Last year's election involving Bush and Gore heated up a fifty year old debate: whether the Electoral College is still an effective system considering the circumstances the United States now faces compared to when it was created by the founding fathers. The Electoral College is drafted into the constitution and has been used to elect the President of the United States since the beginning of our independence. In the two hundred some odd years of its history, there have been instances when the college did not work and has stirred up a considerable amount of debate.
             When our founding fathers created this system of election, they accounted for the many problems faced by a new nation with new citizens. Because of the pristine age of the country, the founders knew they faced different problems of creating a system compared to the older powers of the world. The influence from other world powers was a foreseeable problem, so the founders had to limit the public vote in order to protect the new nation.
             Two of the main problems faced by the founders were the difficulty of travel and the absence of political parties during the 18th century. In 1776 the United States contained only four million people spread up and down a thousand miles of Atlantic seaboard barely connected by transportation or communication. Because traveling and communication from one state to another took days and sometimes months, it was almost impossible for any normal farmer or shop owner to make an educated guess with lack of up to date information. Also, considering there were no political parties at the time, no person could chose a candidate with common beliefs of their own unless they had some form of information that would be distributed to every citizen. Additionally, the founders also had to deal with the country's fear of an oppressive ruler as a result of the tyranny imposed upon the colonies by British rule.
             The founders agreed that the best w...