Should the electoral college be abolished in favor of a national vote

I thank Con for competing with me in this debate.1) The Electoral College increases "Deliberative Democracy": This point barely even correlates to anything How does the fact that it's controversial immediately lead to becoming more informed? Deliberative Democracy means that the people weigh their options in deliberation before they make a majority vote. Whether the Electoral College system is there or not, the voters' decisions are going to be deliberate. They are going to weigh their options based on the candidates credibility etc. The Electoral College has nothing to do with deliberative democracy. However, if a National Vote is placed, Deliberative Democracy would increase and citizens would become more informed because they have more of an incentive to vote. "Nicholas Miller of the University of Maryland describes the Electoral College as 'a subject terrific for political analysis's is truly a gift that keeps on giving.' He furthers that 'the Electoral College is a boon for political science research and teaching.' This resulting political discourse, according to David Johnson of the University of Minnesota, has a number of results, including 'clarifying citizens' understanding of the issue, helping citizens reach their best reasoned judgment, increasing citizen participation in the political process, and socializing the next generation into the procedures and attitudes they need to be active citizens." -Con How is this evidence? These are a bunch of claims that do not even correlate. The fact that the Electoral College is good for political analyzation, doesn't necessarily mean that it would immediately make voters try to be more informed because of it's complexity in the system. "Deliberative democracy or discursive democracy is a form of democracy in which deliberation is central to decision making. It adopts elements of both consensus decision-making and majority rule." http://en.wikipedia.org...; 2) I already stated that majority and minority fraud could be controlled by other methods other than the Electoral College. Con clearly ignored that statement Sub Point C) It's not a straw man. I clearly stated a fact which is that it is less likely that there would be extremely close scores since there would be large pools of data. A straw man would mean that I misunderstood his statement and attacked it from my misunderstanding. CON Case November 2011 Beachwood LY Temple University"s Professor Jan Ting explains that under direct vote "if the popular vote should be close"legal battles over counting votes could erupt in"all states where any ballots could be contested." Abraham Taylor of the Center for Accuracy in Media explains that the benefit of the electoral college is it "isolates the problem and deals with it on a micro level. Without the present system the problem would [be] magnified dramatically as nationwide recounts would have been required." Jan Ting explains that the impact is that only the electoral college prevents dangerous delays in election results. First of all, Con stated that close election recounts in a National Vote, would cause dangerous delays Am I right? Because if I am, than I do not think it is faulty to say that under a direct vote, you wouldn't have to worry too much about dangerous delays because close elections would be much less likely because of large pools of data. 3) That was barely evidence. It's just logical to assume that if most people vote for a certain president (and most people live in cities) than I would conclude that most people in America want that President Now I will conclude this with a statement: The Electoral College was original established because the writers of the Constitution did not want the people to have too much power because they felt that the majority was uneducated. Which they were. But people nowadays are much more informed and have much easier access to information. So I would think that it is fair to conclude that the people should have more power in deciding their Presidents. I also believe that people claiming that the Electoral College is necessary because it "represents all of the country" are wrong because the Electoral College forces Candidates to focus on a small number of states that are "politically centered" and practically speculated to be representative of the US's wishes. Why base votes on speculation when you could base them on actual evidence, such as a fair majority vote? It's just common sense that a vote would be more fair if the people who live in a country get to decide who runs their country.It's just common sense that a majority vote would be an accurate vote.It's just common sense that the Electoral College is outdated. If people are going to have a President representing their country, than they better be the ones to decide who becomes the President to their country! The People should ruleNot the Elite