Electoral College or Popular Vote?

[SteveRogers]

Allocating electoral votes by congressional district would be disastrous.

Truly proportional allocation of electoral votes would I guess arguably be better than the current system.

But really, the idea of keeping the electoral college around is just plain silly at this point.

The idea of the electoral college originally made sense given what the founder's envisioned the role of the president to be. The thing is, we decided pretty early on that the President was going to be something much different. You have to remember that originally it wasn't even expected that the people would indirectly vote for the president by voting for electors. The President was basically a whole extra level removed from "the people." The people voted for state legislators who in turn voted for electors who in turn voted for the President.

But starting circa 1828 presidents began styling themselves as the representative of the people; the only person who can claim a nation-wide popular mandate.

Couple that idea with the modern disdain that we have for the idea of a "faithless elector." The idea of the electoral college functioning as a deliberative body has completely gone out the window.   

So Americans have by and large rejected the idea of using the EC to insulate the presidency from the will of the people, and we certainly don't recognize the importance of the EC as a deliberative body. That means the country has flatly rejected two of the original primary motivations behind the electoral college.

That basically just leaves the protection of the balance of power between states as the only remaining justification for the EC. Except of course that we know that the EC doesn't really perform that function as intended either. Sure, in theory Wyoming gets disproportionate influence on the vote total relative to its population, but does anyone really think that that means Wyoming's concerns or the concerns of any other small states are better served by the current system than they would be under a direct popular vote? Candidates by and large ignore the small states in favor of the big prizes. Which is not to say that the EC benefits large states either. When was the last time a Presidential candidate campaigned in Texas or California? No, the EC benefits swing states, hardly the original intention behind the process.

By the way, the question of electoral college vs. popular vote and the question of what voting system should replace the EC if abolished are two very distinct issues.