College must go

VOTING

e Electoral College is an archaic practice and desperately needs an update

CHIRAG MANGNAIK

STAFF COLUMNIST

Th ough the election is essentially over, the arguments regarding the Electoral College remain ever present.

Yet again in the 2020 election, the vote over the most powerful position in the world was decided by a handful of key states.

Th e Electoral College and the winner-take-all system lead to the electoral process being decided by a small group of people, even though the diff erence in the popular vote was over fi ve million.

Th is system is outdated and a product of a bygone era and should be replaced with the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact for a return to democracy.

The Electoral College

Th e Electoral College is a body of 538 electors; one for each seat in the House of Representatives and one for each seat in the Senate, as well as three electors for Washington, D.C.

Every state has a number of seats in the House of Representatives that’s almost proportional to their population. However, each state, regardless

Renee Josse de Lisle/The Cougar

of population, has two seats in the Senate.

POLITICS

President-elect Biden

For any given state’s members of the House of Representatives and the Senate, the state has an electoral vote for the presidential election. For instance, Texas has 36 seats in the House of Representatives and two seats in the Senate and, as such, has 38 electoral votes.

When people vote within a state, a presidential candidate is

decided upon by a popular vote. Most states, with a few notable exceptions, award all its electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate won the popular vote within the state.

Finally, when all of the state electors have cast their votes, whichever candidate has the most electoral votes wins the presidential election.

Th ere are two big issues with this system. Th e fi rst is the bring peace by compromising on issues that should not even be up for debate.

We need to keep the momentum that we have built over the last few months

issue of each state receiving two electoral votes by default because of the Senate.

Th is throws off the proportionality of the system, resulting in people in smaller states having more power behind their vote simply because they live in a less populous state.

Unequal voter power

According to Chris Kirk from Slate, the average voter from and continue to push our representatives to create legislation that reflects our needs, not their compromises. We need to keep the good and work together to move towards Wyoming has 3.37 times the voting power of the average voter from Texas.

Voters living in the most heavily populated states of the country often have a far lower infl uence on the election than voters living in states with low populations.

Winner takes all

However, that’s not the only problem with the system. Th e other big problem is the winnertakes-all system within all but two states, Maine and Nebraska.

Th e winner-takes-all system is where all the electors in a state vote for the winner of the statewide popular vote instead of distributing them proportionally. Because of this, it’s possible for a candidate to narrowly win half the states and lose all the other states and still win the presidency.

In fact, it’s possible to win the presidential election with a mere 23 percent of the popular vote largely because of the winnertake-all system.

In 2016, Trump won Texas by a slim 9 percent margin.

ELECTORAL COLLEGE

Continues on page 11

Th e Divided States of America: It is time for us to heal the wounds of hate

GINA MEDINA

OPINION EDITOR @ITSGINA_M

It seems like most of the world sighed with relief when it was announced that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are projected to become the next president and vice president, respectively.

However, there are still people, including President Donald Trump, who are in disbelief of the election results.

The nation has been divided for too long and it has grown more distant over the past few years. Although we are a nation derived from unity, we have strayed so far from each other that we no longer uphold the name of our country.

The election results are just one more fact that has become an opinion, much like the effectiveness of face masks and the human rights of others.

Our nation has been misguided and fractured by the one person who has sworn to protect it. It is time for us to become one again and move past the antagonism.

emphasized in his victory speech that this was the time for healing in this nation and that he will “work as hard for those who didn’t vote for (him) as for those who did.” This is exactly the message of unity and hope that the nation has needs.

While President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris might not be the ideal, they appear to be more promising candidates who will attempt to reverse the damage of hate and division in the country.

Politics have been so polarized for so long that a Mississippi lawmaker threatened to secede from the nation upon Biden’s election. He has since apologized and deleted the tweet, however the instantaneous reaction of hate and denial is why we need to rid ourselves of the hostility.

However, we need to ensure that we are not attempting to

After years of internal turmoil, the U.S. is ready to become one again. With new leadership in place, there is more hope than ever before. | Christopher

Charleston/The Cougar

After years of internal turmoil, the U.S. is ready to become one again. With new leadership in place, there is more hope than ever before. | Christopher Charleston/The Cougar

In a proper representative a more respectful and kind country.

Social workers should not be allowed to discriminate

ANNA BAKER

STAFF COLUMNIST @ANNA2POINT0

Recently, the Texas State Board of Social Work Examiners voted to change its code of conduct, removing protections for disability, sexual orientation and gender identity following Gov. Greg Abbott’s recommendation. Th is would allow social workers to turn away people based on these characteristics.

