In  2000, George W. Bush ran for the President of the United States, and lost the popular election, but still became President. How is that possible? The majority of the citizens voted for Al Gore, wanting him to become the next leader of our country, but Bush won the electoral college. The electoral college is a voting system also nicknamed  “all or none” to determine the final presidential winner. Throughout the past month, I have studied the topic of an electoral college and strongly feel that it is unnecessary and can be negative towards elections. Today, I will be explaining to you what the electoral college is, why it should be banned, and ways our country can eliminate the unnecessary electoral college. This is relevant to you because in 5 years, we will be part of the American population that will vote for the next President in 2020. The electoral college should be discontinued because it has caused very many upsets in our election system throughout our history. Now, lets move on to talk about what the electoral college is and what it does.

Through a survey that I recently took, 33 percent of this class does not know what the electoral college is. The electoral college is an institution that decides on who becomes the next president. Each state has a certain number of votes based on the total number of people in that state’s Senate and House of Representatives. For example, California has 55 votes while Hawaii only has 4.The 23rd Amendment of the Constitution states that Washington D.C. is treated like a state in this process and is given 3 votes.  According to History.com, there are in total 538 votes including Washington DC. Now, who votes directly with the electoral college? Citizens like us actually elect people called electors on the first Tuesday of each November instead of the presidential candidates. The electors with the most votes will then vote using the electoral college institution. After the votes are counted, the presidential candidate with the most votes voted by the electors will “win” all of the electoral college votes of that state. A total of at least 270 currently is needed to secure a win. The final winner of the election is then officially declared around the beginning of the following January. This entire process was generated by our Founding Fathers to allow for a fair election of president between the citizens and Congress. In conclusion, the electoral college is a institution that allows for voters to vote for electors who then directly votes for a presidential candidate in elections every 4 years.

Now that we have learned about what the Electoral College is, lets look at why this technique is unnecessary in many cases, has caused some upsets, and can be very manipulative. 43 percent of this class does not believe that this process should be abolished, so today I will clearly state why it is futile. First, this action is unnecessary because it has made no difference in many cases between the winner in electors and citizen voters. According to the National Archives website, President Barack Obama won 65 million 446 thousand 32 votes while Republican Candidate Mit Romney won only 60 million 589 thousand 84 votes. Overall, Barack Obama won the popular vote. Now lets look at the electoral college results. As you can see, Obama who is in blue won 27 states while Romney won 23 states, but Obama won many of the states with larger amounts of votes which according to the New York Times, allowed him to win 332 of the 538 votes which gave him a “winner takes all” status. This is not the only case when both processes concluded with the same outcome. Another election includes the election of 1992 between Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush. The electoral college resulted in the same winner as the popular vote which would conclude that it is unnecessary. Next, the electoral college has caused certain upsets throughout past elections that can lead to large changes. Looking back at the election of 2000, George W. Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore by a sliver, but at the same time won the electoral college with only a difference of 5 electoral votes. This shows that the majority of the citizens of the voting population in that year had wanted Al Gore to win. Both candidates had different views and opinions on ideas which could have left jarring differences in our country if the outcome had come out with no electoral college. According to the Washington Post, Al Gore had written an article on something he was most ardent of. He was a strong environmentalist activist. In the article, Al Gore accused President Bush of not abiding to the new environmentalist policy put in by the government and to not put in further action of the seriousness of the greenhouse effect around 2007. This would not have been as much of a problem if Gore had won with only the popular vote. The popular vote is the most raw data we can collect because there is little interference between the citizen’s decisions and the winner. Lastly, this system can be easily manipulated. All electors are expected to vote for the candidate they pledged to represent before becoming an official elector. It is not illegal for an elector to manipulate the system and vote for a contrasting candidate. The outcome would be a bad impression of that elector and another vote for the opposing candidate which is not what each citizen wants. Overall, the electoral college can be ineffective and can even cause turmoil between the country itself.

We have now learned how big of a problem the electoral college is to our nation, but we need solutions to expunge the electoral college. Now I know that you may think that there are no solutions to this process since it is embedded in to our history as a country, but I have 1 ideal result that can reduce this question of policy. We could hold a vote to abolish this measure. My approach would be to send out the message that every person should be able to put in their own unbiased vote with no interference to the elections. It should also be clear to the public that it is rather inconvenient and disturbance After the message is put across different areas of the United States, there should be an official election towards the banishment of the electoral college. With this election, we can know what the majority of the population believes in and order will be restored. If the electoral college was to be omitted, there would be one less flaw to our presidential election process.

All in all, the electoral college is something I passionately am against because it is such a redundant and flawed system. There have been numerous cases of confusion throughout past elections where a candidate has won only the electoral college. Today, you all have learned what the electoral college is, why it should be banned, and how we can ban it. I hope that after my argument today, all of this class may be accepting and agree that the Electoral College should be banned for all of the problems it has caused our country. Why not eliminate this problem if we have the knowledge and power to do so?