I believe that in the current year of 2016, the electoral college can be effectively eliminated from the voting process.It is an outdated relic from before the age of mass information and it can lead to very obvious subversion of the people's will, and can thus be done away with to ensure fair elections where everyone’s voice truly matters.Whether or not the powers that be would realistically allow such a thing to happen could easily be the topic of a whole other paper. So allow me to lay out an argument against the electoral college.

Firstly, we must understand what the electoral college is, how it operates and why it was implemented in the first place.The electoral college is the system where the people in each state cast their vote to tell their congressmen who they want for president, all it takes is a majority of people voting for a candidate in each state for that state to send its electoral votes (equal to its representatives in the house based on population plus two in the senate) in favor of said candidate.However, the congressmen themselves do not vote for the candidate themselves. Instead, they send specially appointed electors, chosen by the two parties.The founding fathers included the electoral college in the constitution to essentially allow for the will of the states (or in today’s case the will of the two parties) to supersede the will of the people in a time when the fastest way to deliver information was on a piece of paper delivered by a horse messenger who may or may not have gotten to his destination alive.

Now aside from being needlessly convoluted in today’s information age, there are some major flaws with the electoral college.The first major flaw being none of the electors are required to vote as pledged.This is easily the biggest reason why the electoral college needs to be eliminated from the voting process as it eliminates any and all accountability to the people.Often times we the people do not even know who these people are who are voting on our behalf.And based on the level of corruption that’s been exposed by WikiLeaks in the Democratic primary election do we have any reason at all to still believe these people will represent the people's will?We can be fairly certain that anyone who would be considered for an elector will most likely despise Donald Trump on the basis of him being a direct threat to their power and position.And despite being shown as the favored candidate in crooked polls such as Reuters and Ipsos it’d be fair to say most of the ordinary people either despise Clinton or reluctantly tolerate her because she isn’t Trump.The will of the people is absolutely going to be subverted in this manner this election.Much like it was in the 2000 election with George Bush who won the majority of states yet lost the popular vote.

The second major flaw being it reinforces our broken system churning out two broken candidates from two broken parties to run a country slowly going broke.No one is going to vote for a small party if they know they have no chance of winning.Especially in our current system where the distribution of electoral votes is winner take all, a third party cannot possibly gain support without looking like its taking support away from the two main parties.And no one in their right minds will support a party that never wins.I know for a fact that our founding fathers were against the thought of a two party system, considering it “the greatest political evil under our constitution”.As much as I’ve come to dislike Gary Johnson and the Libertarian party in the past few weeks I still believe it’s worth letting Johnson participate in the debates just to show people there are other ways of doing things.The people are sick of having to pick the lesser of two evils every four years, and it can change once the electoral college is gone or massively reformed.

When it comes to that, I can’t say I have the right answer.The only thing I can say for sure is that this system is broken, which any randomer off the street could tell you.However, the proposed reform I probably most agree with is the Congressional District method, which would give one electoral vote per congressional district and then two votes for the winner of that state.With the added caveat that electors be in some way held more accountable for how they honor their pledges.I foresee third parties gaining traction with this method as a third party candidate would gain much more traction in the primaries and general elections, which quite honestly is what we need if we want to re-enfranchise voters and get all major parties to give us better candidates.

To conclude, I believe that the best choice for we the people is for the electoral college to go.We’re living in a time where both parties in the political system are showing brazen and open contempt for the will of the people.On one side you have the Democrats, who conspired to rig the primaries to ensure their favored candidate got the nomination, who conspired with the media to make sure that happened, who call the opposition racist while referring to outreach to a large consistent part of their base as “Taco bowl outreach.” And on the other side, you have the Republicans, who look down their noses at over half of their base, who submit to the aforementioned Democrats in an effort to appease them, who have failed miserably at conserving and protecting the culture and values that have made this nation what it is today, who have actively tried to subvert the will of half of the people by attempting to stop Trump from getting the nomination.If these are the people who are supposed to represent us in deciding who gets to lead us for the next four years, then I’m not going to cry when I see them go. The people have spoken, it’s about damn time their voice mattered when it doesn’t benefit the elite.