The USFG should abolish the Electoral College

Thanks again to Lady4Liberty for engaging in this debate with me, and I hope it's a nice introduction to the site. Now, to start, let's examine what the Electoral College is. The definition I provided for the Electoral College seems so simple and straightforward, doesn't it? Broken down, it means that two things are happening: there's a popular vote, and there's a vote by the Electoral College. These are meant to uphold the basic ideals of a representative democracy, wherein every vote counts. Representatives are present as go-betweens, merely translating the votes of individuals in their states into a smaller but proportional number of votes for the candidate of their choice. Seems great, right? Any system that deals with voting should take on the implement the ideals of a representative democracy. Why? Because the US is a representative democracy, or at least purports to be. A representative democracy "is a variety of democracy founded on the principle of elected officials representing a group of people, as opposed to direct democracy."[1] It's chiefly meant to deal with the realities of really big societies where votes cannot be held among every person every single time there's a new bill up for discussion. Since what we're discussing is what happens every 4 years where a popular vote is taken anyway, this reality isn't a concern here. The voting system in presidential elections is in place not as a side-show, but as a way for citizens to be involved in the electoral process. In order to ensure that people feel that their votes count, we have to ensure the following: a) every citizen can vote and gets adequate representation, b) every vote counts the same, c) any representatives that translate those votes are actually acting in a representative capacity, and d) the result of elections generally matches the popular vote. Any system that fails to implement any of these aspects is fundamentally detrimental to representative democracy. In order to assess these things, I'll begin by exploring the sordid history of the Electoral College. How did it get its start? First off, let's be clear that, while the Founding Fathers established it, they did not have the goals of representative democracy that I stated above in mind. The founders clearly did not want everyone to vote, negating that possibility for anyone who didn't own land, let alone anyone of a different skin color or gender.[2] In total, they awarded just 6% of the population with the ability to vote, something that took many decades to change at all.[3] However, I'm not requiring Con to defend its history, only where it's at currently. So, why spend all of this time on background? Because denying representation and even the vote hasn't stopped. For the former, 650,000 people in DC have no representation in Congress.[4] Still, at least they have electoral votes " Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands aren't so lucky, lacking even that basic impact on elections.[5] As for the latter, we can look to multiple examples, but the most flagrant is disenfranchisement of felons, which entirely bars anyone who was convicted of a felony from ever voting in a U.S. election.[6] This is used regularly to disenfranchise African Americans and other minority groups, basically continuing the long-held tradition of Jim Crow laws that denied so many their basic voting rights.[7, 8] Frankly, all of this is reason enough to abolish the electoral college by itself, but we can go further. Much further. The Electoral College itself IS voter disenfranchisement, at its very core. Many people think that the Electoral College was designed to help small states, and given how it functions today, it's not hard to see how some might view it that way. It's actually helped them quite a bit, to the point that voters in Wyoming have over 3 times the electoral power of voters in California.[9] This means that each voter in Wyoming has 3 times the say of voters in California, which inherently makes the votes of individuals in each state unequal, something we should strive against for a representative democracy. ...But the Electoral College wasn't built to help small states. It was built chiefly to reach across the divide between northern and southern states, and they did this by giving southern states electoral votes equal to their total population. Seems legit, but it wasn't. Slaves made up a great deal of these populations, and slaves couldn't vote, which meant that these electoral votes were actually giving even more representation to a much smaller population on the basis of how many people they owned.[10] But maybe you're thinking that it's still nice that small states are being represented, even if that wasn't the initial intent. However, it really doesn't help small states at all - the winner-take-all system we have in place ensures that candidates will get all of the electoral votes from a given state, and not a proportional number based on actual votes.[11] That means that California, as a state, still has far more say than Wyoming, but it's not the STATES that we want representation for. It's the people. And this winner-takes-all system fundamentally deprives anyone who doesn't agree with the majority political views of their state. If you live in a "blue" or "red" state, and you align with Republicans or Democrats, respectively, then your vote doesn't matter. This amounts to millions of voters across multiple states who are completely unrepresented by the Electoral College.[12] And, if you live in one of these states that's already assumed to go "blue" or "red", you have no impact on the outcome anyway. In some cases, independent candidates will take a state, siphoning every electoral vote away from other candidates.[13] Swing states are the only ones that end up making any difference in an election because these other states will rarely, if ever, shift. That means that 80% of the votes cast in America have no impact on the outcome of an election.[14] But maybe you're still satisfied with the system. This is a representative democracy, we need representatives. The Electoral College may not be solidly built, but at least the electors themselves are fine, upstanding individuals, right? Not quite. Electors aren't elected - they're nominated by their political parties, and have little to no accountability to voters. In most states, the electors can vote for whoever they want, without any regard for how the general population of their states voted.[15] That's happened over 80 times, and worse yet, it sometimes results in absolute nonsense votes for people like "John Ewards", who was almost John Kerry's running mate, in 2004.[16] But all of this only sounds terrible, right? It hasn't borne out in any elections, right? Actually, it's happened as many as 5 times, most recently in 2000.[17] And if votes ever result in no candidate receiving a majority of the electoral vote (which, thankfully, hasn't happened yet), then the House of Representatives chooses the president. That also sounds good, except that each state receives one vote. That means that the 7 smallest states, with a population of roughly 4.9 million, can outvote the 6 largest states, with a population of 119 million.[18] There are so many better ways to do this than to stick with the Electoral College, though I'm going to propose one: The USFG should implement a voting system whereby presidential candidates are elected by direct popular vote, which would be open to everyone over the age of 18. In instances where no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, runoffs will be held between the top 2 finishers. A representative democracy should be representing the voters as well as possible, which requires that the voters have direct say in who's representing us. For this to happen, we need to completely remove the current system in order to put it behind us. We have to leave any trace of the system we have, which employs unelected and unaccountable individuals to make our decisions for us, behind to ensure that the mistakes of its history do not perpetuate themselves. But the pursuit of representative democracy isn't just beneficial because it's something our government is supposed to support. The realities of the Electoral College system lead to apathy, mainly because people feel distanced from the impact of their votes. It's not surprising at all tht more than 60% of people don't vote in this country, and that even more young people are eschewing the practice. We're an international embarrassment for our voter turnout.[19] It's not surprising, as I've pointed out that the vast majority of voters might as well not even show up due to the Electoral College system. If you're in a swing state, then congratulations, you're getting all of the attention during the election season. For the rest of the US, there's almost no reason to turn out. The large electorate can also feel impersonal, but at least under my system every vote actually counts towards the end result. That invests people in the process, making them more likely to research the candidates and turn out for the vote, thus furthering our democracy. With that, I hand the debate over to Con. 1. http://bit.ly... 2. http://1.usa.gov... 3. http://bit.ly... 4. http://1.usa.gov... 5. http://bit.ly... 6. http://bit.ly... 7. http://thebea.st... 8. http://nyti.ms... 9. http://nyti.ms... 10. http://bit.ly... 11. http://1.usa.gov... 12. http://1.usa.gov... 13. http://bit.ly... 14. http://1.usa.gov... 15. http://1.usa.gov... 16. http://onforb.es... 17. http://bit.ly... 18. http://bit.ly... 19. http://bit.ly...