Should Electoral College Be Replaced With A Direct National Election

Should the Electoral College be replaced with a direct national election? In order to understand this question, we must first understand what the Electoral College and a direct national election are. The Electoral College is basically a body of people representing the states of the US, who formally cast votes for the election of the president and vice president. This group of people is made up of 538 electors who are chosen or appointed by a larger group and a majority of 270 votes by these people are required to elect a president or vice president. A direct national election on other hand is more straightforward as it is when the nation gets to elect—presidents are elected in all or most constituencies of a nation or state. The Electoral

Gregg II believes the Electoral College has long been one of the least understood and most unappreciated aspects of the American constitutional order. Yet, it has endured and continued to serve American democracy, why?—because it works. He argues a few times that our presidential elections are open, free, and fair due to the Electoral College. “Our fights can be bitter, but when they are decided at the ballot box they end with legitimate presidents and governable regimes,” Gregg says. He gives the example that in a presidential election, candidates are a race to win more votes than the other guy—and each is based on every vote being counted as well as all votes counting equally. However, all the Constitution tells us is to not count the votes as one giant political entity but instead count them on a state-by-state basis. Therefore, the removal of the Electoral College would radically alter American politics and undermine the nation’s constitutional ability as Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan concluded in Gregg’s article in favor of the fairness

We must keep in mind that every presidential election since the 12th Amendment was added in 1804 has been running accordingly to the rules of the Electoral College. Even though it may be known to be an “outdated and undemocratic framework” as mentioned on a newspaper article found on dailynebraskan.com—changing the rules to a complete new system will change the game. If the Electoral College has made it this far I believe it is for a reason—because it has served to elect forty-four presidents, many of them good, some great, and only a few disasters. It has ultimately created the balance we need in our political order. And l could not agree more with what Gary L. Gregg II said, “we should not gamble what we have in chasing after abstract dreams and ideological agendas.” We should be realistic that the “game” is not going to change anytime, as a few people seem to agree with on nerdwallet.com. However, I feel that this is a good example of us humans always wanting “more” then what we already having and not learning to satisfy with what we have. We must be aware that as stated on uselectionatlas.org, “although there were a few anomalies in its early history, none have occurred in the past century. Proposals to abolish the Electoral College, though frequently put forward, have failed largely because the alternatives to it appear more problematic than is the College itself.”