Should the Electoral College Be Abolished?

• The Electoral College was designed partly to give slave states outsized influence by counting enslaved people as 3/5 of a person toward electoral votes; the winner-take-all allocation used by 48 states has no constitutional basis and was not intended by the founders.
• The concentration of presidential campaigns in 5-7 swing states means the remaining 40-plus states are effectively ignored; policies, spending, and attention flow to Pennsylvania and Arizona while Texas and California voters are taken for granted or written off.
• Every other major democracy with an elected executive uses popular vote; the US could adopt ranked-choice voting to handle third-party spoiler dynamics while achieving genuine majority legitimacy.

Debater: To be announced

• The Electoral College forces candidates to assemble broad geographic coalitions; a national popular vote would mean the entire election is decided in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston, with candidates able to ignore the 40 states they can't run up the score in.
• The 2000 and 2016 outcomes that offend reform advocates were legitimate under the rules both candidates competed under; changing electoral rules in response to a disliked outcome is corrosive to the democratic norm that you play by the rules even when you lose.
• The National Popular Vote Compact raises serious constitutional questions under the Compact Clause and could allow a small number of compact-state legislatures to unilaterally override election results in non-compact states: a constitutional crisis waiting to happen.

Debater: To be announced