The Electoral College is a group of electors from each state that vote to decide who will run The United States of America. The number of electors from each state varies depending on the population of the state. The two senators for each state and however many house of representatives there are from a state make up the number of electors from that state. Since there are always two senators and at least one House of Representative per state, each state will have a minimum of three electors within the Electoral College. For example, California will have much more electors than Kansas because the population in California is much greater therefore causing the state to have much more members in the House of Representatives. Although the District of Columbia is not a state it is treated like one in this matter. The district was granted three electors under the 23rd amendment to the constitution. There is a total of five hundred and thirty eight electors in all with a two hundred and seventy majority vote rule. This means that at least two hundred and seventy of the five hundred and thirty eight electors must agree on one of the presidential candidates for the candidate to be elected. This system was set up as an alternative to allowing the citizens or senate vote on the president. Many citizens in today’s world believe that their vote should directly count in the Presidential election. Because of this, some citizens have begun proposing to abolish the electoral college while others have been fighting to save it. Some sources argue that the electoral college favors Republicans candidates over Democratic ones but there are also many other articles that argue that our country needs the electoral college to keep out independent party candidates and keep order. After thoroughly researching the topic, the best solution to the issue would be to keep the Electoral College. The Electoral College should be kept in place because it promotes the two-party system, giving citizens the power to elect the President would cause major issues, and the Electoral college promotes state’s rights and representation.

The Electoral College openly promotes the two-party system by making it very difficult for any third party candidate to even come close to being elected. The system mainly uses third party candidates as a way to take away votes from either of the two main party candidates. Many citizens believe that third party candidates only create political instability and are not prepared nor have enough support to successfully run The United States of America. In today's society, third party candidates typically feel very strongly and are passionate about certain issues and in turn those issues usually get adopted by one of the two main parties because these large parties want to win popular majorities in the states. This system works well because it allows third party candidates to have a say on some matters and for their issues to be heard and most often taken care of by one of the bigger parties but it also allows large parties with lots of support and experience to stay in power and keep the country stable. Without the two-party system, there would be an overload of political parties that would form to take away votes from the main parties. This would create chaos and could potentially put extremist or radical parties into office. These kinds of leaders often lead to drastic downfall within a country and could even lead to a collapse. Knowing that either the Republican or Democratic candidate will win every election allows citizens to feel more comfortable with whatever leader was chosen even if it was not the one that he or she wanted for office. Having an unknown party take office could cause a major panic within the public and a sense of discomfort from not knowing everything about the party and where it came from. This would make the country very weak and could cause more problems such as invasions or attacks. Citizens need a sense of normalcy when it comes to political parties so other parties should not be considered for presidency. Having a two-party system is a tradition that has worked for many years now and will continue to work if the Electoral College is held in place.

If the Electoral College was abolished and popular vote was used to determine presidency, many issues would arise and the government would have much trouble surviving. The first main issue with using popular vote to determine presidency would be that there are many citizens who may be uninformed or misinformed about presidential candidates. Having uninformed or misinformed people vote on who controls the Executive Branch of the United States government would lead to unfit leaders that cannot or do not know how to do the job of president. Getting citizens vote can be very easy by backing whatever issues people may care about or saying anything to please the people while getting the vote of electors who are constantly submerged into the political world and know more than most citizens about politics would be much more difficult. The leader of the United States should be able to do the hard task of gaining electors votes instead of just giving simple speeches to citizens that may not even understand anything or be familiar with any of the topics being discussed. Some citizens believe that since they are not directly deciding who becomes president, they have no say in the United States government. This is untrue because the popular vote helps to determine the representatives. It is also shown that most often the popular vote and electoral vote almost always favor the same candidate to be president. Because of this, there is no need to change to a system where the popular vote determines the president and vice president if the elector the citizens favored is typically the same. Having popular vote determine the president and vice president would also make the process of counting votes to determine the president and vice president tremendously slower. First of, there would be much more votes to count considering that there are about three hundred and twenty five million people in our country versus the five hundred and thirty eight total electors that we currently have. Since there would be so many more votes to count it would not only take longer but it would most likely needed to be recounted to check for accuracy. This could take weeks or even months to complete. In a world full of insanity, not knowing who won the election for a period of time would be agonizing and quite annoying to some citizens. Our world is used to knowing anything and everything whenever we need to know it. Waiting is not one of people’s strong suits, especially in the coming generations. The electoral college should remain as the people that determine the president because not only are those citizens some of the most informed citizens within our country but it is also tremendously faster. 

Lastly, the Electoral College maintains a federal system of government. The Electoral College was set up in a way that allows states to vote on whom they want to elect for president and vice president. Without the Electoral College, citizens nationwide would be voting on whom they want for president and vice president. Doing this would completely get rid of the state's involvement in this process and would lead to a more nationalized government. A more nationalized government would have little to no power granted or left to the states a would cause them to eventually disappear altogether. Without states the national government would gain far too much power and the idea of having power separated throughout the United States of America would completely go out the window. The House of Representatives and Senate both deal with states rights and their representation so if this country were to get rid of the Electoral College it could possibly need to get rid of them all if states were to diminish and disappear. Since both the House of Representatives and Senate are both still kept around today for reasons dealing with the necessity of having states, so should the Electoral College. Our government has been based off of the balance between the national government and state government since the very beginning. The constitution was written to ensure a good balance between the national government and state government. The founding fathers knew that the United states of America would be nowhere without these two governments and a country without them both would be quite unsuccessful. Abolishing the Electoral College would be the first step to abolishing states within this country.

In conclusion, the Electoral College should be kept in place because it promotes the two-party system, giving citizens the power to elect the President would cause major issues, and the Electoral college promotes state’s rights and representation. The two-party system is necessary within this country to ensure that radical leaders do not take charge or monopolize the government of the United States of America. Popular vote should not be used to determine the president and vice president because citizens aren't typically as informed on political issues and matters as electors are and the using the process us popular vote to determine presidency is a much more time consuming and tedious process than the process of using the Electoral College to determine presidency. Lastly, abolishing the Electoral College would be the first major change in taking away states power that eventually could lead to the abolishment of states altogether. The argument of abolishing or saving the electoral college is very important and needs to be carefully considered because it is very worthy of my time as well as an American citizen's time. The electoral College decides who will be in charge of The United States of America and it is a civic responsibility of all citizens to stay informed to hopefully put the best leaders in office. The United States was built off of the Electoral College and successfully used it to elect presidents for hundreds of years now, there is no reason to change a perfectly working system.
