After the last presidential election, which is still underway apparently, there is much controversy over what should happen to the Electoral College system. There are people who say that the Electoral College is good but should be modified to meet the needs of the modern world. There are those who say that the Electoral College system is too outdated to be modified and should be entirely eliminated. Finally there are those who say that it is has stood the test of time and is still the best system for our country.The original framers of the constitution obviously preferred the electoral system to a direct popular election. The argument that historians give for this is that they preferred this system because travel was difficult and there were no national party organizations. I personally reject this argument. I agree that travel was difficult back then, but wouldn’t that have meant that the candidate who lived closest to the most largest states would have an un-fair advantage under the electoral system back then? The historians add that the framers feared that many regional candidates would divide the vote, and that by requiring a candidate to win a majority in the Electoral College was a way of obtaining a national census.There have been many attempts to reform or even scrap the Electoral College election sense it’s birth. The most recent one being in 1997 when congress debated a constitutional amendment to replace the electoral system with a direct popular vote system. However the Electoral College system to this day remains virtually un-changed from its original form. The only exception is the twelfth amendment, which requires each elector to cast two votes, one for president and one for vice president.Under the current system there are five hundred and thirty eight electors. Each state gets one elector, each representative, and a senator. A presidential candidate needs two hundred and seventy votes to win the election. ...