It’s ironic that they would remove protections for people who are already disenfranchised and allow them to be even more disenfranchised by making it harder to fi nd social workers to help them. Th is decision should be reversed.

According to Abbott’s offi ce, the nondiscrimination clause went further than Texas’s state law, which was why he suggested it. While this may be true, we need to look at who this change aff ects to see why it is wrong.

Th is change obviously aff ects transgender people, queer people and disabled people. People who already face challenges in their lives due to being minorities and disenfranchised.

LGBTQ people put off medical treatment because of discrimination in health care accessibility. Now, they may be discriminated against by the same people who are supposed to be advocating for them.

Many queer people also live in poverty and there’s a higher likelihood of LGBTQ youth being homeless. In fact, about 35 percent of LGBTQ Texans between the ages of 18-44 were

ELECTORAL COLLEGE

Continued from page 10 democracy, electors should refl ect that, with 20 of the electoral votes going to Trump and 16 going to Hillary.

Instead, 36 of the electoral votes went to Trump and two went to other candidates because of faithless electors, which is a separate topic.

Th is means that since California is known to be consistently blue and Alabama is known to be consistently red, the people’s individual votes don’t matter as much because the race has already been decided in those states.

Battleground states and campaigning

Th is also results in battleground states and disproportionate campaigning and fi nancing.

Gov. Greg Abbott’s recommendation to remove protections for disabled and LGBTQ people opens the door to discrimination. | Sonia Zuniga/The Cougar

living in poverty in 2017.

Disabled people are also often in poverty. In fact, they are twice as likely to be poor than someone without a disability. Th ey often have medical costs involved with their disability that is also a factor in their poverty.

Disabled people have an income limit of about $2,000 per month to be able to get Social Security disability benefi ts. Th ey are forced to be low income in order to receive aid.

Disability, gender identity and sexuality are things we cannot choose as people, so it’s horrible for people to be discriminated against for them. Th e reality is many of these people are discriminated against and disenfranchised for their labels.

Now, social workers — the

Battleground states are states that have had varying results in presidential party affi liation in the past couple of years such as Florida, Colorado, Iowa and others. Th ese states are consistently treated as more important because they have an undecided voter base.

To put this disparity in perspective, according to FairVote, 91.48 percent of general-election campaigning in 2016 occurred in just 12 states, 11 of which were battleground states, according to Politico and Th e Hill.

According to the campaign for the National Popular Vote, battleground states receive, on average, 7 percent more federal grants than “solid” states.

To have any political affi liation in Florida is signifi cantly more benefi cial than having any political affi liation in California or Alabama because those races people who are supposed to help people out of bad situations often caused by discrimination — have the power to discriminate and cause these people to be even more disenfranchised.

People may say that it’s freedom of religion for people to discriminate. Even if it is, it doesn’t make it right. If they didn’t want to help people, they should not have become a social worker. If they refuse to do social work for someone, they are blatantly refusing to do their job.

Th ere’s also the fact that social workers refusing LGBTQ and disabled people will actively put them in harm’s way. By making it harder for disenfranchised people to receive help, they will likely have more trouble getting out of the bad situations that made are already overwhelmingly decided in favor of a certain candidate before anyone even goes to the polls.

Th is system, regardless of how it is posited, allows some voters more voting power than others. It is an archaic system that assumed information could only travel as fast as a horse, and where the state and federal governments are both bidding for power.

Th is problem is not fi xable via a constitutional amendment. A constitutional amendment would require a two-thirds majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. But, there may be another solution to this problem.

Th e National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is a proposed agreement between states, which if signed by enough states so as to guarantee that signees together hold over 50 percent of

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them need a social worker in the fi rst place.

Th is decision by the Texas State Board of Social Work Examiners is going to be very harmful to marginalized communities in Texas. Whether a nondiscrimination clause goes beyond state law or not should be irrelevant because it is simply wrong to discriminate based on gender identity, sexuality or disability.

We shouldn’t allow our state to become more lenient when it comes to discrimination. We have to be staunchly active against it so that marginalized people can get the help and support they need.

Anna Baker is an English junior who can be reached at

opinion@thedailycougar.com and ultimately, degree attainment.

the national electoral votes, will have signees cast their electoral votes according to the national popular vote rather than the statewide popular vote.

As a result, every voter in America would have a direct say on at least 270 electoral votes, regardless of whether their state signed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact or not.

Th is would eff ectively institute a nationwide popular vote for the presidential candidate system within the electoral college, utilizing its own parameters to render it meaningless.

As of today, it has been elected into law by 16 jurisdictions and needs only 74 more electoral votes in order to go into eff ect. If Texas were to pass it, that

i

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