Is our election process fair to everyone?
Introduction
The thesis of the paper is that despite the multitude of claims that the 2016 Presidential Election was rigged or unfair, America’s inclusive voter eligibility, the equal opportunity of citizens to run for office, and reliable ballot casting methods ensure that the election process in the United States is completely free and fair. The main purpose of the paper is to find a common ground among supporters and opponents of the basic research question. There are two different claims which support the fairness or unfairness of presidential elections in the United States, where the backing sides’ main argument is that the electoral college votes are based off how many people live in that state. On the other side, the opposing side claims that the elections were not fair since more people voted for Clinton as for Trump.
Background
The outcomes of the presidential elections in the United States have raised various concerns regarding the fairness of the voting system in the states. There have been concerns regarding the current system of the electoral college. The presidential elections resulted in 46,15% public votes and 304 electoral college votes for Trump and 48,25% of poplar and 227 electoral college votes for Hillary Clinton. Currently the states are given power in choosing the president, which would not be able in case of the national popular vote implementation.
The opponents point out the fact that one man, one vote would result in fairer elections. In their perspective it is not fair that the person receiving the minority of the popular votes can win the presidency, because of the principles of federalism where the president needs to be supported by different people across the country. The current system granites that small states equal representation. The fairness of presidential elections is correlated with the support of the public towards the sole presidential election system in the states. There have been surveys conducted which showed the knowledge of the presidential election system in the United States as well as support towards it and revealed that the public is not well informed about the work of electoral college. The citizens vote for presidential electors even though the public opinion has historically favored direct popular elections, but the electoral college reform is not regarded as an urgent public issue. This could also result from the fact that the elected president enjoyed the greatest public support in 53 out of 57 elections (Neale, 1-14).
The debate of electoral college has been present since the foundation of states. There are numerous arguments for and against it as well as different law improvements. The failure of the electoral college to guarantee one person, one vote, the possibility that the winner of electoral college may receive the minority of popular votes, and that the candidates focus their attention only on a particular state, the fact that a single state even with close results can be decisive which means that the possible electoral fraud is even a greater concern. On the other hand, the electoral college has been an important part of the well-functioning of country’s democracy in the last two centuries. It produces a proportionally greater margin compared to the polar vote. It helps to maintain the two-party system and stability. It is a system which deliberately balances state representation with the representation of individuals (Feld and Grofman, 1-18).
The opposing side has right since the election fraud does exist today, but is however rare based on the legal and news records, which can be used as evidence of existing election frauds. There have been different researches conducted and electoral study on the election fraud also supports the fact that non-citizens are responsible for voting fraud despite the lack of other reliable data existence. They have conducted the participation rates among the non-citizen participation in the United States and found out that the participation has in the past been large enough to change meaningful election outcomes including the electoral college votes (Chattha, Earnest, Richman, 149-157).
There are various different voting frauds possible, such as allegations of double voting, of death voters, fraudulent address, fraud by persons with felony convictions, by noncitizens, registration fraud, voter fraud by dogs, vote-buying and fraud by election officials. The allegations regarding the voting fraud could be solved by implementing already existing laws and with election officials correct and legible registration on site, voter registration prior the elections, and with verifying the residence of voters. Further on, by implementing the federal Help America Vote Act – HAVA the allegations of duplicate registrations, regarding the issue of death and conviction could be diminished (Levitt, 5-31). Voter fraud can therefore be human or electronic, but both sides the opponents as well as supporters of the thesis of fairness of US Presidential elections should be working together to eliminate the possible voting frauds through already existing measures, principles and laws enacted in the states and promote the HAVA recommendations.
There have been many claims towards the electronic ballot machine security risks such as inaccuracy and possibility of hacking. In the Presidential election in 2016 the concerns of inaccuracies were in the center of media attention. The claims were regarded to the past experience of e-voting in the year 2004, where number of votes were lost due to the storage problem, adding votes for candidates, and failures of machines. The electronic ballot machine inaccuracy still needs to be examined in the last presidential elections. However, the irregularities happened in the past and hence in the 2004 elections when the technological issues appeared such as e-voting machine failure in New Orleans- Further on, in Ohio the e-voting machine added 4.000 votes for George W. Bush and loss of 4.500 votes in North Carolina (Lippert & Ekundayo, 56-58).
The opposition points towards the importance of accurate counting ballots for the functioning of democracy. There are advantages and disadvantages of the voting technologies and both sides should be considered. Based on the Warf (530-556) the empirical result does not support the fact that voting technologies favor one political party or one ethnic group over another, as well as there could not be proven that voting technologies favor the urban areas over rural. The research has been examined at the national level, whereas the possibility of biases on the local level have not been examined. The fact that in the presidential elections in the year 2000 and 2004 resulted in 1.9 million and 2.3 million ballots voided the issue cannot be overlooked. The chance and cases of voting technology fraud and inaccuracy is however low and has in the past not affected the overall election results (Warf, 530-556).
Conclusion
Many still believe the election was unfair. While the popular vote favored Clinton, Trump still won’t due to the electoral college. The current system is imposed that two states wont determine the elections. There are different arguments of opposing and supporting sides. The last presidential elections were focused on the possible election fraud and inaccuracy of the voting machines. The both sides can work on the fact to eliminate the shortcomings of the current voting system by implementing the already proposed laws and principles in order to achieve the common solutions. The beginning should be on building the consensus over the issues such as possible frauds and work from there onward. On the other side the research should be done on the public awareness and knowledge of the electoral college and the current voting system prior the proposed proposals for changing the existing system. In every presidential election, especially when the results of the popular votes were not in line with the electoral college votes have been debated, but largely forgotten after the passed elections. The common solutions should be based on the overall public opinion and further analysis of the positive as well as negative sides of the current voting system.
Annotated Bibliography
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Feld, L. Scott, Grofmann, Bernard. “Thinking About the Political Impact of the Electoral
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