Electoral college apologetics are stupid

In light of the recent Trump victory, a lot of right leaning types, particularly those who seem of rural background, seem to be posting these memes describing why the electoral college is such a great idea. They show this map of America that shows how every county voted, and they then point out how all of the blue areas are small dots in a sea of red. Essentially, they're saying that liberal America lives in concentrated areas while the majority of America is red, and because of this, we need the electoral college to prevent the red areas (which are much larger in number) from being dominated by the smaller blue areas.

This is really an idiotic argument. Look, first of all, even though most counties in the US are red, not all counties have the same population. Yes, most counties are red, but most people don't live in most counties. We have cities, with high population densities that vote democrat more often, and rural areas with low density that vote republican. Land area should not be what decides elections, people should. If we control for population, the actual electoral map looks something like what this article describes.

It really astounds me how many people think political minorities should wield all of this power over the majority because geography. These people are so concerned about tyranny by majority, but what's the alternative, a small minority of Americans should dominate policy that dictates the rest of us? I mean, really, that's what the argument comes down to. That we should be scared of the majority so let's let a minority govern people instead.


Even if we granted people the argument that yes, perhaps we should have a system more sensitive to the needs of, say, rural America, the electoral college is a horrible system. The urban populations end up dominating states like California, New York, and Illinois anyway. I mean, do people think all of New York is urban? Most of the citizens are because they live in New York City, but then there's this whole upstate area that is far more massive where fewer people live. In Illinois, Chicago essentially dominates how the entire state votes. In California, cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco override all of the rural areas where people vote for republican. Here in Pennsylvania, where we normally go blue for presidential elections, cities like Pittsburgh and Philadelphia end up deciding how the entire state votes. As such, I don't see how the electoral college, which is winner take all on the state level, is really this great choice for ensuring more rural areas more power.

And let's not forget the fact that the electoral college causes over half the states to be largely irrelevant to the election. Because the demographics ensure that the citizenry will end up voting a certain way, these states are largely ignored and written off. It's only the famed swing states that end up being relevant to the election. New Yorkers, no one cares what you think, you'll vote democratic anyway. Texans, no one cares either because you're going to vote republican. But my vote in Pennsylvania is worth so much more because my state's demographics are more divided. If we had a national popular vote for the presidency, the whole country would be one big swing state. Candidates would have to go out and appeal to all of us. This is a good thing.

Another issue worth considering is how rural areas already end up wielding significant power in congress and state legislatures these days (especially with gerrymandering being a thing). I'm not sure we should really want the presidency to be decided in similar ways. While localities can choose their representatives for legislatures and this is all well and good, the presidency really comes off to me as something that should be decided by everyone equally because they represent all of us. 

As such, this whole argument about how the electoral college is necessary to protect "the majority of America" (which is really just the majority of the land area, where few people live) seems like nonsense to me. It's not a good idea to begin with due to the fact that it's undemocratic to begin with, but it also fails at accomplishing what it is supposed to accomplish, especially in the larger states. While there are possibly some decent arguments for the electoral college out there, this is not one of them. We should have a popular vote for the presidency, and we should arguably be moving off first past the post too in order to ensure that minority ideas are better represented in elections as well. If anything is tyrannical about the popular vote, it's that the single group that gets the most votes can drown out the rest of the country even if they are merely a plurality, and that people are forced into supporting parties that don't actually represent their views for the sake of avoiding a "greater evil." Instead of focusing on trying to ensure rural areas of America have more power, we should be pushing for a system that is more responsive to Americans and their beliefs regardless of where they live, because two parties do an awful job at actually representing everyone.