Abolish Electoral College

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Many have concluded that the Electoral College should be taken away completely or just in some states. There have been cases where Electoral College has actually been bad for us, but there has also been equal amount of times were it worked in are favor. There have been a few cases where they try to abolish the Electoral College and even just remove it state wide. For example, in 2004 Colorado almost passed a bill that uses popular vote instead of the electoral votes. Another, case was in 2000 when an elector voted against the popular vote which hasn’t happen in over 100 years. There is a misunderstanding of why we the Electoral College actually works, for example it can help smaller states have more representation and a bigger impact on who wins the election. Another well reason electoral voting works is it makes sure everyone received proper representation from each county. One of the other reasons Electoral College is widely excepted is it there would be no real mechanism of insuring who won the majority of the votes and specifically ones with not much regulation on voters. Many people don’t know that are voting system is is that of an electoral vote and not of a populist vote, this creates a problem amongst certain voters who believe otherwise and they feel they have been betrayed. There was the 2000 presidential election where Colorado’s popular vote system, where who ever wins the most votes in the state gets all nine electoral votes for the state. Colorado’s example of popular vote in the 2000 election shows how even though 47 percent voted for john Kerry all nine electoral votes went to president George W. Bush. Having an electoral system puts 538 people in charge of who are next president is, and puts a heavy burden on those individuals knowing specifically that they hold the power to choose who will represent the leader of free world. “The most serious drawback to the current Electoral College system is that it doesn 't allow for a direct popular vote, whereby the presidential candidate who receives the most votes wins the office and can lead the country cloaked in a mantle of legitimacy.” (Tupa) There Electoral College was almost abolished before in 1969, when there was “A constitutional amendment calling for direct popular election of the president was backed by the American Bar Association, the Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO, the League of Women Voters, and a host of other un-fuzzy- minded pillars of civil society.” (Keyssar) Even before the 1969 bill was introduced there where over 200 amendments that tried to modify the Electoral College or replace it. …show more content…
A reason the prior bills before 1969 never passed was “The issue was not small states versus big states but slavery and racial discrimination.” (Keyssar) Around the 1960’s many legislations passed one being African Americans counted as a full vote this meant the south had less to lose in a popular vote. One of the most popular alternatives to the Electoral College is approval-based voting which “The issue was not small states versus big states but slavery and racial discrimination.” (Bolinger) Another short coming of the Electoral College is many large states feel their representation is disproportional, so many don’t vote because they feel their vote doesn’t matter and it was even stated that “The nine most populous states have 51.2 percent of the vote but only 241 Electoral College votes” (The Washington post) The only other way a popular vote system would gain traction again would be if another candidate wins the electoral vote, but not the popular vote. President George w, Bush was the first president in over 100 years to become president even though he lost in the popular vote. This is one of those cases where Electoral College is bad because those candidates can …show more content…
In the 2000 election there was voter fraud which called for a recount in Florida if this was a populist vote it would call for country wide recount, but “The Electoral College reduces the possibility of a recount since popular vote totals are often much closer than the margins produced by the Electoral College’s “winner-take-all” system in 48 states.”

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