Letter: Popular vote more equitable than Electoral College

A recent letter gives the classic justification for the Electoral College, that large cities shouldn’t speak for the rest of the country. It compares the square miles of land voting for one candidate versus the many more square miles of land voting for the other, and stated that Trump won most counties but lost the popular vote.

Basing the presidential election outcome on counties and square miles won, rather than votes by people, conflicts with the Declaration of Independence, which states the self-evident truth that “all men are created equal” (the 19th Amendment supports rephrasing this: “all people are created equal”). An American is a not a square mile or a county, but a human being.

If we are equal, then one American’s vote should have the same weight as any other American’s. The Electoral College subverts this notion of equality by favoring states with small numbers of electors. The District of Columbia has three electoral votes; each electoral vote represents 103,756 voters. Washington has 12 votes, each worth 267,434. It’s outrageous that a voter in D.C. has a vote 2.6 times more valuable than mine.

The popular vote is a much better implementation of equality than the Electoral College.

This story was originally published January 12, 2017 at 3:58 AM with the headline "Letter: Popular vote more equitable than Electoral College."