The Electoral College is a process put into place by the founding fathers for the purpose of electing a president. However, this process was enacted at the very beginning of the United States and the question must be asked, Is it still neccessary? Or even fair? With advancing technology and better processes, the old ways of doing things must be questioned.

Almost all states have a winner-take-all system in place, with the exception of Maine and Nebraska. This system has many faults and in some cases can produce false results. A presidential candidate that wins by a large majority in a state will win the electoral votes of that state, however, if another candidate wins a very close election, he/she will also win a state. For example, in the 2000 presidential election between Al Gore and President Bush, Al Gore won the popular vote of the people but lost the election for president because of the electoral college, the very fact that we know what the popular vote was is proof of neccesity of change. Not only this, but sixty percent of voters want to vote directly. This makes it possible for a candidate to have more individual votes but less electoral votes, making the system somewhat corrupt.

Not only is the process of the Electoral College unfair, it is simply not neccessary, with most voters using digital machines to enter their vote for candidate, votes can be counted digitally and accurately. The electoral college was a great idea before computers were invented and all votes had to be counted by hand. When the process of the Electoral College was put into place, it would have been impossible to count he votes of the entire country with any degree of accuracy, and even if it was possible, the validity of votes would be constantly be questioned. But in this day and age technology makes the very idea of the elctoral college obsolete. I understand the desire for preserving traditional methods but not when it sacrifices a fast, fair, easy system.

Not only should we use a system using computers to count votes, but we already do, news broadcasters show which presidential candidate is winning in real time using modern technology. This allows us to know which candidate has won the election on voting day. Keep in mind that when the electoral college was made, many citizens had no idea who had won often until the next year. The fact that we know immediatly is proof that the meeting of the Electoral college in December is completely unnessessary. And what if there is a tie in the elctoral vote, although we know what the popular vote is, we would still have to send the vote to congress.

Times have changed. Technology has improved. With this the very building blocks of our government must be improved and updated. The Electoral College is a perfect example of a system that worked well in the early days of the country but has since been made obsolete, this system must be fixed    