(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.