The electoral college should be abolished

Introduction: what is the electoral college? The electoral college is the system in the United States that decides who will be the next President. This system is unique to Presidential elections, as opposed to the direct popular vote that decides most other elections in the United States. According to the constitution, each state is granted a number of electors, determined by the sum of its Representatives and Senators. The electors of the states vote on who becomes President, and a majority vote is required to win. The United States Constitution does not dictate how the electors are to be elected, only that the states get to decide how they are chosen. Today, the electors are determined by a "winner take all" fashion in most states, allotted to the candidate that wins a plurality of the popular vote. In my argument, I will explain why the electoral college is outdated and unreliable. P1: The electoral college is outdatedThe electoral college system was originally based on the idea of a very indirect democracy. The intent was to have the people control their state legislatures, the state legislatures choose the most educated, experienced citizens of their states, and those citizens choose the President[1]. If necessary, the House of Representatives would have to confirm the President. One of the reasons the founders feared direct popular vote was because at the time, a public that mainly lived in rural areas would not know candidates' positions, or in many cases, not know the candidates at all. This is outdated because, with the rise of the internet and televised political advertising, it is very easy for voters to get informed. For this reason, the original reasons for the electoral college are negated. Furthermore, the electoral college does not function as it did at the founding. While electors originally had freedom to choose candidates they supported, today they are bound to their state's (or in the case of Maine and Nebraska, congressional district's) popular vote[2]. As a result, it no longer even fulfills the founder's intents at a very indirect democracy. P2: The electoral college in its current form is unreliableAs mentioned above, most states use a winner-take-all system for electing the electors. This causes problems in terms of representation. Further, because states are guaranteed a minimum of 3 electoral votes (for 2 Senators and 1 Representative minimum), smaller states are given more influence then they should. As seen in this video[3], a Wyoming citizen's vote is worth four times as much as a Californian's vote. While this may seem like it has benefits because it appears to prevent large states from being overshadowed by big states, this is not what happens in actuallityThe winner-take-all matter causes most states to be ignored. This is because states where one candidate has polls widely in his or her favor have all their electoral votes "guaranteed", unlike "swing" states that either candidate can win, where electoral votes are up for grabs. As seen at 2:03 in the video, this causes swing states to gain the most attention in Presidential elections. In other words, a Republican in New York has no influence on the Presidential election, whereas a Republican in Ohio has relatively high influence. The Presidential elections are decided by only a handful of "swing" voters in swing states. This causes the actual popular vote to diminish importance. While the popular vote usually has the same result as the electoral vote, it is not always the same. No less than three Presidential elections, 1876, 1888, and 2000, had popular vote winners who lost the electoral vote. An additional two (1800 and 1824) had the election thrown to the House of Representatives because no candidate won a majority of electors. While these elections were relatively close, it is possible for the discrepancy to be much bigger. As seen at about 4:20 in the video I cited above, it is possible for a candidate to win with only 22% of the popular vote. Note that this assumes proportional turnout in each state, and the discrepency can be even larger depending on varying turnout. Also, this assumes the lack of significant third party candidates. The final flaw with the electoral college is the possibility of faithless electors. Although electors are chosen based on popular vote, many states do not have laws preventing them from voting their will. Although faithless electors have not impacted a Presidential election yet, there have been recent reports of multiple faithless electors that might impact this upcomming election. At least three Republican elector candidates set to vote for Romney should he win their respective states have indicated that they will vote for Ron Paul if elected[4]. Although Ron Paul was a candidate in the Republican primaries, he is not running for President. This means that, should the electoral vote be close enough, the election might be thrown into the House of Representatives even though only two candidates will have actually won states. Ron Paul will have gotten three electoral votes despite negligible popular vote count, and there is a remote possibility that he will allow Obama to win without a popular vote or electoral vote plurality. Overall, the electoral college no longer does what it was intended to do, and obstructs democratic electoral process in the United States. It should be abolished in favor of a direct popular vote, which would accurately reflect the desires of the public. Citations1. . http://uselectionatlas.org...2.http://www.archives.gov...3.http://www.youtube.com...4. . http://www.washingtonpost.com...