The Electoral College — everyone knows it and everyone has an opinion on it.

Some think it’s a key feature of our republic that keeps the voices of those who live in less populated rural areas from being outshined by those who live in the big urban areas. Others believe it to be an old defunct undemocratic system that disproportionately benefits certain regions and groups over others. While opinions on this system vary, only one is backed up by actual facts and evidence — the belief that it is an outdated relic of a long-gone era of our nation’s past.

One of the main issues people have with removing the Electoral College is the belief that the urban centers of America will dominate the political scene. Candidates will only spend their time campaigning in places such as New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles while ignoring the rest of the nation, according to sources such as the Heritage Foundation in their online article “The Benefits.”

This could not be further from the truth. If we add up the population of all 100 cities in the U. S. from the largest, New York City, all the way to Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, you get around 63 million people (or about 19% of the U.S. population).

Now, unless there is an unknown city somewhere in the U. S. with over 100 million people, cities cannot dominate the American political scene by population alone. This belief also does not make sense because candidates only campaign in the same places with the Electoral College, instead of only campaigning in big cities they only campaign in swing states.

There’s an overemphasis on swing states. Prior to the 2020 election, 95% of all campaign stops were held in just 12 states, according to the “Nation Popular Vote.” Most of these states can be categorized as swing states, which are states that can go either way in an election.

Due to the nature of our electoral system, there is no difference in winning a state by one vote or one million votes. It is a winner-takes-all system in which if you win only 51% of the states’ votes, you get every single electoral vote. This means that candidates don’t campaign in states where they have wider margins because it is an already assured victory.

This system makes candidates only care about issues that a handful of states emphasize, ignoring the vast majority of our nation. This also leads to opposition parties not campaigning in states they know they will lose, ignoring vast amounts of their voting base. This is seen in the 2020 election when Democratic candidate Joe Biden made zero campaign stops in the solidly Republican state of Wyoming, and Republican candidate Donald Trump made zero campaign stops in the predominantly Democratic state of California.

It’s also undemocratic. Votes from less populous states are counted as more than votes from more populous states. A few examples include the following: A North Dakotan vote is 2.7 times more than a New Yorker, a Rhode Islander has about 2.5 times more voting power than a Pennsylvanian, and an Alaskan has three times more voting power than a Floridian.

This can be applied to any state using a simple math formula that calculates the population per electoral vote of a smaller state/population per electoral vote of a larger state. The Electoral College in simple terms pretends more people are living where they do not, and fewer people live where they do. Why should people from smaller states have more representation than those from larger ones?

When Electoral College defenders run out of baseless arguments to defend this system they default to a variation of the following: “The founding fathers created this system to defend against mob rule! Do you know better than the founders!?”

The founding fathers were smart and bright individuals for their time, there is no denying that. But it has been 236 years since the Constitution was written, the world has changed more than they could have imagined.

Try explaining to James Madison that he could step into a flying steel tube, travel across the continent, watch a moving picture with sound and contact his buddies in Philadelphia instantly from there. Our world is completely different than theirs was, and it is time for Electoral College defenders to step out of the 1790s, and move into the 2020s. There have been four times the winner of the popular vote has lost the election, two of which occurred in the last 30 years.

If we are the shining city on a hill, and the land of the free, why are we the only nation in the world that does not listen to the will of the people when electing our head of state? Democracy means fairness, and this system is anything but.