The US Electoral College removes the right of Americans to have a voice in their presidential election. Changing it would not require an amendment

America's current electoral college system is in need of significant reform. It doesn’t work, and it has transformed us from the beacon of democracy, into one of the last advanced countries on earth that is not actually a full democracy.

The result is that more and more Americans are feeling demotivated from voting for their own leaders, because they feel that their vote will not matter if most American states will nearly always have the same majority - and thus the same share of electoral votes in the end regardless.

It CAN be fixed, and here is how. Many people claim that the electoral college system is in our constitution, and thus could not be changed without 3/4 of all states agreeing to it.

That’s only half true. The only aspect of the electoral college system that is contained in our constitution is the requirement to have electors proportional to the voting population representing each state’s votes; and two additional electors in each state proportional to their senators in congress. But constitution left it up to each state to decide how to determine how their electors should vote.

We cannot change the second part, which does leave two additional electors per state - 100 nationwide out of 538 - not directly reflecting the people’s vote. But we can change the first part so that 438 of those total votes are directly reflecting each of your votes.

The straightforward way that we can easily do this is by passing a constitutional law requiring states to match their electors’ votes to their population’s votes proportionately - and banning the ‘winner take all’ system currently used by all but two American states.

For a little context - the ‘winner take all’ system is a process used by 48 of our 50 states that requires all of its state electors to cast the same vote for president, reflecting the state majority vote. This single process is the reason that many people in each state are completely excluded from the choice of our president. Therefore, it is a single process that has kept America from acting in truth as a full democracy.

This means that many Americans in every state, in every election, never have their voice heard if the majority vote in their state will always be the same. Of course many Americans are discouraged from participating in the democratic process as a consequence. You cannot in point of fact call a nation a true democracy if all but the majority in each state are silenced - and if every vote does not have a say in the selection of our president.

But here is a fun fact that most people do not know. The winner take all process…is not in our constitution. Again, the constitution left it up to the states to decide how to determine how their electors are required to vote. This was a change made by individual states during the century after our constitution was written, excluding American voters beneath the majority of each state, one state at a time.

James Madison, the founding father who wrote the constitution itself, openly stated in later life that he and the other founding fathers never anticipated that the winner take all process would come into being, and he himself stated on the record that it was opposed to democracy and everything the framers of the Constitution intended and stood for.

We can change it. All we need is a majority vote in Congress to ban the winner take all system in the electoral college nationwide, and require electors to proportionately follow the vote in each state - and the process that makes the electrical college undemocratic in the first place, which is not even in our Constitution, will be gone. It’s that simple.

To abolish gerrymandering – where politicians from both parties redraw district boundaries to try to get more voters from their party and each district? Another law can be passed stating that each state’s electors voting for each candidate be chosen proportionately to the total number of votes cast in the entire state by the numbers, ignoring district boundaries altogether.

And remember: there is no electoral college involved in the selection of your representatives who make our laws in Congress. These truly are selected from a direct Democratic vote. So in many ways, the congressional elections that happen every two years are much more in your power! Only 40% of Americans vote for our members of Congress, because most don’t realize this.

So here is what we should do:

Step 1: Every two years, only vote for representatives and senators for our nation’s congress who pledge to abolish the winner take all system of the electoral college nationwide, until they are the majority in congress.

Step 2: Once we have a majority of opponents to the winner take all electoral process in congress, urge them to vote to abolish it as promised.

Step 3: The presidential vote will then be determined by voters nationwide as it should be, not the majority in every state only. And every American’s vote for president will finally be heard.

Step 4: More Americans will be motivated to vote and follow their Democratic process, because when it comes to the presidential election voters in every state - and not just swing states - will finally actually have a voice in it.

It is in our power to do this as described, if we want to actually have the right to vote for our own president. We just have to do it. So what are we waiting for?