Reinstating the Electoral College

Written By: Gina Denny and Sofia Roque

The Youth and Government program is constantly evolving, with new delegates and new ideas being introduced each year. Last year, the program adopted a popular vote system for Elections Convention. This system allows each delegate attending the convention to cast votes towards whomever they wish. Returning delegates may remember the electoral college system, a system that is criticized for taking power away from the delegates. Yet, with similar flaws existing in the popular vote system, the electoral college may give delegates more power after all.

The program’s voting system started off as a straight popular vote. However, the issue quickly became that the larger delegations began dominating and winning the elections, as they had much more individual votes. David John, an East Shore advisor, claimed: “there were a few smaller clubs that finally figured out how to work together to build coalitions and that was able to work, but there were still people that felt that larger clubs still had the advantage.” They consulted the Student Advisory Committee, which consisted of two groups of three students and three advisors, one being from the east and the other from the west. “They came together between the early-mid ’90s and created a system that helped to allocate the electoral votes based on the number of people brought to the election convention,” John stated. People argued that the Delegation Leaders took control of the elections because many deals were made to ensure votes. The program then decided to combine both popular and electoral votes.

Due to the complicated procedure, it took ages to count all of the votes, which resulted in dropping the electoral college system as a whole and returning to the popular vote. The electoral college voting method is comprised of various different parts meant to give smaller delegations a bigger role in elections without entirely taking away the advantage of having a larger delegation. Each delegation is given a number of votes based upon the number of students present at EC. “There were tier systems,” Max Myers, alumni of the Somerset Delegation explains, “for the amount of votes you could delegate as a club, and the DL was more or less in charge of these votes.” In this tier system, larger delegations had fewer votes per person but still more votes as a whole. The DL was in charge of allocating votes to the candidates and would often time make deals with other delegations to gain support for their candidates.

This tactic was especially useful to smaller delegations, as they typically do not have candidates running for each position. They could make a deal asking for support for one candidate in return for support towards another.  This allowed each delegation to have more votes on their side and could combat the power of the larger delegations.

By reviving the electoral college system, candidates from smaller delegations have a greater chance of being elected. Forming coalitions with other delegations give these delegations altogether a larger say in the election. The system itself also adds an interesting aspect to the program. Each election brings a new problem to solve and a window for creative solutions between delegations. When delegations work together to get their candidates elected, they can form bonds that surpass the boundaries between different schools. The current popular vote system has the right intentions.

YAG is about giving power to individuals, and that is exactly what popular vote system is meant to do. However, its intentions have not succeeded because the larger delegations still dominate EC. Delegates will still vote for candidates from their delegation because they are familiar. It is impossible to break this habit, so the current voting system cannot fix our problem. By reinstating the electoral college, it is possible for smaller delegations to have a larger role in the program.