The Electoral college is something that has been around for hundreds of years, and has helped us decide what to do. It is a fair method of electing the president, but it is not what we need anymore. Times have changed since that was established, so it is time we use a good old-fashioned way of voting, and use election by popular vote.

Back in the seventeenth century, when the Electoral College was created to find a balance between citizen voting and majority vote. How it works, is we select the electors representing our state's votes, they meet and vote, and then congress counts their votes. Also, all states, except Maine and Nebraska have something called the "winner-take-all" syatem, and that is a "system that awards all electors to the winning presidential candidate."(s1,p7) But now, the citizens in your state who qualify as a voter cast their votes. Instead of that being what our state's choice is, we choose the electors of our candidate, or person we voted for, and then the candidate with the majority votes wins, getting atleast 270 out of 538 electoral votes. This seems very unfair, and in one specific case, it is. In the 2000 presidential election, between Al Gore and George Bush, Al Gore got more popular votes than George Bush; he should have won. But Bush had more electoral votes, and that was where is mattered. So, Bush won that. If Gore won popularity wise, he should have won, hense creating happier citizens, since he won the majority of their votes.

Another argument, according to source 3, paragraph 23, is that the Electoral College method of choosing the president, "may turn off potential voters for a candidate who has no hope of carrying their state." This is very important, as we all want a good leader who will support our home state. If, for example, the Electoral College voted on a Democrat, and he won, Florida may not have much hope. Florida is a Republic state, as is most of the southern states; yes, Mr. President would be obligated to help all 50 states when necessary, but the bigger benefits would go towards the Democratic states, and probably his home state. Therefore, voters may not even bother casting in a ballot if the candidate of their choice does not have much hope, or if they think either potential leader will benefit them. So if they do not have much of a choice in the matter, they lose interest and shrug it off, as opposed to if it were popular vote, and every single vote was accounted for. Fortunately, though, this does not happen often; one meesly vote does not do much to turn the tables.

The Electoral College, all-in-all, has helped us a lot, yes, but it is high time we go back to the popularity vote. It would make most citizens, and many potential voters, happier to know that they are accounted for, and we won't have the potential of the popularity winner, the one the people actually voted for, to lose on account of the electors. It should be the people of America's decision, not a group of government workers, to decide who runs our nation.