The Electoral College should be abolished

"he hasn't given a single reason why we should maintain the electoral college, beyond delegating the burden of proof to me." I'll do so, but it's your job to show why we should abolish it. You made the "time and energy" argument at the end of your round, and that can be applied here. You have to show why we should change the current system. "It's catchy, and it gets to the heart of the problem with a tyranny or monarchy: the lack of popular sovereingty and consent of the governed. Both of these government principles are missing in a monarchy, and when the U.S. government was created, it was designed to include both. I have proof right here: http://en.wikipedia.org...... http://en.wikipedia.org...... Both of these imply that leadership should relfect will." I have a few issues. 1. I don't want to read your sources for you. Sorry, but it's your job to show exactly what supports your argument from your article. 2. I don't really see how these two ideologies directly relate. I'm looking more for specific language in an official document like the Constitution, which says or heavily implies that the U.S. government's first and foremost job is to reflect the will of the people. In fact, I will show why I think the U.S. government was specifically NOT created with the main intent to reflect the will of the people. Besides from the obvious creation of the electoral college, which, in and of itself, can imply that the government's ideal was not to reflect the will of the people, we can look at Thomas Jefferson's own ideology: http://en.wikipedia.org... Specifically, "Republicanism is the best form of government and representative democracy is needed to prevent the tyranny of the majority, as Madison explained in Federalist No. 10. Jefferson maintained that, '[a] democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.'" Rights > will of the people. A government that first and foremost reflects the will of the people, which you have defined as the majority, is a "mob rule." Thus, I still don't see how the U.S. government is supposed to reflect the will of the people. "if something is superfluous, then it should be abolished. Otherwise, it only wastes time and energy." How much time and energy does it waste, really? Like you said, most of these electors seem to just go along with the popular vote. When following elections, people don't wait until the electors cast ballots. They just wait to see who had the most votes in a particular state. Plus, how much time and energy would it take to completely abolish the system? All processes like that would have to go through the intense bureaucratic system that is amending the Constitution, which would be a massive pain. "What I meant was that the electoral college fails in its intended purpose, and today it only succeds in inhibiting modern elections." I don't see how it inhibits an election, since everything seems to go along with the popular vote anyway (like you said.) Your statement is contradictory. "I said that the popular vote should prevail, and we now run elections so that if often does, but the electoral college often prevents it from prevailing." Completely contradictory, and I still don't see why the popular vote should prevail. I also think it's unfair to small states to remove the Electoral College. In a direct popular vote system, victories would largely revolve around the biggest urban centers. Thus, a candidate would only have to appeal to certain, highly populated areas, and smaller states would always have their interests unrepresented–basically, a tyranny of the majority. In conclusion, my opponent's two responses to my arguments are, in the case of the first, vague and seemingly inapplicable, and, in the case of the second, contradictory.