The Electoral College

It appears you've conceded the points of attention to small states and the definition of a republic. You haven't addressed them at all in R3. Holding elections by popular vote is not disqualifying for the label of 'republic. ' Otherwise, All of our senators and representatives would disqualify us from being a 'republic. ' They are all voted in by popular vote. Moving on, To rebut: 1. The electoral college was more of a compromise between the founding fathers, And hastily made on top of that. (1) Many things have changed since they implemented the system. Political parties, Gerrymandering, Campaigns, The HoR freeze, Technology (holding a national election back then was much less practical), And much more. Several of them wanted popular vote, Some wanted congress to elect the president directly, Some wanted state legislatures to elect the president, Et cetera. To pretend this was some unanimous decision among the founding fathers is to attempt to revise history. Your changes to the EC would be considered major changes. There's really no way around this. You say HoR shouldn't be frozen. If it was unfrozen, The power gap between texas and wyoming votes would close significantly. California would gain a good deal of seats, Et cetera. There would be over 650-700 Electoral Votes. The senator vote % would diminish to around 13-17%. Maybe even less depending on how the HoR seats were decided. China's equivalent of the HoR has over 2, 000 members. Ours wouldn't likely grow to that size, But over 1, 000 is possible depending on how things played out. Because of this, The senator bonus for winning the majority in each state would likely not be the deciding factor to many elections. In this case, The system is 100% indistinguishable from a pure popular vote. It would likely be similar to how our situation is now with the minority vote winning the election. 5-10% of the time the senators would be significant. This is absolutely as close as you can get to a pure popular vote system without eliminating the electoral college completely. 2. I haven't ignored your criticism of the winner takes all system. It's one of the primary reasons the EC should be dissolved. You're pointing at 3 states who got several visits from each candidate and ignoring that 25 states were completely ignored and 7 more states got only 1 visit from a candidate or both candidates. It isn't so impressive. Any state that has a chance of swinging will garner some attention. This doesn't go against my point, It actually proves it. It is not that hard to tell, With all the polling that is done nowadays, When a state is going to be a close race. There's a margin of error, If it falls within a few points of that the state will get attention. You have to show me how Trump 'appealed' to them before you have a shadow of a point. Even then, Again, You're leaving out the 32 states who got 0 or 1 visit from each candidate while holding up 3 states that got more than that. 3. 3rd parties While it is another minor point the EC discourages 3rd party voters because winning half a state out of nowhere is extremely unlikely. A reform, Or the dissolution, Of the EC would work quite well for it. Leaving the senator votes in as a bonus would hinder 3rd parties as well. To conclude, It appears we're at an impasse. You've conceded all the points I started with, And all the points I've made in this debate now except for some vague suggestion that 'any state could be a swing state you never know. ' These states were recognized as possible swing states and both candidates spent time there. This wasn't unforeseen, And it was clearly never impossible. The states that had no chance of swinging were paid no heed. I'm uncertain of what you think wins this debate for you. I'd take your reformed EC over what we have now because it's a massive step in the direction of popular vote where the mass majority of victories would go to the candidate with the popular vote. I'm not even certain if, In your reformed system, It is mathematically possible for someone to win the presidency without the popular vote victory. If my napkin math is right on this, It would be nearly if not completely impossible. In this case, It would be effectively no different from a pure popular vote system. It would just mean that votes were still slightly unequal between states, But much less so than now. If you were going to change the EC that much you may have wanted to debate a different topic, And made your desired changes clear in R1. Something along the lines of "The EC should be reformed. " With you as pro, And someone who wanted the EC to stay in place as Con. To state it clearly one more time, I don't know what wins this debate for you. We barely disagree on anything, You just want to reform the system to where there would be a tiny chance senator EC votes would swing it if candidates won enough states but not the popular vote, But in reality I'm uncertain if that would actually be possible in that system. My position is that the EC should be eliminated, But I can't help but like your system too because it's nearly identical. You can't simply say "no its not" and back that statement up with no logical statements or evidence. There is really only one more step for you to take between having an EC at all and not, And that's just a slight power spike from senator EC votes. With an expanded and expanding HoR (if you agree with the unfreezing, Which it seems you do, Otherwise you're agreeing with a system that goes counter to our founders) that would be more and more insignificant. Otherwise, There is unequal representation in Congress in the HoR which is supposed to give states power by population. So from what I see there's not much left to say. You are all but agreeing with me. I'm all but agreeing with you. The topic of this debate suggested you were Pro EC and that it should be preserved 'at most with minor reforms. ' I leave it up to the audience to decide whether or not your suggested reforms are minor. I see no world in which they are. The only real argument you may have left is that abolishing the EC is likely to favor democrats somewhat. There is a slight statistical majority in favor of democrats, And this is increasing as older generations die off. (2) If current trends hold, Which can be doubted somewhat, Then the US Republican party will probably die within 30-50 years. May your thoughts be clear, -Thoht (Additional sources in comments. Some data pulled from previous sources)