Dear Governor,

I believe we need to keep the Electoral College. It seems to provide a more efficient way of deciding who will be the president.

There may seem to be many problems with the electoral college, but there are just as many things that are good about it.

In the passage

In Defense of the Electoral College: Five reasons to keep our despised method of choosing the President, it lists several good points of how the electoral college helps us choose our president. The first point is Certainty of Outcome. In the passage, it states that the Electoral College usually exceeds the amount of popular votes they have because most states use a winner-take-all basis if they so much as have a one percent higher difference than their opponent.

The next point is: with the Electoral College, you can't win by just winning over one region (South, Northeast, etc.). In order to have enough Electoral College votes to win, you have to be accepted nation wide. You can't win by just being supported by the South or only the Midwest, you have to be supported by several regions. In the 2012 election, Mitt Romney was a solid regional favorite in the South. He has no chance of winning extra Electoral College votes if he only campaigns in states he knows he's going to win. This is a perk of the Electoral College because if the candidate has only regional appeal, he's less likely to be a good President.

The third point is the swing states. These are states that are not set on one certain party, such as Demorats in Texas or Republicans in California. The voters in toss-up states are the most studious of the campaign because they know they are the ones who will ultimately decide who will win the election. The voters in these states will pay closer attention to the debates, do further research into the claims the candidates place against each other, and they also recieve the most information and attention from the campaign. These voters are thought to be the most thoughtful and often decide the election.

The fourth point is about the big states. In the passage it states: "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 Senate decreed in the Constitution..." The larger states usually end up getting more attention from the candidates than the smaller states because the larger states have more electoral votes than the smaller states. For example, in 2012, the popular vote in Florida was very close, and yet Obama still got the 29 electoral votes. A victory the same way in Wyoming would only give the winner 3 electoral votes.

The fifth, and final, point is that the Electoral College can help avoid run-off elections. It can help avoid the problem of elections in which neither of the candidates has the majority vote. For example, Richard Nixon in 1968 and Bill Clinton both had only 43% of the popular vote, while they both had a lead in the Electoral College. There would be no pressure for a tied election if none of the candidates wins a majority of the votes. That pressure, which usually complicates the election process, is cut back by the Electoral College, which will give a clear answer.

Yes, it can be said that the Electoral College method of choosing the president can turn potential voters away from a candidate that has no hope of carrying their state. Voters knowing their vote will have no effect are more likely to pay less attention to the campaign than they would be if the popular vote decided the President. Either way, no voter's vote is going to swing a national election and, with that information in mind, about half of the eligable voters in America voted in 2012's election.

It seems to me that the Electoral College helps more than it harms the election. I believe the Electoral College should remain intact as it provides a more efficient way of deciding who will become President.

Sincerely,

PROPER_NAME