Electoral College

For the electoral college: efficiency, tradition. Against the electoral college: unfair representation, gerrymandering, faithless electors, and the winner take all system. Aftwer looking over this list, I come to the conclusion that the electoral college should go. When there weren't so many citizens, and communication was difficult, the electoral college's efficiency was very important. Now, with information everywhere, the most relevant part of this efficiency left is that there are fewer votes to count. With the internet and voting machines, even this advantage may become irrelevant. And I don't find tradition to be a good reason in and of itself for anything. The biggest problems without the electoral college, vote fixing and recounts, can be fixed. Recounts can be fixed with electronic counting, and while protecting this process from interference will take continual work, I believe that it is better than dealing with a system that gives some sitizens a more powerful vote than others, and only contains election fraud down to a state level anyway. With a direct election, the actual will of the people can be more accurately read. And with the internet, the problem of campaigning everywhere is shrinking. There will be bugs to be worked out of any new system, so the electoral college would probably need to be kept for a couple elections after a decision anyway. Somehow, though, the electoral college either needs to go, or be updated a lot to fit in with the new reality of the political world.