Pros And Cons Of Abolishing The Electoral College

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Every four years a new president is elected in the United States. During this time, the people of the United States go out and cast their ballot toward the candidate that they think is best. The thing is that the winner of the election is not decided by the popular vote of the people, instead the president is chosen through a system known as the Electoral College. In this system, each state has a certain number of votes that they get. Electors are then chosen in each state and they are supposed to cast the state votes for the candidate that won the majority in the state. Though this is a system that has been in place for a long time in the country, the Electoral College system needs to be removed because it has many flaws within it. One …show more content…

In the article, Debating the Electoral College, the author agrees with this statement stating that the, “Winner-take-all is creating problems for states and the country as a whole” (Pearson). This statement is explaining how with the Electoral College, the winner of the popular vote in the state wins all of the votes from that state. The problem that comes with this is that the votes of the minority party in the state will not have an effect on the election, since the popular vote does not decide who wins the presidency. This is especially true in some states, according to the author, ““It gives too much attention and power to swing states” (Pearson). What the author is saying through this statement is that in swing states, which are states that have very close votes in each election, have more of an influence than other states in the nation. For example, in a safe state, which is a state that is known to vote for a certain political party in each election, the minority party will not get representation because the state will be voting in a certain way. This is true for both the Democrats and Republicans because there are safe states for each, where the minority party in a state can vote but all of the electoral votes will still go towards the majority. For these reasons, the winner-take-all system is a problem with the Electoral