Dear State Senator,

I think we should change our voting system. Electoral College has it's flaws. We know it's the traditional voting system. It has some unfair advantages. Allow me to explain and convice you to changing our voting system.

Under the electoral college, voters vote not for the president, but for a slate of electors, who turn elect the president. The electors could be anyone not holding public office. Who picks the electors will depend on the state. Sometimes state conventions, sometimes the state party's central commitee, sometimes the presidential candidates themselves. Voters can't always control whom thier electors vote for. Voters sometimes get confused about the electors and vote for the wrong candidate.

The single best argument against the electoral college is what we might call the disaster factor. The American people should consider themselves lucky that the 2000 fiasco was the biggest election crisis in a century; the system allows for much worse. Consider that state legislatures are technically responsible for picking electors, and those electors could always defy the will of the people. Oh, and what if a state sends two slates of electors to Congress? It happened in Hawaii in 1960.

Perhaps most worrying is the prospect of a tie in the electoral vote. In that case, the election would be thrown to the House of Representatives, where state delegations vote on the president. At the most basic level, the electoral college is unfairto voters. Because of the winner-take-all system in each state, candidates don't spend much time in states they know they have no chance of winning, focusing only on the tight races in the "swing" states.

It's official: The electoral college is unfair, outdated, and irrational. The best arguments in favor of it are mostly assertions without much basis in reality. And the arguments against direct elections are spurious at best.

Sincerely, PROPER_NAME