Direct popular vote should replace the electoral college in U.S. presidential elections.

Thomas Jefferson once said, "Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention have ever been found incompatible with personal security or rights of property and in general have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." Because I agree with this quote I negate the resolution: Direct popular vote should replace the electoral college in United States presidential elections for the following reasons. Direct popular vote goes against the intent of the Constituiton and it protects the rights of small states. For the purposes of today's debate I would like to provide the following definitions: Democracy: rule by the majority (merriam webster dictionary) Republic: A political order in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who are entitled to vote for officers and representatives responsible to them. (the free dictionary.com) Contention 1: Direct popular vote goes against the original intent of the Constituion and the Founding Fathers. Direct popular vote should not replace the electoral college because it is a step of democratization for the United States. Supporters of direct popular vote argue that democratization is desirable. However, it is the opposite. Joe Wolverton author of The New American says, "any democratization of the presidential election process is an affront to the express intent of our Founders. The men who constructed our federal government zealously guarded against permitting the harmful influence of democracy to infect the inner workings of our nation." The United States should not taking steps towards democracy because America is not a democracy for good reason. Alexander Hamilton once said, "We are a Republican government, real liberty is never found in despotism of the extremes of democracy." Any form of democracy within the U.S is not disirable. The John Birch Society's documentary, Overview of America, affirms this by saying, "Democracy itself is not a stable form of government, instead it is the gradual transition from a limited government to the unlimited rule of an oligarchy." Any form of democracy is not desirable because it assists in the Gradual destruction of a republican government like that of the United States and turns it into a governmental rule of the few that denies individual liberties. Contention 2: The electoral college protects small states influence within the presidential elections. According to Kristina Dell, "with a direct popular vote...the selection of the president would often be the biggest, most populous states with little attention paid to smaller ones." Without the electoral college the voices of small states would be drowned out by the larger ones. Bob Nutting of the Maine House Republicans says, "In the election of 2008, because all votes in the electoral college are important, Maine saw candidates and their surrogates. If the criteria for winning were the popular vote, they would have camped out in California, Texas, New York, Florida and other populous states." The electoral college is a necessity in order to give small states the right to have a voice in presidential elections which is why i urge a negative ballot for today's debate. And now to attack my opponents case: In response to his first contention sub-point A, he says that "the electoral college produces an unfair scenario in favor of small states." However, without the electoral college, the small states would get no say in presidential elections at all, they would be drowned out by the larger states (see second contention). He also says that "free and fair election is an imperative condition that a democracy must have as a foundation. However, as i proved in my first contention America isnt even a democracy, so obviously this point doesnt stand. In response to his first contention sub-point B, he basically says that the distortion of the electoral college must be solved, but this isnt true since the distortion was specifically put in place to create "free and fair elections" with regards to equality of states. In his second contention he says the electors that are voted for by the people can go against the popular vote of their state. However, according to U.S. Electoral College FAQ's "Throughout our history as a nation, more than 99 percent of electors have voted as pledged(1)." Which means that electors voting against their states is the exception to the rule. Also, according to Joe Wolverton, "In the ease of the Electoral College, the Founders inteded the electors to be a deliberative convention of wise men brought together for the sole purpose of soberly choosing a President form among the available candidates." This shows that the intent of the Founders was to trust electors more than the people to choose the President. In his second contention sub-point A, he says that direct popular vote fixes the problem of faithless electors Dramatically change the outcome of Presidential elections. However, how can faithless electors "dramatically" change elections if they only occur 1 percent of the time? He also states that "the election needs to be put back in the hands of the people for which it was intended." However, the original intention was for the electors to elect the president not the people. The people only influence who the electors will vote for. In his third contention he says that because of the electoral college, candidates focus all their attention on a few batleground states; however, as I stated in my second contention if direct popular vote decided presidential elections, then candidates wouldnt need to pay attention to small states, only large ones with high populations which means that although the electoral college doesnt solve the problem of candidates ignoring certain states, neither does direct popular vote which means that this contention doesnt prove why direct popular vote should replace the electoral college. Therefore, it is void. (1) http://www.archives.gov...