How To Eliminate The Electoral College

The Elimination of the Electoral College

With the recent election, a controversy has come up about the eliminating the Electoral College. The Electoral College is made up of a group of electors where they vote for the President and the Vice President based on the states popular vote for the candidate. There are 538 Electoral College votes and in order to win the election, a candidate must have a majority of 270 votes to become the President. When Americans cast their vote, they are actually casting votes for the electors who will then cast their votes for the candidate. So, what’s the issue? Well, the issue is that, “The current system has the problem that presidential campaigns concentrate on only ten of the fifty states, and at least four out of five Americans are left out of the process of deciding who their president should be,” according to John Koza. In this election alone, President Obama and Governor Romney have visited Ohio a total of seventy-one times because Ohio was a major battleground state. To add on, statistics show that President Obama and Governor Romney have spent about ninety- five percent of their time and money in only ten out of the fifty states. Why? Because those battleground
states have citizens who are undecided as to which candidate they should vote for, whereas most of the citizens in other states are decided. Now, let’s say that there was no electoral college and the candidates won by popular vote, chances are that they will spend a lot of their time and money campaigning in heavily populated areas such as the New England states, the South, and the West Coast. This unit has mostly been about public opinion and political participation.
It has also been about the election. We learned how people choose the president and we got a general idea about the Electoral College. The Electoral College plays a HUGE role in an election. As I mentioned in the first paragraph, the electors vote for a candidate based on the states popular vote. Take Virginia for example, if you were to look at the counties, you would see that a majority of them voted for Governor Romney. If you were to look at the heavily populated (urban) areas like Richmond or D.C., they voted for President Obama. So, what candidate did the electors place their vote for? President Obama. Just by looking at the map, one would think that Virginia voted
republican. The Electoral College was an agreement between the election of a candidate by a vote in Congress and the election of a candidate by popular vote of citizens. I’m sure that back when the Electoral College was formed, no one questioned the fairness of it. The popular vote is basically being spilt from the Electoral College vote. In my opinion, the Electoral College should be eliminated because it should not be electors from each state deciding the “fate” of our country. It should be the citizens deciding the outcome of an election because after all, that is why we are allowed to vote. I feel that even though we are allowed to vote, our vote doesn’t really count because of the Electoral College. Voting is a great way for our votes to be heard and to exercise one of our many rights, but if the Electoral College is eliminated, then we might as well not vote.

Works Cited Page

Savage, George . "George Savage: Time to eliminate the Electoral College."Madison.com Madison WI news sports entertainment. N.p., 5 Nov. 2012. Web. 8 Nov. 2012. .

Jeunesse, William La. "Time to eliminate the Electoral College? | Fox News." Fox News - Breaking News Updates | Latest News Headlines | Photos & News Videos. N.p., 5 Nov. 2012. Web. 8 Nov. 2012. .

"Is it time to eliminate the Electoral College? | TheGazette." Eastern Iowa Breaking News and Headlines | thegazette.com - Cedar Rapids, Iowa City. N.p., 6 Nov. 2012. Web. 9 Nov. 2012. .