The Electoral College Should Be Abolished and Replaced in the American Voting System

To understand why the Electoral College is a flawed system, we must first understand why the system was created in the first place. In the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton (a very important Framer in our nation's history) writes that the Constitution makes sure "...that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications." He also writes that the President should be voted in "..."by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station" (1).In summary, the Framers of the Constitution did not trust the people of the United States to make informed decisions regarding the election of the President. Alexander Hamilton believed that people running for President could easily be unqualified for the position, and believed that the American people were ignorant (or even stupid) enough to vote for such a candidate.Logically, though, this was probably the best system available given the technology available at the the time. Even if the US was the most literate people in the world (hypothetically, I don't have statistics proving this), the lack of high speed transportation meant candidates couldn't exactly get their messages across easily. This, most likely, meant that political platforms and ideologies of candidates had to be spread by propaganda and word-of-mouth. Obviously, this medium to share knowledge can easily be corrupted, so having an extra layer to check the voters' decision made sense. However, we are now in a different time period. We have planes that can get a candidate across the entire nation in a few hours. Candidates can now share their ideas and platforms directly to the populace via televised debates, the Internet, and having the ability to hold rallies in multiple states in a single day. Corrupting a candidate's platform due to misinformation is no longer a problem. So, currently, the only explanation as to why we still have the Electoral College is either because the government is still afraid of the American people making decisions, or because of tradition.So why should we get rid of the Electoral College if it has worked reasonably well up to this point? Wouldn't it be easier to just live with the current system? No. The Electoral College is fundamentally broken in multiple ways, and with our current technology there is no reason why we shouldn't move to a popular vote system.The Electoral College in and of itself is not representative of the nation as a whole. If you compare state populations to the number of electoral votes in each state, the ratio of votes per person differs wildly. For example, according to FairVote.org (2), in 2008 California had 36,756,666 people living within its boarders, and had 55 electoral votes. This equates to roughly 668,303 people in California are represented by every electoral vote. Compare that to Wyoming. Wyoming had a population of 532,668 during the same year, with 3 electoral votes. This means that for every 177,556 people in the state, an electoral vote was received. Since every electoral vote is weighted the same in the General Election, this means that Wyoming essentially has more relative power in determining the President than California. 177,556 people in Wyoming have the same amount of power as 668,303 people in California. This is inherently unfair when determining the President of the entire United States. This kind of unfairness is what allows candidates to win the General Election without getting more popular votes that his/her opponent, as we saw in the 2000 election when George W. Bush won the election while losing the Popular Vote to Al Gore.Additionally, the winner-take-all system can mean that half of the nation's votes can become useless. According to The National Archives and Records Administration (3), in most states in the Union, the amount of electoral votes a candidate wins is not proportional to the amount of actual votes are earned. Whichever candidate takes the most amount of votes in 48 out of 50 states wins all the electoral votes of that state. This means that if 10 million voters in California vote for Candidate A, and 9.8 million voters vote for Candidate B, those 9.8 million votes for the latter candidate are essentially ignored and have no meaning. Isn't it strange that in a nation where the citizens fought so hard to earn the right to vote, we have a system where only the votes that break a tie are important? Why don't we have a system where every vote is important when the election for the highest office of the nation rolls around? A straight popular vote would ensure that every vote, whether it's on the winning or losing side in a state, would count towards the election of the President.Finally, the electors themselves and become corrupted. When you vote for President, you vote for an Elector who actually votes for President. However, according to FairVote.org (4), 21 states do not actually require the Electors to vote for the candidate their state voted for. Electors that vote against their state's election outcome are called "Faithless Electors". In history, there have been 157 Electoral Votes like this. While many votes were due to the original candidate dying before the Electoral College cast their ballots, 82 Electoral Votes were changed due to "personal initiative of the elector". There hasn't been an instance in which faithless electors actually changed the outcome of the election, but it is possible due to this system. For example, 23 Virginian Electors decided to change their votes in 1836 due to personal initiative. This is a large swing when you consider that some Presidential races, like the one in 2000, was decided by less than 10 Electoral Votes. We should not have a system where it is possible for a small amount of citizens who are entrusted with voting for the President can easily (and usually without consequence) completely ignore the voters of which they serve. Imagine if the 2016 Election was very close and was decided by less than 10 Electoral Votes. Then, you find out a couple weeks later that the candidate that was set to win the Presidency lost due to a few Electors deciding to ignore the populace and voting for who they wanted. How would that be fair? How would the populace react? We should not have a system where a select few decide who wins the Presidency while ignoring the rest of the citizens of the nation.The Electoral College is a broken system that should be replaced with a Popular Vote system due to these reasons. A Popular Vote system is a fairer and simpler way to determining the President than our current system.Sources:(1): Text of Federalist Paper #68: http://avalon.law.yale.edu... (2): Page contains PDF showing 2008 populations vs. Electoral Votes per state: http://www.fairvote.org...(3): Electoral College FAQ by the National Archives and Records Administration. Used for distinction of Winner-Take-All system: http://www.archives.gov...(4): Faithless Electors Section: http://www.fairvote.org...