The Electoral College Should Be Abandoned

Thank you for the argument. But I'm going to go out on a limb and actually advocated the opposite. I'm going to argue each of my opponents points of interest and then I'll get to some of my own points of interest. 1. The small states cry ================ I have various arguments against this contention but let's start at the top of my opponents argument. He first says that there are enough people in the states of California, Illnois, New York, and Florida to decide a popular vote if we didn't have an electoral college. Not quite true actually. Let's consider that there are 300,000,000 people in the United States here are those states: California: 36,756,666 Illinois: 12,901,563 New York: 19,490,297 Florida: 18,328,340 Hmmm....... Let's round each up for fun. 37 million, 13 million, 20 million, 19 million. Do some addition..... 89 million! Now some division 89 / 300 = half of the popular vote? Not quite actually. So let's figure out how many states it would take to equal half of the popular vote. California: 36,756,666 Texas: 24,326,974 New York: 19,490,297 Florida: 18,328,340 Illinois: 12,901,563 Pennsylvania: 12,448,279 Ohio: 11,485,910 Michigan: 10,003,422 Georgia: 9,685,744 There we go 50.46% of the entire population right there. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org... On the other hand what would it take to win the electoral college considering there are 538 electorates total: California: 55 Texas: 34 New York: 31 Florida: 27 Illinois: 21 Pennsylvania: 21 Ohio: 20 Michigan: 17 Georgia: 15 North Carolina: 15 New Jersey: 15 Bringing us to a grand total of 271 electoral votes, or more than half. So let's consider.... It takes 9 states to win the popular vote and 11 states to win the electoral vote. Ah, it appears my opponent has won because under the electoral college two more states are really represented. Only not. The electoral vote only requires a candidate to win half of the popular vote in any given state. This would actually be possible to do, that's why politicians campaign very heavily in those 11 states and make make their advocacy to conform to those 11 states. On the other hand there is absolutely no way that a politician could win 100% percent of the popular vote in all 9 states. In fact it's doubtful a politician could even win 70% of the vote in each of those 9 states. In other words that politician is only going to win if he focuses on many states outside of those 9. In fact, under a popular vote even if we were to assume a candidate could really win something like 75% of the popular vote in each state (highly unlikely) that candidate would have to focus on 68% of the population. 68 x 75 = roughly half (51%). In other words the candidate would have to focus on the top 17 states at the every least. Though I'd postulate a candidate would have a tough time even doing that thus they'd have to focus on more states. Yet the electoral system makes it so a candidate only has to win 51% in each state and thus only really has to focus on those 11 states in order to win. Hmmmm..... Representation? NOT! So let's go into my opponents arguments a little more. He says, "without the EC, what voice would people in Wyoming get in who should be president." Considering that they don't have a voice now, and are not represented what-so-ever I'd argue that their citizens under a nationwide popular vote would have just as much say as every other citizen. And furthermore, that they would have a greater chance of being advocated too via candidates. "The EC forces each presidential candidate to win over people in ALL States. If we were to have a nationwide popular vote, people living in smaller States would be ignored which could lead to disruption of our union." Ummm... no? In fact that's the exact opposite of what is true. Next my opponent argues that abolishing the amendment wouldn't happen because the consitution requires a 3/4 vote to change and the smaller states wouldn't want to change it. 1. First I'd argue that they would want to change it because it's actually advantageous to them. 2. But more importantly this point just doesn't matter. The resolution asks whether we SHOULD change it. Not whether we COULD change it. Thus my only burden is to say that we should, whether we could has nothing to do with this topic. 2. The Individuals! Think about them! ========================= My opponent argues that people in smaller states are better off because their votes are suddenly worth more. Actually I'd argue that's not quite the case. Under the electoral college if one votes for a candidate in their state but that candidate is not the winner of the popular vote in that state then the person's vote counts for absolutely nothing.... Secondarily though I'd argue that a person in D.C having three times the power of vote than a person in California is just dead wrong. One should not be given 3x the vote simply because they were born in a different part of the country. We're basically saying that one persons say in how this country is run is less than others. 3. Minorities Lulz!!! ============== My opponent argues that the EC vote represents minorities more but I have a few major qualms with this idea. 1. Minorities are called minorities because they don't have a large population. This is problematic in the Electoral college because the lesser votes of a state simply go away and the entire state's electoral vote goes to whoever won the popular vote in that state. This means that minorities within states have extremely small chances of winning actual electoral votes by themselves and thereby their votes end up counting for nothing. 2. On the other hand in a popular vote system, whether a candidate wins the popular vote in a state or not those, the votes from minorities still carry through and can accumulate with similar minorities from other states to make a voting base. 3. Let's take the california example. Only some minorities in California will be represented because whoever loses doesn't get representation...... However in a popular vote system everyone would be represented and the state still has a massive population so I'd argue they get massive representation. 4. Based off of these conclusions one is more likely to focus on the minority voices in a popular election because they can accumulate and have more potential to matter. 4. Faithless Electorates =============== Guess what, under the electoral college electorates don't actually have to vote for who they've pledged to vote for. Furthermore this has actually happened at least twice in the past of the United States. Meaning that the vote just doesn't flat out matter. http://www.votesmart.org... Check out faithless electors. 5. Not what we wanted. ================ And of course sometimes the EC vote isn't what the popular vote would have been. Thus not what the people really wanted. Best example is probably 2000 where we elected Bush. And I think we all saw what he did. ^.^ Your turn.