The electoral college should be abolished in favor of direct election.

The electoral college, is, as my "opponent" said, contradictory to the fundamental tenets of democracy, and while I agree here, I am dubious of if the electoral college is a necessity to hold democratic elections. Allow me to elaborate, with some historical evidence that is. First off, what I would say an advantage of the electoral college is would be that it results in landslide victories, and what this does is bring a sense of finality to the election. And for those asking just why this is a positive, simple, expediency. It creates an election result, that is, typically, easily ascertainable and reliable because it is based on a point system. In the 2000 Presidential election, as I'm confident many know, there was a long standing recount battle between eventual President George W. Bush and Democratic Candidate and former Vice President under Bill Clinton, Al Gore. In that election, specifically in Florida, a state with the potential to decide the outcome of the electoral college, George W. Bush won by precisely 1,784 votes. This was less than an 0.5% difference in votes, and under Florida's state law, this correlates to an automatic vote recount. And penultimately, Bush won the machine vote recount, however, as Gore was allowed to do law, he ordered a hand recount of the votes. Now this election was embodies by controversy because of the flawed nature many of its ballots perpetuated, nonetheless Gore contested the recount for this very reason. To elaborate further, some of the Florida ballots, weren't perforated completely when voters cast their ballots, leaving some with chads that make it ambiguous who the person had cast their vote for. In total, these ballots, which came to be known as "hanging chad" ballots, totaled to about 9,000 in quantity. And as previously explicated, Gore contested the recount based on this rationale. His appeal eventually made it up to the U.S Supreme Court, and the highest court in the nation reversed the manual recount, with a proclamation that the state may "value one person's vote over that of another." The result of this was the sustaining of the decision made by the machine recount, Bush winning Florida, and henceforth all of its electors, and winning the presidency. This recount battle lasted a total of 36 days, over a month after the elections intended conclusion. The point of citing this presidential election is to show that, when a popular vote is dealt with on even a state level, however superior I think a majority of us can agree that it is better in form, can remove the element of expediency that pervades the electoral college. And so I have to implore by "opponent" here to attempt to answer the question, which is objectively speaking an exigent question to answer, if we were to translate this format to a national level, where every vote is of desideratum importance, how would we handle any contentious election, in example the 2016 Presidential election, in a way which doesn't mandate an asinine amount of time an election should be dragged out for. On an election year the president elect has to be in office by January 20th the year subsequent the election's occurrence, and I don't see how, as the argument stands, this is an affirmed reality if an unmitigated popular vote is the implemented election system. My argument here being stated, I would be more than satisfied if you could think of such a method, because I , and those I have spoken to on the issue, certainly haven't, and I wait to see what you can offer, because if this question could be answered in an all encompassing and objective way, I would immediately concede. As, I do think a popular vote, hypothetically, is the nonpareil system of holding elections, however I'm more than apprehensive of its applicable viability.