Should the Electoral College Be Abolished?
Two presidents in 20 years won without the popular vote — Wyoming voters have 68× the presidential influence of Californians. The National Popular Vote Compact is 209 of 270 electoral votes from activation. Two debaters, opposing sides — you score who makes the stronger case.
Monday, October 12, 2026 · 7:00 PM EDT
What's at stake
Abolishing the Electoral College shifts which voters campaigns need to win. Keeping it makes a structural minority veto in presidential elections permanent.
The Matchup
The Positions
A democracy in which some votes count 68 times more than others based on geography is not a democracy. It is an accident of 18th-century statecraft turned into permanent structural power.
- 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
A national popular vote would let candidates win the presidency by maximizing turnout in a handful of dense cities while ignoring rural America, and would invite manipulation of a few high-turnout jurisdictions to swing the entire election.
- 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
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“Every other major democracy with a directly elected executive uses a national popular vote. The US could adopt ranked-choice voting to handle third-party spoiler dynamics while achieving genuine majority legitimacy. The American system is the global outlier, not the model.”
“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 — it was adopted state by state as a partisan strategy.”
“The Electoral College forces candidates to assemble broad geographic coalitions. A national popular vote would concentrate the entire election in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston, allowing candidates to ignore the 40 states they can't run up the score in — the opposite of the representation problem reformers claim to solve.”
“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 — and signals that the rules should change whenever one side prevails.”
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The Format
Standard SuperDebate: two people, cross-examination, moderated from start to finish
Opening Argument
PRO · opening case
Cross-Examination
CON questions PRO
Opening Argument
CON · opening case
Cross-Examination
PRO questions CON
Rebuttal
PRO
Rebuttal
CON
Closing Statement
PRO · final case
Closing Statement
CON · final case
Audience Vote
You pick the winner
~28 minutes of debate · audience vote follows closing statements
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