The Electoral College Should be Abolished

====INTRODUCING THE AUDIENCE TO THE DEBATE====Thanks, Pro. I would like to clarify, as I am negating changing the status quo, my opponent has to not only justify changing what has been the most dominant voting system used in the US for centuries, but also has to prove *ALL* my points wrong and that his proposed system would be more beneficial, also given the changes it would pose on American politics. I will also confront his points in order to add validity to my own arguments, so take that into argument points as well, voters. Changing such a system is no small matter, and must not be treated as such. Now onto my arguments. My apologies for the rushed format, I had little time to post my argument as I am very busy tomorrow.Minority States - Sparsely populated states that are generally rural.====MY CASE====C1: REPRESENTATION AND FOCUS: This premise is quite simple, yet crucial to this debate. All states, no matter how unpopulated, needs proper representation. With the most common system preferred by the public being "whoever gets the most votes overall by the people wins" way, this would be impossible to achieve. The Dakotas, Alaska, Vermont, Montana, Wyoming, and other such states all have small populations no matter how you look at it. Clearly, their votes would be minimized completely, and would be greatly overpowered by more populated states. This is simply unjust in every definition of the word. They would NOT be represented.As another important point on representation and focus, the president would have a hard time determining solutions for regional concerns as no representation would be given to minority states. They would pursue national interests, which would prevent regional progress. With EC, all regions are represented, and therefore is more fair to a considerable amount to the country, which lacks large populations. The simplistic 'more votes wins' plan contradicts the concept of individual liberty.If my opponent is for such a flawed system, then, by his logic, we should abolish the Senate as well. Where do we stop by this rationale? Must we cast a ballot on EVERY decision made in the Senate? In what regards should this stop? My opponent must draw a line.C2: MODERATION: This loosely ties into my first contention. It should be obvious that if popular vote was the system of use in political elections, democrats would almost exclusively campaign in significantly populated blue areas, whereas republicans would almost exclusively campaign in significantly populated red areas. Smaller rural and sparsley-populated regions, as mentioned above, would get little to no voice in elections. These areas would suffer dramatically.Also, swing states encourage moderation.If you think about it, many policies will pass in one area of country, and not the other. Some moderation is good. Some campainging strategies seen as ultra conservative from hardcore liberals would pass in the South, and not pass in the North, and vice versa. It is generally predictable how different parts of the country will vote on things. If they are definitely blue, or definitely red... it's just obvious. However, swing states are a different story. Since they are unpredictable and basically vote from scratch, then both candidates are forced to moderate their policies in order to appeal to a neutral audience.Lastly, bear in mind that since there is one swing state per region, the candidates will be able to make sure that they are able to confront regional concerns rather than only national concerns. This also help prevents candidates from simply going to populated areas to campaign.C3. CREATES A CLEAR WINNER IN CLOSE ELECTIONS: For this argument, in order to create more substance to my points, I shall provide an example(s) which more than proves my point:We all (hopefully) know how close the election in 1960 between Kennedy and Nixon was. More than 68 millions voters cast their ballots [1] and Kennedy came out in the popular vote as less than 2/10ths of a percent ahead of Nixon [2]. We should all know of the accusations from both sides about vote-stealing and the cries to recount the votes.With such close results, there would no doubt that the votes would have to be recounted in a direct elections. This would've taken months, and created more potential opportunities for fraud. This would therefore hinder the election.But because the Electoral College divided one big national election into 50 individual state elections, recounts were only pursued in a few states where the vresults were closest. And because Kennedy had a huge lead in Electoral votes --- 303 to 219 --- [3] Nixon would have had to win just about all the challenges to change the outcome of the election. Clearly that wouldn't happen, so most recounts were soon dropped. The EC took what had been a virtual tie in the popular vote and turned it into a clear-cut victory for Kennedy.There have been multiple times in American history where the candidate with more overall votes beat the other by less than 1% (e.g. Garfield, 1880, Nixon 1968, Cleveland 1884, etc.) [4] . If we had a direct election, we would have to verify the results by using a national recount. With EC little to no recounts would actually be counted. This prevents unnecessary complications and potential fraud opportunities. Most times, the EC produces a more notable margin of victory than the popular vote results. This makes the elections more obvious, and provides an opportunity to the president (winner of the election) to get ready for his new job as president. C4: THE EC SUCCESSFULLY AVOIDS CONFUSION. But an important result of the EC is that it has led to the development of two political parties that strive for broad appeal. Most other democracies have dozens of parties, many with very narrow agendas. With such an amount of parties, it is hard to reach agreement on virtually anything. But the EC requires a candidate to win a majority of electoral votes. If there were three or more parties, that would seldom happen. Because of this, American politics evolved to have two national parties, each of which needs to appeal to as many people as possible.A common argument against the EC revolves around third party candidates not being properly represented. However, more than two candidates would not only lead to confusion, but it would be impossible to please enough people to justify putting the winning candidate in office. With that, I hand this debate back to Pro.====SUMMARY====In this debate, I have showcased the following points:-All states, no matter how unpopulated, needs representation.-Swing states encourage moderation on all fronts, and discourages extremity from any party.-Prevents confusiong, fraud, and other harmful things to society as well as successfully determining close elections with confidence.-The Electoral College helps prevent confusion on nearly all fronts.It should be noted I am saving rebuttals for the next round. Thanks. I put lots of effort in considering all the circumstances clinging onto me in real life. ====SOURCES====[1]: http://www.ushistory.org...;(near the end of the final paragraph)[2]: http://uselectionatlas.org...;(the chart shows a .17% popular vote difference, showcasing less that 2/10ths of a percentage point).[3]: http://uselectionatlas.org...;(look at the chart)[4]: http://uselectionatlas.org...;http://www.270towin.com...http://www.270towin.com...