Dear Senator,

People have different opinions on the Electoral College. Some feel that it should be changed, and the president should be elected by popular vote. To explain what the Electoral College is, the Office of the Federal Register writes

What is the Electoral College?.

Bradford Plumer writes

The Indefensible Electoral College: Why even the best-laid defenses of the system are wrong, to explain the problems with the Electoral College, and lastly, Richard A. Posner writes

In Defense of the Electoral College: Five reasons to keep our despised method of choosing the President to explain why we should keep the Electoral College. It has been made clear that we should not change the Electoral College.

It is true that the Electoral College may be confusing (Plumer), but it has worked for all these years, thus we should just leave it the way it is.

To start, The Electoral College was established by the founding fathers as a compromise between election of the president by vote in congress, and it also considers the popular vote of qualified citizens (Office of the Federal Register). The founding fathers wanted us to use this system. They knew it would succeed.

Next, Plumer writes, "It's official: The electoral college is unfair..." This is not true because the number of electorals each state gets is always decided by the number of members that state has in the House of Representatives, plus two for the senators (Office of the Federal Register).

Additionally, Richard A. Posner says that "There are five reasons for retaining the Electoral College despite its lack of democratic pedigree; all are pratical reasons, not liberal or conservative reasons. He then goes on and says, "A dispute over the outcome of an Electoral College vote is possible...but it's less likely than a dispute over the popular vote." In the Electoral College system, their will always be a certainty of outcome. Plumer goes against that and writes, "Perhaps most worrying is the prospect of a tie in the electoral vote." This cannot happen.  Posner also writes that "The electoral College requires a presidential candidate to have transregional appeal." The north, for example, does not have enough electoral votes to elect a president (Posner). The president is everyone's president.

Also, The Electoral College considers swing states and big states. Plumer writes "At the most basic level, the electoral college is unfair to voters". This is not true because of the idea of swing states and big states.  Swing States, also known as toss-up states, are the states that pretty much decide the election. They could go either way (Posner). "The Electoral College restores some of the weight in the political balance that large states (by population) lose by virtue of the mal-apportionment of the Senete decreed in the Constitution. " This means that the larger the state (in population, not size), the more their overall vote weighs.

Lastly, by using the Electoral College, we are avoiding Run-Off Elections. A run off election is when no candidate recieves a majority (Posner).

In conclusion, you and I both know the Electoral College has some flaws, but overall, it makes sense to keep it the way it is.

Yours truly,

Emily.