the discrepancy in word count is because of blog post restrictions). I genuinely appreciate the counter-argument, and I would not say that I am beyond persuasion to see the system modified or thrown out entirely.