Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Step Seven

Every year that the Electoral College is used to elect the President, we find numerous flaws within the system. The Founding Fathers formed the Electoral College to elect the President, because they believed that the general public was too uninformed about candidates to directly vote for the President. I believe that for the most part the Electoral College is an unfair way to elect the President of the United States. I feel that the popular way is the most effective and fair way to elect the President. However, I am willing to compromise that the Electoral College provides the states with a say in the election. A compromise between the Electoral College and the popular vote would be best for the election.

A possible compromise that we have reached is to retain the Electoral College but change the way in which the Electoral votes are distributed. Every member of Congress represents a certain group of people, and the number of Electoral votes in each state corresponds to the number of representatives from that state. Since each representative is supposed to act on behalf of and according to the wishes of his or her constituency, it would make sense that each Electoral vote would serve a similar purpose. Under this new system, the candidate who wins the popular vote of the entire state would automatically receive two Electoral votes, but the rest would be decided according to district. For example, if a state had eleven electoral votes, two would be based on the state-wide popular vote, but the other nine would be based on the popular vote in each district. If a candidate won six of the nine districts, as well as the popular vote, he or she would receive eight electoral votes. However, the other three votes would go to a different candidate. This would allow the popular vote to have a greater effect on the outcome of the election, yet it would not force several states to become irrelevant and possibly ignored during the campaigning process.

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