Impromptu, with rebuttal

Thanks to my opponent for a great debate and excellent arguments. I will keep my rebuttal simple. My opponent has failed to sufficiently affirm the topic, "The President of the United States should be elected by popular vote." Not only does my opponent spend most of his time pointing out flaws in the Electoral College rather that explaining why the President should be elected by popular vote, the case he makes to affirm the topic is filled with errors. My opponent's argument begins by stating that, "Under this system, every four years, every U.S. citizen would vote for who they wanted to be President." While this is not an error is logic, is it naï¿½ve. The 2008 election had the highest voter turnout in years with 131032799 votes cast [1]. But this is still only about 63% of people eligible to vote [2]. What is to suggest that the popular vote system would bring in more voters than the electoral system? My opponent goes on to say that the winner would simply be the one with the most votes, subject to any recounts if the vote is close. But he later states that "If the {2000} election had been decided by the popular vote, the controversy over the hanging chads, et al., wouldn't have mattered one jot." It is true that if that particular election had been under the popular vote system the recounts wouldn't have mattered or even had to have been performed. But again, what is to suggest that the popular vote system is better? My opponent has acknowledged that the popular vote would still be subject to recounts and therefore the same controversy that plagued the 2000 election could plague others. The next point made is that "in the extremely unlikely event of a tie, a run-off election would be held, maybe a week or two later." The only purpose a run-off election would serve, however, is to eliminate third party candidates, which hardly influence the vote anyways. In the 2008 election, third party candidates garnered zero votes in the Electoral College and only 1.42% of the popular vote [3]. Also, a run-off election would be incredibly difficult to prepare for in one to two weeks and highly unproductive to prepare for in advance, not to mention costly. The 2008 presidential election cost $1.6 billon [4], twice as much as the 2004 presidential election. If my opponent is looking for a way to break a tie, the preferential system would be a better option than the popular vote because it would automatically break ties [5]. But this is irrelevant because once again my opponent has failed to prove why the popular vote system is better than the Electoral College. Lastly, my opponent states what would be eliminated through his plan, "No electoral college, no deciding vote in the House of Representatives (like in 1824 [1]) - just one popular vote, which is the ultimate decider." First, "no electoral college" does not prove why the President should be elected by popular vote. Second, my opponent seems to take issue with the deciding vote in the House of Representatives. I will elaborate further on this in the next section on my rebuttal. To summarize, it is clear that I am taking issue with the fact that my opponent has failed to give evidence or even reason as to why, "The President of the United States should be elected by popular vote." If I had to affirm this topic I probably would have included discussions of how the United States is founded on democracy and how democracy includes everyone and maybe why a popular vote is more cost effective. Instead, throughout his case, my opponent just points out flaws in the current system, the Electoral College. My opponent tries to address the issue by discussing why the popular vote is fair, fair being defined as "free from bias, dishonesty, or injustice" [6]. But all he does is give examples as to why the Electoral College is unfair. By trying to prove the Electoral College as unfair and expecting it to prove the popular vote system as fair is affirming the consequent, a serious logical error. Just because something is proven to be fair or unfair does not mean proof as to why another item is the opposite. The Electoral College is not the subject of the topic, nor is the topic asking for why it is worse. Because my opponent has simply failed to affirm, I urge a vote of negation. -Sources- [1] http://www.archives.gov... [2] http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com... [3] http://www.fec.gov... [4] http://blogs.wsj.com... [5] http://en.wikipedia.org... [6] http://dictionary.reference.com...