As the presidency of the University of Utah’s student body, we are proud to be elected by a democratic process. Each of our 30,000-plus peers had the chance to vote for one of four presidential tickets. We have the opportunity to represent the student body because we received the most votes.
While we certainly don’t have the same responsibility as the president of the United States, we do have one thing in common. We are elected officials with the duty to represent every one of our constituents. The candidate who receives the most votes ought to win. This is how democracy should work.
Even though the president of the United States is the only official elected to represent all Americans, the process isn’t as straightforward as it is here at the U. In our current presidential election system, all votes aren’t equal.
In the current system, states have a different amount of electors based on the number of representatives they have in Congress. There are 538 total electoral votes, comprising the 100 Senate seats and the 438 in the House of Representatives. The magic number to win it all? 270 votes.
The theory behind it all is that states would get equal representation without equitable populations. Unfortunately, the Electoral College has accomplished the opposite. That’s why every four years, the election falls on the shoulders of a few battleground states.
These handful of swing states receive most of the press, campaign trips and political promises in an election. On the other hand, there are voters who live in states like Mississippi, California and Utah where voters are disregarded as living in a safe state and largely ignored.
The current system also disproportionately benefits the key swing states beyond the presidential election. These swing states, for example, are more likely to receive important federal grants, and research has found they are twice as likely to receive a natural disaster declaration. It is not good when political campaigning determines lifesaving federal support during an emergency.
It’s a clunky and confusing system that doesn’t adequately represent the voices of millions of Americans. The result is that some voters matter more than others. This equates to millions of Americans being disregarded in their extraordinarily important and indispensable duty to elect our leader.
Each and every one of our votes should matter. The good news is that there exists a healthier, more democratic option for electing our president, and Americans across the political spectrum desire a better system that is more representative of the democratic process.
In Utah, leaders of both parties have entertained the idea of entering our state into the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPV), which is an agreement among states to direct each of their Electoral College votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote nationwide.
We encourage Utah to join the national popular vote compact. Add your voice to this issue by writing to your state legislators and asking them to pass legislation supporting the NPV. While it won’t be a fix-all to that which is broken in our politics, it will bring us closer to our shared American value of one vote, one voice.
We believe that by electing our president via national popular vote, we can take an important step toward reassuring confidence in the election process by increasing voter engagement, and we will take this opportunity to faithfully invest in the integrity of our democracy.
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Ephraim Kum, Michelle Valdes, Ayana Amaechi and Mihali Sergakis are the 2020-2021 Associated Students of the University of Utah presidency.
