Presidential elections should be decided by a popularvote instead of the electoral college.

I would like to use this round to rebut against claims made in my opponent's opening statement. "An election by popular vote will make it so that candidates would be incentivized to only focus on the needs of major cities while ignoring the rest of the country, while a delegate system makes every area important." This statement applies to the electoral college, as well. The electoral college makes it so that candidates focus on the needs of states with the most electoral votes, such as California and Texas. Of course, the amount of electoral votes in a state depends on the number of representatives and senators (always 2) in that state, which depends on population. Therefore, it can be determined that both the electoral college and the popular vote share the issue of candidates focusing on populous areas. Regardless of the voting system, candidates will always focus on populated areas in order to attract interest of a greater amount of people. Unfortunately, this strategy is key in becoming elected since only 19% of the country is considered rural [1]. Although both voting systems (and any voting system) share this flaw, the popular vote still gives equal voting power to every citizen, while the electoral college takes away voting rights from citizens of lightly populated states. "An electoral process ensures that [presidents] can get the majority of the vote and with less controversy." This statement is completely untrue, as the Bush vs Gore election ended in Gore winning the popular vote (the majority) and Bush winning the election. This certainly caused controversy as the election, which would differently affect both today's economy and the president from 2000 to 2008, went against the interest of most American citizens! "Neither Hillary Clinton or Trump look like they will be able to break 45% of the vote, and one of them would need a surge to hit that. The days of winning the popular vote are over." The popular vote involves the measure of the popularity of a candidate relative to the popularity of another candidate. In an election with more than two parties, a candidate can receive less than 50% of the vote, but still win by having MORE popularity than any other candidate. Although a candidate with less than 50% of the vote would not be considered "popular", this is not the defenition of the "popular vote". "The electoral college does avoid a lot of controversy and hassle." Again, this is not true. Regardless of the voting system, any close election will cause controversy, but it would cause more controversy for the popular candidate to lose, as explained previously. The concept of "hassle" is also not as nearly as important at the concept of fairness. The recounting of votes occurs within a couple of hours. The result of a presidential election affects the distant future. "People in swing states know that their vote is extremely important... This is exactly what we want. Thoughtful voters having the most influence on the system." Again, this is exactly what we don't want because it affects the voting rights of every American citizen. According to the preamble of the Declaration of Independence, "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness [2]. Therefore, any American citizen's votes shouldn't be extremely important or unimportant, as this goes against a major concept at the country is grounded on: equal rights. [1] http://data.worldbank.org... [2] http://www.elcivics.com...