The Electoral College Should be Abolished

Thank you for the arguments Con.For my R3 case I will rebut my opponent's arguments from R2. I hope that he will be able to respond to my R2 arguments as well as counter-rebut my R3 ones.RebuttalsRe: Representation and FocusState-by-state representation will not be needed in a national popular vote because each vote would be individual and would have no accordance with the state that citizen lives in. It is unfair to give a voter more value in an election simply because they happen to live in a state with smaller borders. If that state's borders were expanded for some reason, or the voter moved to a larger state, then the vote's value would drop. Small states would be over-represented. This is much less fair for people living in big states - their votes don't count as much toward the result as small states do. A national popular vote would eliminate thisproblem and ensure that every vote is equal the next. States need not be relevant in a national election.Regional concerns would be more prevalent in large states versus small states, since there is more space in larger states for problems to arise. The fact that Rhode Island has one regional concern would be of much more proportion to California with its five thousand regional concerns.There is no reason to abolish the Senate because the Senate serves the purpose of representing the states several times a month on many different issues, not like the EC which is only used every four years for one issue only: the next president of the U.S. The Senate can address each state's issues without needing to ask the state which candidate the majority of its citizens support.Re: ModerationWith the EC, candidates tend to only campaign in the states that matter: swing states. It would be pointless for a Republican candidate to campaign in a solid blue state and vice versa. With or without the EC, there is no reason for a candidate to visit a small town because there are few people living in that town that would affect the election outcome. Since rural areas already trend red, campaigning there is pointless.Candidates will moderate their policies regardless of whether there are swing states or not. It may be true that swing states will be appealing to candidates, but if there is no EC at all then the candidates will want to moderate their policies to appeal to all of America, not just a few states. Even if that was not the case, it doesn't matter a whole lot whether a policy is moderated or not. America will vote on what it wants, and that will make America happier because a popular vote is a direct representation of democracy in comparison to a flawed EC.Re: Clear WinnerTo dissect this argument, we must first find out why it is being contended that a clear winner in an election would be better than a close one. Two factors have been brought up: recounting and votes and a number of fraud attempts at a result of it.RecountingMy opponent has attempted to paint recounting in a bad light. However, recounting in a direct popular vote would not be all that bad. We must first consider that the new president isn't inaugurated until late January[1], leaving plenty of time from election day in early November to the day the president-elect takes office. 2½ months is enough time to recount a nation's votes, seeing as how the votes on Election Day are all counted in one sitting. Also, the only time the nation would recount every person's vote would possibly be if the election was as close as the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy one. Even if there was a difference of a million votes between the candidates (such as the 2012 one), the election still wouldn't be close enough to trigger a national recount. Only in rare settings where the votes are really close would a recount be considered. To add, a recount would be much less likely in a national popular vote because there would be a single large national pool of votes instead of 51 separate pools.FraudSince fraud was brought up, it'd be proper for this subject to be addressed by the other side. It was claimed that a long recount time would risk further fraud opportunities. But because it is a baseless assertion to say "a recount would take months and months", there is no point in taking this argument seriously. We know that in each election, the votes are counted in one day, so fraud opportunities would not be higher. In fact, they would be lower because recounts would be less frequent as I pointed out earlier. Fraud attempts would actually be more frequent with the EC because the people committing fraud would know that if they did it enough, it might tip the vote balance of that state causing the entire state to go for the other candidate. In a popular vote, this wouldn't happen because each vote is individual and would have no effect on the state that vote was casted in. Fraud attempts would only give a candidate a few extra votes and there would be no risk of an entire state switching its votes because of it.Re: ConfusionIt is another baseless assertion that the two-party system would collapse because of a loss of the EC. If no candidate received 270 electoral votes in the EC, one from the three candidates with the most votes would be chosen by the Senate anyways. In a national popular vote, the candidate with the most votes would be elected as chosen by the people. Also, since few people vote for the party they know is going to lose, there would be no reason for the people to begin voting for third party candidates more often without the EC.Your turn, Con!Sources1. http://en.wikipedia.org...2. http://www.archives.gov...