(03-20-2019, 09:53 AM)mikesez Wrote: The electoral college doesn't work as designed and could be improved.  It was supposed to discourage demagogues but Americans alive today have only ever had demagogues as their President. Just switching to a popular vote won't fix that, but it will make elections more expensive, and less secure against hacking and rigging.

Let's all ignore the stupid memes we see that show vast numbers of "red" counties and a tiny number of "blue" ones. The founders weren't thinking about balancing the votes of big cities versus rural areas.

The founders gave us an electoral college for two reasons. 
One is, they couldn't agree to a national standard of who gets to vote and who doesn't.  If some states let a wider variety of people vote, it would be unfair to just add up those votes against those from another state where it's harder to earn the right to vote.  We still have this problem today.  Some states let convicts vote from their prison cell!  Some still make it difficult for convicts to vote long after their sentences are over.  So National Popular vote makes no sense for us unless we tackle this problem first.
The second is, the founders didn't want presidential candidates having to criss-cross the nation making direct appeals to the people.  They wanted those candidates to "campaign" subtley to the wealthy men in each state who were likely to become electors.  Then the electoral college would have to meet in many separate locations, with everyone voting at the same moment, and only once.  They wanted there to be surprises when the envelopes were opened.  They thought the most likely result was no candidate would get a majority, lots and lots of candidates would get a few votes, and the House would then get together all in the same place and pick one candidate from the top three.  But any of these top three candidates might have gotten votes from only a single large state.

The people didn't like this idea.  They didn't like voting for an elector unless that elector pledged to vote for a specific person.  The people wanted to know who people in other states were voting for, because the electors were only going to get to vote once.  If votes were split between two similar candidates, both candidates might be eliminated from consideration by the House.  If a big state like Virginia or new York put all their electors for a single candidate, a spot in the top three was almost guaranteed.  So the people pretty quickly came up with the idea of political conventions to bring together like minded people and agree on a single nominee before the electors were even selected.  This would make sure that votes were not split and that the electoral college would, more often than not, give a majority to a single candidate.   

The political conventions and primary process leading up to them defeat the two goals the founders had.  Now, candidates have to campaign directly to the people well in advance of a vote.  This guarantees that we get two demagogues to choose from. And now, the results of the electoral college are pre-determined, no aspect of randomness or surprise, and no chance for the House to deliberate. 

I do think the plan leaves a lot of room for improvement, but I think we should focus on the process holistically:

1) the nominating process must be considered as well as the final selection.

2) if a national popular vote total is used, every state must have the exact same voter qualifications.  Maintaining such standards probably requires a central, federal authority for voter registration and counting votes - this office would instantly be the target for hackers and ballot box stuffers from around the world.

3) some indirect or "surprising" mechanism needs to be present to counteract demagogues.

I'm not sure you've actually read Federalist 68 or any of the anti-Federalist papers like 72 or lesser known Cato. I say this because you have a pretty rough interpretation to what was actually written. In any case, the process works exactly as intended. They even went so far as to fix flaws along the way with appropriate amendments. I will agree that improvement could take place but I think we would disagree as to why.

Like previously mentioned, the process works as designed. The issues as of late are self induced by those states and a particular party introducing legislation to muddy the waters so to speak. States have tanted the electoral process by corrupting electors. Oddly enough, Hamilton warned of this as well as foreign interference. It is our recent stupidity that opened that vulnerability. Let me quickly address your "holistic" points:

1.) I agree, the nominating process is probably the biggest reason for controversy today. This process has been molested over the last few decades and we are really seeing negative results. Back to fundamentals and eliminate tampering.

2.) This isn't happening (popular vote), nor should it ever. Every logical person knows this is not a solution and would only open the doors to further corruption and interference either by foreign entities or corporate. Money talks! I do agree a Federal voting standard and identification must be put in place to avoid ballot box stuffing. This is completely logical and fair...which is why it will most likely not happen. State and Federal elections are money makers and sadly depend on a bit of "smoke & mirrors" for a certain group! Oh if we had just listened to the forefather's warnings!

3.) The nature of introdcuing surprise is not a fix nor should be an element in today's society. In fact, we hate surprises! We must be connected to real time info 24/7. Surprise introduces doubt that gets fed on. Any question to my opinion can be answered by looking at the 2016 election. How did the Dems and Hillary handle that "surprise" element. Nearly every viable poll had her winning. SURPRISE!! Here we are two years later with Trump and every associate being blasted with investigation after investigation because corruption entered into our system, only this time it failed to succeed.

Elections and the current issues associated are directly connected to our want to fix what isn't broke, strictly for the benefit and gain of a party or group for the almighty dollar. Unfortunately, when people are involved, so is the potential corruption. The answer, get back to grassroots, remove monetary interference, implement a federal/state voter identification system, and provide federal grants to each state to ensure equipment is of the same standard (no strings attached). If there was ever a process that required the KISS principle, elections is it. We can't allow corruption to take root and hide in the bowels of complicated legislation.

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