system
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human
CMV: There is no good reason (without political bias) for the continued use of the Electoral College system

There have been several pro-electoral college posts recently, so I thought I would try my opposite opinion and see if anyone can convince me to change my view.

In my opinion the Electoral College system has no benefit for America today.  If the majority of the population votes for a given candidate, that candidate should become president.  There is absolutely no good reason I can think of for a person who lives in a state like North Dakota to have significantly more influence on who becomes president than a person who lives in California.

People complain that candidates will no longer appeal to issues important to small states or even bother to visit small states at all, but first...well why shouldn't the candidate who appeals to issues important to a majority of the population of the country as a whole win?  Why should a candidate focus near equal attention on the issues important to the 30% who live in rural areas as the issues important to the 70% who live in cities and suburbs?  Focusing on the issues most important to the most people is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Second, a candidate could just as easily today pick a set of states which have a combined total of 270 electoral votes and campaign in just those states if they wanted, ignoring all other states entirely.  They don't because that's a foolish idea, and it would likewise be foolish to exclusively campaign in the largest states under a popular vote system.  People might talk about how candidates would only campaign in California and New York, but those two states have a total population of about 60 million - less than 20% of the country's population total (and even though they are in the minority, both with significant numbers of republicans too, so it's not like any candidate could get anything close to all of those states votes).  If every vote matters equally *every vote matters equally*, regardless of if you live in Rhode Island or Texas.  So this doesn't disenfranchise anyone living in a small state, it just makes their vote matter exactly as much as anyone else's.  Under the electoral college, anyone living in a big state is effectively at least partially disenfranchised, since their vote effectively just counts less than the votes of people in small states.

Further, since almost all states are winner take all, under the current system if you are part of the minority party in a given state, your vote doesn't really matter.  Republicans in California or democrats in Alabama don't really have a meaningful voice in presidential elections.  Going to a pure popular vote would fix this.

Ultimately I believe that the only *real* reason people still defend the Electoral College system at all is because it benefits their political party.

To change my view, you would need to explain a concrete, compelling, and non-political (i.e., no 'republicans controlling the presidency is better for America, so we should support whatever system allows that to continue happening') reason why the electoral college system is beneficial to America as a whole.
gpt
> Republicans in California or democrats in Alabama don't really have a meaningful voice in presidential elections. Going to a pure popular vote would fix this.

You know what else would fix this?  States allocating their electoral votes by congressional district.  

Individual states have the power to do this now.  They don't need to wait for a constitutional amendment that will never get approved by states that would be disadvantaged by it.  

Democrats in California have the power to make this happen right now.  It would solve the problems they claim to have with the Electoral College throughout their state.  

But they aren't doing it and they aren't even considering doing it.  Why?  Because their reasons aren't what they claim they are.  They want political advantage.  

> (i.e., no 'republicans controlling the presidency is better for America, so we should support whatever system allows that to continue happening')

The reason the Electoral College is important today is to protect rural populations.  There tend to be personality differences between rural and urban populations, not massive, but consistent enough to be predictive, so rural populations end up mildly right-wing and urban centers are strongly left-wing.  

The population distribution is currently such that if we went by a straight population vote, the cities would have the ability to dominate rural areas not only through college and culture and the news, as they currently already do, but also to dominate them with politics.  If rural political voices aren't loud enough to be heard, policies harmful to rural areas will get implemented.  

Currently, Republicans represent the values of rural people and Democrats represent city people, but there is no guarantee or iron law that this must be so.  Democrats used to appeal to a broader coalition of people which included rural folks.  Nothing stops Democrats from deciding to appeal to rural folks again.