This house would abolish the Electoral College

I would like to thank death23 for accepting my challenge. We have agreed to debate this subject in a PM.C1: Undermines American DemocracyThe Electoral College (EC hereafter), undermines the popular vote in the U.S. Presidential elections. Four times through history, the EC went against the public vote (1). Furthermore, the percentage that is won in the EC vote is often far greater than that of the popular vote. For example, in 2012, Presient Obama was won re-election. Although he won 51% of the popular vote, he received over 60% of the EC vote (2). This also creates an interesting problem. It only takes only 11 states to win the EC, and thus the Presidency (3), even if that candidate loses signifigantly in the other states. As a result, it is mathematically possible to win the Presidency with a mere 22% of the popular vote (4). The EC also violates the one-man, one-vote principle. In certain states, the EC makes your vote worth far more than had you voted in another state. An individual vote in Wyoming counts nearly 4 times more in the EC than in Texas, because Wyoming has 3 electoral college votes in a population of 532,668 citizens and Texas 32 lectoral votes for a population of almost 25 million. As FairVote notes "By dividing the population by electoral votes, we can see that Wyoming has one "elector" for every 177,556 people and Texas has one "elector" for about every 715,499. The difference between these two states of 537,943 is the largest in the EC." (5)C3: Swing statesAmong the major disadvantages of the EC is the fact that the election is usually decided by a handful of swing states. Consequently, candidates often focus solely on those 6 of 7 states, while ignoring the rest of the country. Should the EC be abolished, it would force candidates to work to gain votes in all 50 states.C4: The EC lowers voter-turnoutBecause all states have a winner-takes-all system, it discourages people from voting. If you are a conservative living in a solid liberal state (or vice-versa), why would you bother to go out and vote knowing that your vote won't count in the overall EC vote. Taylor B notes (6): "I think it would be more equitable to force more nationally-focused campaigns. Imagine Barack Obama speaking to crowds in Dallas or Mitt Romney campaigning in New York City. At the very least, it might engage more people in the national debate. If we ever hope to breach the 60% voter turnout threshold last seen in the 1960s (the last two elections have produced around 57%), this is one way to do so. The lawsuits that emerged in the fallout of the 2000 election will be less likely to reappear. When one state decides an election, it behooves all sides to fight for those electoral votes. If the popular vote decided the winner, I doubt we’d see such fallout again."Richard J. Cebula and Dennis R. Murphy concludes in his research paper published in Public Choice (7) "Abolition of the present Electoral College system may not only lead to more voting, but, in particular, to more voting for alternative parties, and hence to more voting for alternative national policies, than presently takes place." Over to con.Sources1. http://www.factcheck.org...;2. http://www.fec.gov...;3. http://www.martyduren.com...;4. https://www.squarefree.com...;5. http://www.fairvote.org...;6. http://www.forbes.com...;7. Note that the full source can be accessed by going to sci-hub.cc and Copy+Pasting the URL, though the conclusion is available on the website. http://link.springer.com...;