Power to the People. Rock the Vote. Freedom to Choose. Democracy for all! With thousands of colorful colloquialisms out there stressing the importance of voting it's funny that we don't elect the most important office in our government. But what is the system that allows us to entertain the fallacy of democracy? Why do we not directly elect the highest office in the land? Is it for our protection, or for the governments?
             When the Founders of our Constitution settled on the Electoral College as the means of selecting a president, one of their primary concerns was to protect the interests of smaller states against potential domination by larger, more densely-populated states. The results of the 2000 race illustrate how easily such domination could be brought about through direct popular election of the president. President Bush won practically the entire rural area of the United States whereas Al Gore won the densely-populated states in the popular election. If the Electoral College was to be abolished, then the Presidential candidate would only focus their time and effort in the populous states rather than, say forty-four rural states who deserve equal representation.
             The feeling of over half of the country is that George W. did not win the election, because Al Gore won half a million more of the popular votes, and therefore should be president today. However, when our Founding Fathers set up this system, they foresaw problems. They created a system that had an answer to any problem in any presidential election. This last election, one of four now in history, is proof that they had amazing foresight and protected this country from 225 years in the past from tyranny and takeovers.
             A good example of history allowing the popular vote as the determining factor, which lead to a hostile incident, is Adolf Hitler's reign. Hitler came to power in Germany after a perfectly democratic election (with little, ...