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The Electoral College is a system which was established to elect the president of the United States of America. In this system, each state receives a group of electors. The number of electors each state is awarded is based on the representation a state has in Congress. The total number of electors per state equals the number of people a state has in the House of Representative plus the two senators a state has. In a state, the electors pledge to vote for the candidate who wins the popular vote. This system is simply unneeded in modern times and is unneccesarily complicated. The Electoral College must be abolished.

To commence, the Electoral College should be eradicated because it is simply unreliable. The result of a direct election would be more transparent and would make the citizens of this country certain the election was democratic and just. The issue lies in the fact that voters are technically only voting for electors to cast a vote for a candidate, and not for a candidate themselves. These electors pledge to vote in favor of the candidate who rightly wins the popular vote in a state, but some attempt to be defiant. For instance, according to Bradford Plumer's article, "Back in 1960, segregationists in the Lousiana legislature nearly succeeded in replacing the Democratic electors with new electors who would oppose John F. Kennedy" (11). If the Lousiana legislature was successful in their attempt to be defiant, electoral votes would not go to Kennedy despite him winning the popular vote in that state. Another way in which the Electoral College is unreliable is that it allows for a tied vote. There are 538 electoral votes in the system currently in use, meaning it is possible for two candidates to receive 269 votes each. This may seem unlikely, but it is more likely to occur than some might think. For instance, as according to Plumer's aforementioned article, an electoral tie would have occured in 1968 if only 41,971 more votes were for the losing candidate. Additionally, in the 1976 election, if 5,559 voters in the swing state of Ohio, and 3,687 voters in Hawaii had simply voted in favor of the candidate with the minority of the votes, a tie would have occured. In order to resolve a tie, the House of Representatives casts votes to decide the winner of the election. At this point, the impact of each representative is skewed so representatives of states with lower population can more easily decide the state's vote. This happens because each state only votes once, so the few representatives of a small state such as Nebraska can decide who to vote for rather easily, while in California, 55 representatives with different views must colloborate to cast a single vote. With so much unreliability, why is the outdated system of the Electoral College still in use?

Furthermore, the Electoral College must be abolished because it does not properly refelct the views of the nation. Citizens' wishes will not always be equivalent to what the electors vote for. This occurs partly because of the winner-take-all system. In this system, the winner of the popular vote in an individual state wins all of the electoral votes a state has. According to the Office of the Federal Register, all but two states use this system. These two states are Nebraska and Maine. As a result of the winner-take-all system, it is possible that a presidential candidate loses the overall popular vote, but wins more electoral votes and thus wins the election. This occurance happened in the infamous 2000 election, when Al Gore won the popular vote but lost to George W. Bush by a mere five electoral votes. If the public indicated they wanted Al Gore as president, why should Bush have won due to this unfair system? It simply doesn't make sense. The winner-take-all system also results in political campaigns to focus their efforts in only certain regions. Some states very predictably vote either for the Republican candidate or for the Democratic candidate. Take Texas, for instance, which has traditionally always voted red. A Democratic candidate knows he should not focus his campaign in Texas, because he realizes his best efforts won't allow him to win the popular vote there and thus win the electoral votes. Because of the tendencies of certain states, many electoral votes are practically predetermined. The states which do not typically only vote in favor of one side are labelled "swing states". With the way the Electoral College works, the few states which are a toss-up carry the most weight. Presidential candidates will usually spend most of their time in these swing states, and very little time in others. For example, in the 2000 election, seventeen states were not visited by either candidate. Supporters of the Electoral College view the disproportional focus of campaigns as a positive. According to Richard A. Posner's article in favor of this corrupt system, "The Electoral College restores some of the weight in the political balance that large states lose by virtue of the mal-apportionment of the Senate decreed in the Constituion..." (21). While it might seem reasonable for larger states to have a larger impact than smaller states, it simply isn't a fair way to go about having an election. Voters should each have the same impact, and they would have exactly that in a direct election. Presently, voters in Florida, for instance, have more impact on the election than a voter in Wyoming. Supporters also claim the focus on swing states is beneficial because residents of swing states should be more politically informed due to their state's importance in the election. This notion is simply a fabrication in order to make the Electoral College seem as if it causes America to be more informed, because there would be no need for residents of specific states to pay closer attention to candidates than residents of others if a direct election were to take place. The Electoral College does not properly reflect the desire of the nation's population, and thus should be replaced.

In retrospect, the Electoral College must be abolished. It is an inherently unfair system and it does not reflect the views of American voters.

Score: 6