I’ve often thought about the way that elections work (especially on a national level) and how little difference the vote of one person actually is. One thing I have found to be unfair even though it is probably a bit more practical than just totaling the votes of the individual voters is the electoral college that is used during presidential elections.

With the electoral college, each state is given a number of votes based on their number of senators and representatives. While this seems fair, traditionally, the votes of a given state all go to the same candidate. What happens then, is that depending on the state and how many votes that state has, if a candidate did just well enough in the right states, he or she could get elected with significantly less than 50% of the votes.

Somebody in a position of power finally realized the injustice of this setup and has decided to try and do something about it. There is an AP report about this California ballot proposal. If you are looking for more information about the proposal, you can read the actual text of the proposal.

The best thing for this proposal would be if it were passed nationwide. For a state such as California to pass a proposal such as this and join only Maine and Nebraska in a system like this, it may cause the candidates to focus more on California and not some of the other states in the country.

If a proposal like this were adopted nationwide, it would be a good thing for the election process as it would cause the election results to more closely mirror the ballots cast by the individual voters. However, if California passes this proposal, it could encourage other states to do the same to try and stay in the spotlight of the candidates.