Dear Mr. Senate,

I believe that we should change the Electoral College to election by popular vote for the president of the United States. I think we should change it because it's unfair to voters, you can't trust that the electors will vote for who you want to vote for, and then there is the 'disaster factor'.

First off, the Electoral College is unfair to voters. As Bradford Plumer pointed out in the article, The Indefensible Electoral College: Why even the best-laid defenses of the system are wrong,"The electoral college is unfair to voters. Because of the winner-take-all system in each state, candidates don't spend time in states they know they have no chance of winning,focusing only on the tight races in the 'swing' states."So basically what he is saying is that if one state already has a lead and the canidate has no chance of winning he isn't going to focus on them. The canidate is only going to focus on the states where he has a chance of swinging the vote towards him(hence the term swing states).For example during the 2000 campaign, seventeen states didn't see the canidates at all.

Second of all, you cant trust that the electors that you vote for are going to vote for the president you want. For example, what if you want to vote for Obama and so you vote for the elector that says he will vote for Obama, but then when its time to vote the elector changes his mind and s/he votes for Romney instead. Now what? You put your trust in one person and s/he didnt vote for who you wanted. Now you might have to wait another four years to have a chance of getting a different president.

Last but not least, one of the single best arguments against the electoral college is what we might call the 'disater factor'. In the article, The Indefensible Electoral College: Why even the best-laid defenses of the system are wrong,it states,"Consider that state legislatures are technically responsible for picking electors, and that those electors could always defy the will of the people. Back in 1960, segregationists in the Louisiana legislature nearly succeeded in replacing the Democratic electors with new electors who would oppose John F. Kennedy. In the same vein, 'faithless' electors have occasionally nrefused to vote for their party's candidate and cast a deciding vote for whomever they please."

The oppsong claim states that we should keep the electoral college. Some reasons stated in the article, In Defense of the Electoral COllege: Five reasons to keep our despised method of choosing the President,are,"A dispute over the outcome of an ELectoral College vote is possible-it happened in 2000- but it's less likely than a dispute over the popular vote. The Electoral Colllege requires a presidential candidate to have trans-regional appeal. The winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes induces the candidates-as we saw in [2012's] election- to focus their campaign efforts on the tossup states. The elctoral College restores some of the weight in the political balance that large states (by population) lose by virtue of the mal-apportionment of the Senate decreed in the Constitution. The electoral College avoids the problem of elections in which no candidate receives a majority of the votes cast."