The Electoral College Should Be Replace By Direct Popular Vote

Thanks. I look forward to interesting debate. The reasons that the Electoral College should be kept will be represented by my 3 contentions 1. Direct popular vote would take away the winner takes all system which is significant to ensuring fairness among voters. 2. If it were to be abolished, the presidents would only campaign in the big states, not paying any attention to the smaller states. 3. The Electoral College is a part of the constitution that"s lasted over 200 years. To amend a part of the constitution would require a lot more than we have right now. To expand on my first contention, abolishing the Electoral College would encourage third parties and independent candidates who would as the New York Times states "fragment the electorate and make it difficult to forge a majority coalition, much less secure a mandate, thereby weakening the winner"s capacity to govern. " This would cause more division across the nation and separate us. The founding fathers created the Electoral College for the United States of America, not the divided states of America. Also, taking away the winner takes all method would encourage voter fraud which would as apatheticvoter. com says "become paramount, in that a state would not be content to simply show a simple majority of Democratic or Republican votes . .. Majority fraud would be difficult to detect since the party in power would be responsible to maintain integrity " something akin to letting the fox manage the hen house. " To elaborate on our second contention, if it were done away with, the presidents would only campaign in the states with the largest populations. All the power would be held by the biggest states, and the smaller states would not receive any attention. With the Electoral College, the candidates campaign in swing states, some of which have large populations and large electoral votes like Ohio, and others with smaller populations and amount of electoral votes like New Hampshire. True, Electoral College does not give all states attention, mainly just swing states. However, a minimum of 11 states are needed to win presidency in the Electoral College, while under direct popular, only 9 are. The candidates would all focus on California and Texas and New York, not giving any attention to less populated areas which might have an abnormally large population of a minority group or race. Under direct popular vote, their voices would not be heard, and they would feel that not only were they shunned, not only was their state shunned, but on a more personal level, that their ethnicity or race was shunned. To further explain my last contention, the Electoral College is an over 200-year-old part of the constitution. It has served us well for 2 centuries and as Alexander Hamilton once noted, if the Electoral College "be not perfect, it is at least excellent. " Also, It would require a lot of effort to change it. It would cause a lot of trouble and stir up a lot of commotion among the nation. The people may protest and it as expert Max McGregor once stated "People often take national protests to levels of violence. You never know how people may overreact to changes without their voices being heard. " Furthermore, the requirements needed to amend a part of the constitution include 75% of the states legislators" approval. Right now we don"t have near that many, only 2,110 out of the 7,382 of our state legislators endorse direct popular vote. That"s less than a third. It would literally be against the law to change it.