Dear Mr. Senator,

My names is PROPER_NAME. I am 14 years old, born and raised in the beautiful city of LOCATION_NAME and I am writing to talk to you about the Electoral College. I've done my research, and according to the article

What Is the Electoral College?

by the Office of the Federal Register, it was first established "in the Constitution as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens." What I understood from that text is that it was made to keep equality and fairness between the government and the people. If that is so, why is it that the people have no say in it? I believe that the election should be based on the popular vote because the people should get what the people want.

The Constitution says "We the people, by the people, for the people," yet the people have limited power. I understand that in order to form a more perfect union of our nations, their must be laws and rules and people who govern, as well as enforce, these laws and rules. All I'm asking for is a bit more freedom and power as a citizen of these United States of America.

I'm not the only one who thinks this way. "...according to a Gallup poll in 2000...over 60 percent of voters would prefer a direct election to the kind we have now." Their has been several cases in which the candidate has "won the popular vote but lost the presidency" (Plumer). For instance, the election in 2000 with Al Gore, where his opponent, George W. Bush, received 271 electoral votes and he received 266, eventhough Gore won the popular vote. Instead of voting for a group of people who vote for us, what's the harm in letting the people choose our nation's leader?

The Indefensible Electoral College: Why even the best-laid defenses of the system are wrong by Bradfor Plumer, has a section titled

What's wrong with the electoral college in which he questions "Can voters control whom their electors vote for?", to which he replies, "Not always." If "we the people" are supposed to be the one's with the freedom, then we should have the freedom to at least choose who we're going to have as our President.

"At the most basic level, the electoral college is unfair to voters. Because of the winner-take-all system in each state, candidates don't spend time in states they know they have no chance of winning, focusing only on the tight races in the "swing" states." (Plumer). Take Mitt Romney, for example. He ran for president in 2012, and, knowing that campaigning down South, where he would already be receiving the votes, would not gain him any electoral votes, he didn't campain there at all. This is why they focus on the "swing" or "toss-up" states, and make the other states feel left out, like "the new president will have no regard for their interests, that he really isn't their president." (Posner)

To prevent the states to feel left out and to prevent an injustice such as this one, we should end the anachronism that is the Electoral College. "...The electoral college is unfair, outdated, and irrational. The best arguments in favor of it are mostly assertions without much basis in reality. And the arguments against direct elections are spurious at best." Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Bob Dole, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the AFL-CIO have all agreed on it at one point in time: "Abolish the Electoral College!" (Plumer).

Sincerely,

PROPER_NAME SCHOOL_NAME

CITY_STATE   