train_essays: 67
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| 67 | 0d8b9898 | 1 | The Electoral College is best described as outdated and obsolete. It was designed so that, when there were too many states and poor technology, the vote could be fairly and realistically counted, by voting between a few people from each state. This was good and efficient for that time, but, with the technology available to us today, it is impractical and easy to corrupt. if you live in a mostly Democratic state as a Republican, your vote is regarded as nothing, and you would have no reason to vote in the electoral college, instead of throwing your vote into the entire mass of the united states, where it has a chance to even slightly influence the vote. Also, since larger states are given more attention, due to the allornothing attitude of most states, other states are given less information and are forced to make more wild guesses than votes, a result of having less information. When the idea of the Electoral College was introduced, the telegraph was still pretty hot technology. All votes would be counted by hand by an impartial court, counting off the vote of every single person individually, out of perhaps more than a million voters. Instead of this, each state would record their own numbers and dispatch a group of electors, who could not be influenced away from their vote, while sending a horseman or a few across the hundreds of miles of U.S. territory with a few little scraps of paper with votes on it would be impractical and dangerous. bags could be lost, a rider could have an accident, entire counties would be unaccounted for. The Electoral College was a nessecity as well as a stroke of genius, and I applaud the man who thought of it. However, this was when the telegraph was a stroke of genius, too. Now we have a cell phone the size of a notepad that can store thousands or millions of votes alone. We have processors that can count the number of people that like apples versus oranges and come out with a percentage, verdict, receipt, and the best bussines option as soon as the numbers are input, as soon as we push that little blue "Enter" button. We can send the votes through the air in the billions, without as much as wires to conduct them. there is little or no possibility of tampering or miscommunication, and there are records to back up and correct every single little error. it is much smarter, safer, and more accurate to initiate a simple counting program on the computer, with each individual terminal sending all of it's results and information to a higher terminal until all of the information is scored, backed up, double checked, counted, percentaged, and a final verdict is reached. This can even be done in a way to run the information separately to different computers, to minimize tampering. The electoral college is obsolete, a small parasite of politicians who just dont want this to end. we dont still use the telegraph, do we? The electoral college is not only obsolete, unnesessary and parasitic, but also unfair to many voters. The main ways this unfairness can be identified are extreme, and each really deserve a paragraph of their own. Let us imagine a scenario: a democrat lives in a mostly republican state. He goes to vote. His vote is passed along, checked off, and placed aside for a time. When all of the votes are in, the republican votes outweigh the democrats. Now, our democrat's vote, his wife's vote, the democratic guy who works at 711 down the street's vote, Joe's vote, Bob's vote, Billy's vote, "That girl Suzie's" vote and ALL THE DEMOCRATIC VOTES IN THE STATE are all, essentially, thrown into the furnace, and will do so next election, the election after, and essentially every mostly republican election after that. In a popular vote without the barrier of the Electoral College, all those votes would flow into the pile for whichever canidate they voted for. Then the pile would be counted, divided into the total votes, and percentaged. then, at lest the votes could count for SOMETHING, other than a waste of time. But wait! there's more. Most states have an allornothing ideal, meaning if politician A got 51% of the votes in California, while politician B still got 49%, Politician A gets 55 votes in the Electoral College, while politician B gets squat. This does not represent the best interests of many of the people in that state. this is unfair. It also means that larger states have the advantage, because they get more votes, like California 55, Texas 38, and Florida 29, while smaller states get less, such as Alaska 3, Rhode Island 3, and Hawaii 4. Just to add insult to injury, this means that larger states are more fought over by politicians, leaving smaller states practically ignored. This is unfair to people in the Dakotas or Montana have no information to base their votes on, instead just picking a canidate by mainly party affiliation. the biggest political battles are in fact fought over the biggest states, in the forms of advertisements and propaganda. Although the propaganda is truely just that: propaganda, there is some truth in them, and the voters in bigger states are more well versed in the political and practical advantages of one canidate over the other. Article 3, while defending the Electoral College, in fact condems itself, by saying that voters in so called "swing states," where there is no true dominant party, are likely to be given the most information on the canidates as they battle over who will get that state's votes in the college. The same thing can be said for the bigger states, because neither politician can really afford to let the other gain the upper hand in that state. Therefore smaller states, or states that are basicly marooned on one party are ignored or disregarded as worthless and unattainable in any case, so they widthold information from them, forcing them to vote blindly in favor of whichever party they choose, which votes may be discarded anyway. With an uncensored popular vote, the political canidates will be forced to advertise for all of the united states, instead of just the bigger or indevisive states. this will also remove all of the unfair advantages from the larger states, including more information as well as an unfairly weighted voting system. In conclusion, the electoral college was the most efficient and sucessful way to vote, back in the 17001800. However, with current communication and transportation technologies, the College has become obsolete, to the point where it should be buried at a crossroads with a stake through it's heart. It is unfair, biased, impractical, and just overall worthless. We should put our newfound technology and knowledge to use and do away with the electoral College, once and for all. | 0 |