The Electoral Collage should be Abolished

Thank you for that quick acceptance. There are three main problems with the EC: it is outdated, it leads candidates to appeal to specific groups instead of everyone, and it allows for the possibility of electing a candidate that is not wanted by the majority of Americans. The EC is outdated because things were very different when it was created. When the system was created, transportation and communication were much slower and more expensive than they are now. This made it difficult for citizens to know much about a presidential candidate or what they stood fore. The EC was created to circumvent these problems by having informed and educated electors vote for the president on behalf of the people. Because the problems of slow and expensive communication and travel no longer exist, we no longer have need for the EC. The next problem is how the EC leads candidates to appeal to specific minority groups instead of the general population. Firstly, most candidates all but ignore the states that they know they will win or lose. This is bad because ideally everyone should get the same amount of attention. Second, this leads to candidates trying to appeal disproportionately to groups like the elderly because of their over representation in many swing states. [1] The same is also true for Cuban immigrants in Florida and many other such groups. The main issue with the EC is its potential to elect a president against the voice of the people. Because we are in a democracy, it can be assumed that we should go by what is wanted by most Americans. Although EC votes are divided up roughly on population, it is the combined seats in the House (By population) and Senate (2 regardless of population) that matter. This leads to states like Wyoming having a disproportionate amount of votes. "Using 2010 Census figures and the distribution of House seats based on that census, an individual citizen in Wyoming has more than triple the weight in electoral votes as an individual in California."[1] It should be pretty obvious why this is a problem. Also, there is the problem of someone's "population" counting for a candidate that they don't like. For example, California's 55 EC votes are representative of its large population. If 51% of California"s population votes for candidate A and 49% votes for candidate B, then all of California"s votes still go to candidate A. Even though there were only enough people voting for candidate A to get about 28 EC votes, candidate A still gets the same amount of votes as if 100% of the people had voted for him. This is also a clear imbalance. The ramifications of this can most clearly be seen in the 2000 election where more people wanted Gore for president, but we still ended up with Bush. The final representation problem with the EC is the way it handles a tie, which is possible with our current distribution of votes. In the event of a tie, the house of representatives chooses the president, but each state only gets one vote. Going back to Wyoming, the 563,000 people of Wyoming would have the same political weight as the 37 million of California. Through all this, it should be pretty clear why we should abolish the EC in favor of a popular vote. [1] http://www.minnpost.com...