After all of the waiting, putting up with incessant ads and smear campaigns, Election Day has finally come and gone. As I sat the night before the election, filling out the absentee ballot that I had been putting off for weeks, a thought occurred to me: As a resident of this state, my vote for president was most likely not going to have an impact at all.
I hate to be a cynic, but Arizona doesn't exactly have a great track record for boosting the electoral count for Democratic presidential candidates. I know some of you are probably very happy about that, but put yourself in a member of the opposing party's shoes; wouldn't you feel a bit disenfranchised if year after year you knew that your vote was essentially being thrown away?
I think it's time that our voting system undergoes a serious overhaul.
The Electoral College is drastically outdated. When the Constitution was drafted, the Electoral College was derived as a compromise between those who wanted the president to be elected by members of Congress and those who wanted the president to be chosen by the state legislatures. The framers feared that the "masses" could be too easily swayed and couldn't be trusted to choose the man (or woman) who would lead the country.
I'd like to think that now we're beyond such contempt for the common person. I have little doubt that I would fall under the Founding Fathers' definition of someone unable to choose a president responsibly. As a poor college student, I'm definitely not a landowner, and (gasp) I'm not male.
As a society, we have seen the error of not allowing everyone (including minorities and women) to have a say in the leadership and direction of this country. Why we continue to maintain such an archaic system of voting is a mystery to me.
Furthermore, even though I may not be what the Founding Fathers would have considered a member of the elite, I know I am capable of making a responsible choice.
I am well informed. Ever since I was able to vote, I have taken great care to stay up to date on matters of public policy. Throughout this election especially, I've carefully weighed all information available about each candidate before making my choice.
While there are doubtless many people in this country who vote for a particular candidate without doing any research (or worse, based on superficial qualities) it is no reason to bar those of us who take our civic duties seriously.
Let's face it, it's much easier to make snap decisions based on 10 second sound bites from the nightly news than actually put in the time and effort to research candidates' actual positions on issues. And being that the majority of people will usually take the simpler route, those of us who do go to the polls informed may already be in the minority.
All of this points to the importance of voter reform. It may be as simple as splitting up the electoral votes and doing away with our current winner-take-all system -- or as drastic as doing away with the Electoral College entirely.
Either way, it will finally allow those of us who are not in step with the majority a chance to have our voices heard. It will also give third-party candidates an easier time gaining a foothold in our stale two-party system. All of this will go a long way in making our government more representative of us all.
Julie Messner is journalism senior. Reach her at julie.messner@asu.edu.
