The Electoral College is broken, and with another election on the way, here is why the voting should be changed to popular vote for the president of the United States. Voters cannot control whom their electors are, in the chance that those electors are replaced with new electors so the votes may be rigged, as well as "faithless" electors may refuse to vote for their party's candidate and could cast a deciding vote for whomever they please.

Voters don't actually vote for the president, instead, they vote for a slate of electors, who in turn elect the president. In the case that you vote John Kerry in Texas, you'd vote for a slate of 34 Democratic electors pledged to Kerry. In the case those electors won the statewide election, they would go to Congress and Kerry would get 34 electoral vote. Who are the electors? They could be anyone, even if their not holding office. Who even picks these electors in the first place? Sometimes it state conventions, other times it's the state's central committee, sometimes the presidential candidates themselves. Can we, citziens of the United States, control whom their electors vote for? Not always, and that shouldn't be.

In the 1960 election, segregationists in the Louisiana legislature almost succeeded in replacing the Democratic electors with new electors with new electors who would oppose John F. Kennedy and make it seem that a popular vote would have not gone to Kennedy. What would happen if their was a tie in the electoral vote? The case would be thrown in the House of Representatives, where state delegations vote on the president. Becasue each state counts for only one vote, a single representative from Wyoming would represent 500,000 voters, 55 representatives from California who getto represent 55 representatives would have as much say as the one from Wyoming. This cannot represent the will of the people.

Now when have you changed your mind about something? Electors can do the same. Electors can refuse to vote for their party's candidate and vote for whomever they please. That can't be right, yet it has happened plently of times before. It's even unfair to the people, who sometimes don't even get to see their electors. Because of the winner-take-all system in each state, they don't focus of states they know they cannot win, aiming towards "swing states." In the 2000 campaign, 17 states didn't see their candidates at all, as well as 25 of the largest media markets who didn't get to see not one campaign ad.

The Electoral College dosen't hear the voice of the people, hardly plays by the rules, is something that should be erased. Even people like Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Bob Dale, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the AFL-CIO agree, give the voice back to the people and abolish the Electoral College!