The United States Constitution has been amended 17 times, and they have all been for extremely important reasons, such as the abolishing of slavery, and the women’s right to vote, but is there another major flaw in the Constitution that needs to be amended? The thing that people see is  beautiful about the United States is the freedom. We get to chose our leaders, and elect our president, or so most people think. While we

do get to vote for who we want to be our president, the real decision is up to these people in the image to the left, members of the electoral college. For years different organizations and groups have tried to get rid of the electoral college, but none have succeeded. What the electoral college actually is and what they do are kind of confusing, so I will say them in simple terms. On election day, voters vote for the candidate they want to be president. Whichever candidate gets the most votes in that state, their chosen electors go to the real election in the first week of December. They will then cast their vote, presumably based on who they said they would vote for, but only 29 states actually require electors to vote for who they pledged too. Whichever candidate receives the most electoral votes is then the president. When the Constitution was written in the 1787, the electoral college was a good idea because voters had very little, if any, opportunity to learn about the candidates, so it was the job of educated, state appointed electors. This system is, however, now severely outdated and badly needs to be removed because of voters ample opportunity to learn about candidates.   
The biggest flaw comes into view when you realise that 21 of state electors (not including Connecticut) can vote for whoever they want to, even if they pledged to vote for someone else. If you pledged that you would vote for a certain candidate, and you are representing nearly 600,000 people, you would think that you would vote for the person that the 600,000 people chose. What I don’t understand is when electors vote for someone completely different, and even sometimes someone who isn’t even running! You may think that this doesn’t happen very often, but it has happened in every single presidential election in U.S. history! You may also be thinking that it doesn’t really matter if one or two electors vote against whom they pledged to, because the vote has never been down to one or two votes, but it actually has. In the election of 1876, the electoral vote was 185 to 184, just barely giving Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency. I don’t know about you, but I would be very mad if the person I wanted to be president lost because my elector lied. I hope that after reading this blog, you can support those who are taking action to abolish the electoral college.   

~James