Pros And Cons Of Abolishing The Electoral College

A debate that has existed in American politics for centuries has flared up again. The debate in question is whether we should keep our Electoral College for the purpose of electing our President or abolish it and elect our Presidents through a popular vote. Those who seek to abolish the Electoral College cite instances -recent and past- in which Presidential Candidates have won the popular vote yet lost the majority of the Electoral College. They also argue that the undemocratic philosophy behind the Electoral College, the thought that the American people aren’t competent enough to choose their own Commander in Chief, is an outdated remnant of a backwards past that has no place in modern society and law. Those who seek to preserve the Electoral

Ideally, the Electors are supposed to be highly educated and qualified individuals whose job is to make sure that the President of our country is the person that is best suited for the office. was of course due to fact that the majority of the population were illiterate, rural farmers who lacked the time and ability to make informed choices for the purpose of voting. In that sense the College isn’t an undemocratic force of evil but rather a safeguard against incompetent and potentially dangerous people running the country. As of fairly recently Electoral College has gained the additional role amplifying rural parts of the country’s power in choosing the commander in chief, acting as a safeguard for peoples with minority views from potential abuse from the nation’s ideological majority, similar to the Senate’s role giving smaller rural populations a greater say in legislation. Furthermore, the Electoral College gives an absolutely certain answer to who will be the next president as elections rarely result in any one candidate winning over half of the popular vote due to third-party and independent candidates. Supporters of the Electoral College argue that if it were abolished then our elections would be flooded with candidates from every third and single-issue party imaginable resulting in presidents winning elections will well under half of the

Our literate population combined with an abundance of modern technology gives the masses the ability to make informed voting decisions making the Electoral College’s original purpose no longer relevant in today’s world. The Electoral College has also given rise to “swing states,” or states that fluctuate from election to election which side of the political spectrum they favor. As a result, presidential candidates have been forced to focus the majority of their time on these few states. This causes politicians to make campaign promises catered to them just to gain political favor which translates into policies once someone is in office that do not impact the majority of the country. For example, candidates in the latest election discussed coal and how to save coal jobs even though there were only about 68,413 US coal miners as of 2015. By contrast there, were 3.2 million US teachers as of 2017 and well over 3.7 million fast food workers as of 2018, yet very little was said about teachers and not a word was said about fast food workers during the 2016 election. The most logical reason for the abolition of the Electoral College is the fact that it is an undemocratic institution that is rooted in a mistrust for Americans of the lower classes. To reiterate, the Electoral College was created because the majority of Americans at the time of its creation were poor and uneducated, factors that the framers of the Constitution though made