Every four years since the founding of the United States, a president has been elected by the people to lead the U.S. According to source 1, the system used to select the president is the Electoral College. The Electoral College involves voters voting for president they want, as normal, and then the president that got the majority vote in that state gets all of that state's electoral votes. Supporters of the Electoral College claim that it is good that the presidents focus more on swing states, and that they are more likely to be the thoughtful voters, but there is zero evidence shown to support this, and it makes presidents focus on states disproportionally. The Electoral College should be abolished and replaced by the popular vote system, as it is an outdated method compared to modern technology, makes the vote of an individual seem even more insignificant, and makes presidents not campaign in states that are small or loyal to them.

Since the Electoral College was hundreds of years ago, it does not account for all of the new technologies that have been developed since then. The founding fathers could not have possibly thought that it would be possible to easily count all of the nation's votes with a machine, but now it is possible. It is likely that the reason they thought of the Electoral College in the first place was because it would mean that they could spread out the tallying of votes between the states, instead of doing it all at once. Nowadays though, there are computers that can count votes faster than ever imagined. Popular vote is now a viable method since every person's vote can be accurately counted.

Due to the Electoral College relying on a majority rules system, the vote of a single person can be completely insignificant. According to source 3, a supporter of the Electoral College, "Voters in presidential elections are people who want to express a political preference rather than people who think that a single vote may decide an election...." This should not be the case when voting. Voters should research their choice as if the election relied completely on them. But instead, there is a system in place where somebody's vote can be rendered completely useless in not multiple ways! For example, if a state already has their majority of citizens voting for president A, if somebody votes for president B it will be as if they didn't vote at all! Even in a case where the state is completely 50:50 on who to give the electoral votes to, if the last person votes for president A, tipping the majority in his favor, according to source 2, "... those electors could always defy the will of the people," and end up voting for President B. The Electoral College is an anti-thesis to democracy, because a citizen's vote can be rendered completely pointless at multiple points.

Both those who support the Electoral College system and those who oppose it agree that the Electoral College puts a much bigger focus on swing states and states with large populations, according to sources 2 and 3. To put this into perspective, here's an example of why supporting big swing states should not be rewarded. The US has 6 states. 5 are completely democrats and each have populations of 20. 1 is half democrat half republican and has a population of 100(assume 20 people equals an electoral vote). If the republican presidential candidate convinces a single democrat in the big state to vote for them, they will get the majority vote in that state and get 5 electoral votes. This results in the democratic presidential candidate, with 149 people supporting him, tying with the republican presidential candidate, with 51 people supporting him. Simple logic shows that the opinion of 149 people is more important than that of 51 people, so a popular vote system would have been best in this situation. The focus on certain states is such a popular method by the presidential candidates, that, according to source 2, "During the 2000 campaign, seventeen states didn't see the candidates at all..."Big states and swing states should not receive much more attention per citizen from the presidential candidates than little states do.

In conclusion, the Electoral College should be replaced by the popular vote system as soon as possible. The Electoral College relies on archaic methods to make tallying votes simpler for the government, which results in problems. It's like the government is rounding the votes. The winner-takes-all method of the Electoral College can render a voter's vote completely useless, and it even allows representatives to vote for the presidential candidate that is against the voter's wills. Presidential candidates will not bother campaigning in states that are loyal to their adversary or are too small to be worth their time. While a single person's opinion might not seem important, or rounding votes seems "easier," no corners should ever be cut when deciding who the leader of a nation with over 50 million citizens is, which is why the Electoral College should be replaced by the popular vote system.