Kankel
Reid Kankel
Ms. Marquez
English 10
1 Mar 2017
Should the Electoral College be Abolished?
In the past sixteen years politics have become the increasingly important in the United States, and as a result, more and more citizens have gotten involved and have started to care passionately about becoming involved and vocal. In addition to more Americans getting involved in the past decade and a half, two presidential elections ended with the winners having lost the popular vote but were victorious due to the Electoral College. The Electoral College is a system of electors who cast votes for the president and vice president ticket which is dependent on the popular vote. The most recent presidential election was quite controversial, the winner, Donald Trump won the election with 3 million less popular votes than his opposition, Hillary Clinton. This Election and the 2000 election, where George W. Bush defeated Al Gore despite losing the popular vote, both sparked Americans like you and myself to question the Electoral College and whether it is a good or substandard system. In my opinion the Electoral College is a poor system and should not be used in U.S politics and instead, the popular vote should be employed in deciding the U.S President.
The Electoral College is not a system that treats all of the people of the United States equally. Considering the United States is a democracy, which according to the Merriam - Webster dictionary is a “government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly”, the Electoral College is a system that goes against what the United States of America is supposed to represent. With the Electoral College you are “not casting a direct vote for the president”, instead you are only influencing the electors of the Electoral College within the state in which you cast your vote (Lewis par.19). If the United States claims to be a democracy, then why would the biggest, most important election in the U.S not reflect the totality of the people. The presidential election is the most impactful election in America, it decides the fate and philosophical direction of the country for the next four years, if not longer. The election should be in the hands of the people it will most impact on a daily, monthly, and eventually yearly basis; Americans should not have to influence another “voter” to select the president - in my opinion there should not be a separate group of representatives who vote on behalf of the citizens of a particular state. As Americans it is our Constitutional right to vote and the Electoral College system takes away our right to vote and because many people do not realize it is taken away, agree to the system blindly.
The Electoral College was implemented into the U.S Constitution over 200 years ago in an era that had completely different people and circumstances, for example, most of the population lived in farming communities, unlike today’s society, where many more peo...
