Presidential elections should be decided by a popularvote instead of the electoral college.

Majority vs PluralityNot many people understand why it is important to win a majority of votes as opposed to a plurality, but there are some extremely good reasons. We don't want the political parties fractured too much. A two party system means that each candidate has broader appeal, which is important because they are president of the whole country, not just a segment of it. An election by plurality as opposed to majority vote could see as many as 10 serious candidates competing for the office of presidency. If we elected candidates by plurality popular vote, there would be very little incentive for candidates like Bernie Sanders or Ted Cruz to drop out. More options might seem good at first glance, but just think about what it means. It means we could have a realistic scenario where somebody wins with just 20% of the popular vote. The person could be so extreme that he is simply unpalatable by 80% of the population. This is why the electoral system was created to start with. It is simply not fair to elect a candidate who is only loved in the North eastern part of the United States. Sure, in this situation everybody's vote is equal. Yet 80% of people have to tolerate some incompetent jerk. I'll say it more plainly. Majority vote keeps unpalatable candidates who are merely regional favorites to become president. It forces them to appeal to more voters. My opponent suggesting not only popular vote, but pluraliy voting is dangerous.The Equality of MenMy opponent quotes the declaration of independence. His quote starts out; "All men are created equal" . There are problems with his use of this quote. One is that he would use a popular vote, which I have shown would be 65% big city dwellers, and by his own numbers only 19% of people live in rural environments. This means that he would have city dwellers have a political process that favors their needs over the needs of people in rural environments. If we are all created equal, why should rural people be virtually shut out of the political process? Why make it so presidential candidaes have no reason to include them when considering their platform?The other problem is thinking the quote refers to equality in the political process. If the founding forefathers cared about that they would have created a direct Democracy instead of a rpresentative republic. The only people who could vote in America at the time of it's founding were white male land owners. http://www.mattbrundage.com...Further more even if we extend that meaning to others, it is referring to equality under the laws we must abide by, not equality of political power. I reject that equality means what my opponent claims and thinks. The term equality keeps changing because it is so vague, but in this instance it doesn't mean what pro asserts.Big City VotersHere is a quote by my opponent: " The electoral college gives US citizens of heavily populated states more voting power than US citizens of lightly populated states, and therefore Americans are not equal in this manner. " Pro has the same concern as me. He is concerned that states with more voters will have more voting power. This seems to conflict with his belief that every vote should be equal, but let's take a look at voting power under a popular vote, and under the status quo. Here are the top ten populated states http://www.enchantedlearning.com...1. California2. Texas3. New York4. Florida5. Illinois 6. Pennsylvania7. Ohio8. Georgia9. Michigan10. North CarolinaThis is the ten most important states in an election about the popular vote. Now here is the ten most important in the college electoral system. http://bigthink.com...1. Colorado2. Nevada3. New Mexico4. Wisconsin5. Ohio6. New Hampshire7. North Carolina8. Florida9. Virginia10. PennsylvaniaNow my opponent is afraid of more populated states having a more powerful vote, but you can see by the lists, that the college electoral system is the only one out of the 2 that actually accomplishes equalizing the influence between highly populated and low populated states. Now that rebuttals are out of the way......Counter Rebuttals"The electoral college makes it so that candidates focus on the needs of states with the most electoral votes, such as California and Texas."My link for the top ten important states in the next election contradicts that. Texas is almost certainly turning red, and California is almost certainly turning blue. The candidates will likely almost completely ignore those states amd focus on smaller swing states. Like I said they will have to appeal to mostly rural areas like Colorado as well as the needs of big cities to win the election, while the popular vote means they can pretty much just focus on the northeast corner of the United States and the west coast. The center states with all the rural voters could just be ignored if a popular vote is all anybody cares about. "Again, this is not true. Regardless of the voting system, any close election will cause controversy, but it would cause more controversy for the popular candidate to lose, as explained previously. The concept of "hassle" is also not as nearly as important at the concept of fairness. The recounting of votes occurs within a couple of hours. The result of a presidential election affects the distant future."The above comment refers to my assertion the electoral college system causes less controversy and hassle in contested elections. My opponent asserts that it is not true that a recount in some parts of Florida is less of a hassle than a nation wide recount in a local election. I'll ask the voters to use common sense when deciding if one state recounting votes is less of a hassle than every single state in the country. as far as the rest of the post goes. A recount does not occur in just a couple of hours. The Bush Gore recount fiasco lasted close to a month, involved hand counting the ballots and multiple court hearings. It could have went on a lot longer if Gore didn't decide to concede the election. https://en.wikipedia.org...That is just one state. A nationwide recount would be a disaster. We would have an interim president for perhaps a year until the real president is figured out. My opponent claims that a fair result is worth the hassle, but how is it fair to make all those volunteers work endless hours recounting ballots? How is it fair to cost tax payers billions in lawsuits in all 50 states toget a close election figured out? How is it fair that somebody who wins 20% of the vote gets to be president when 80% of people hate him? We might have different concepts of fair. My opponent ends his argument by saying that the last thing he wants is for voters to be thoughtful. This is silly. When electing the leader of the free world whose actions effect the entire globe, it is clear that we should prefer to choose him with thoughtfulness. The results are too catastrophic to think of otherwise. We need to think carefully before electing a person with access to the nuclear launch codes which can eradicate life on Earth, even if my opponent does think it unfair for less thoughtful voters. My opponent ends his round by quoting the declaration of independence. A document that is not law. A document that is not even a philosophy, but just a mere political propaganda tool of the colonists. A document that refers to all of us as created equal. Not as being equal, but merely being created equal in the eyes of God